Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday Blu-ray Movie Review

Dead Alive.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 29, 2013

If you’re a real Dead Head, you will recognize 710 Ashbury Street as the address of the so-called “Grateful Dead House” in San Francisco. Part of my misspent youth occurred in San Francisco, and in fact I called Haight-Ashbury home for a brief time in my late teens and early twenties. This was many years after the Summer of Love, but there was still a kind of proto-hippie vibe about The Haight, and I in fact was one of many “longhairs” traipsing up and down the avenue at various times of the day. The Grateful Dead House still had a certain allure even in those years, though I’m pretty certain the band had long since moved on to tonier digs by the time I showed up there. But it was actually in front of the Grateful Dead House that I personally first became aware of the absolutely rabid devotion some fans had to the band. I had wandered by there one day (the house I was living in was right around the corner, in fact), and a guy who I suspect was rather dramatically “chemically altered” basically accosted me right there on the sidewalk and started into a long, occasionally coherent, monologue about The Dead and their (to him, anyway) epochal contributions to global society. It was a bizarre enough experience to actually intrigue me, and as chance would have it, the house I was living in had a large music library which included a ton of Dead albums, and so I spent many days listening to records that I frankly had never really paid that much attention to before. I probably don’t qualify therefore as a “true” Dead aficionado, but the band has always had a special, unkempt place in my heart. Even hippies grow up and go (relatively) straight, and if my connection to Jerry Garcia ultimately matriculated into wearing his line of psychedelically inspired ties, any time I hear the Dead, especially early Dead, I am instantly transported back to my own personal experience with that vaunted trifecta of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. As a laundry list of various celebrities, both musical and otherwise, attest in this hybrid documentary-concert feature, I'm most definitely not alone.

Jerry Garcia was an astoundingly young 53 when he passed away from 1995, ostensibly from a heart attack, but with attendant health issues that included both diabetes and various substance abuse problems. It’s some indication of the incredible love Garcia had engendered over this thirty year career with The Grateful Dead that when his hometown of San Francisco held a memorial a few days after his death, reportedly more than 25,000 people showed up to pay their respects in the vast confines of Golden Gate Park.

Move Me Brightly is a sometimes odd hybrid cobbled together from a huge concert party (you expected anything less?) that Bob Weir arranged to celebrate what would have been Jerry Garcia's 70th birthday, along with some interstitial (and overlapping) interview segments which may have been presented as a separate introduction to the concert that night (online reviews are a bit vague, as if the participants couldn't quite remember what had actually happened, but I digress). Unfortunately what is left here tends to make the boneheaded decision to have the talking heads talking over some of the music, even those songs which are listed on the Blu-ray as "performances" (see the next paragraph for more information). There's some great anecdotal information here from guys like Bob Weir and even Mickey Hart, but why have it play out over the music? At least masterpieces like "Terrapin Station" are left unscathed. (The really ironic thing is the editing tends to shoehorn the talking heads segments in over the jams, which are what a lot of fans are really going to want to hear.)

The Blu-ray "setlist" separates things into "Performances", "Bonus Performances" and "Additional Featured Compositions", but the separation is sometimes meaningless. Even some of the "Performances" are interrupted by talking head moments (as detailed above). What's especially sad about this state of affairs is that so much music was performed that night, only some of which has matriculated onto this Blu-ray (and then sometimes in interrupted form). Several Dead related sites have published a complete setlist along with the performers for everything that was done that evening (unfortunately the Blu-ray does not list the performers), and it may interest and/or disappoint some fans to see what has made it to this Blu-ray, even in interrupted form. I've listed what was evidently the entire set, adding an asterisk (*) in front of the songs that are included on the Blu-ray as either part of the documentary or as supplementary material. (It should be noted that several of the other tunes do show up in part, as "Additional Featured Compositions".)

• The Wheel & *Cumberland Blues (Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Donna Jean Godchaux, Neal Casal, Jon Graboff, Jason Roberts, Joe Russo, Jeff Chimenti)
• Loser (Casal, Russo, Weir, Mike Gordon, Chimenti, Godchaux, Jim Lauderdale, Roberts, Graboff, Adam McDougall)
• Mississippi Half Step (Weir, Gordon, Jim Lauderdale, Godchaux, Graboff, Casal, Chimenti, Russo)
• Dire Wolf (Weir, Harper Simon, Gordon, Russo, Godchaux, Graboff, Chimenti, Josh Kaufman, Sam Cohen)
• *Dupree's Diamond Blues (Chimenti, Casal, Russo, Gordon, Cass McCombs, Sam Cohen, Josh Kaufman)
• *Tennessee Jed (Chimenti, Casal, Godchaux, Russo, Gordon, Weir, Roberts, Graboff)
• *Ship Of Fools (Chimenti, Casal, Godchaux, Russo, Gordon, Weir, Graboff)
• They Love Each Other (Chimenti, Casal, Godchaux, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Jonathan Wilson, Graboff)
• *Bird Song (Chimenti, Casal, Godchaux, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Graboff)
• *New Speedway Boogie (Chimenti, McDougall, Casal, Godchaux, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Roberts, Graboff)
• Loose Lucy (Weir Solo Acoustic)
• *Friend of the Devil (Lauderdale, Simon, McCombs)
• Mission In The Rain (Chimenti, Casal, Godchaux, Russo, Gordon, Wilson)
• Ramble On Rose (Chimenti, Casal, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Wilson)
• Catfish John (McDougall, Chimenti, Casal, Russo, Godchaux, Gordon, Weir, Wilson, Graboff)
• Shakedown Street (McDougall, Chimenti, Simon, Godchaux, Chris Tomson, Godchaux, Gordon, Weir, Kaufman, Cohen)
• *Terrapin Station (Chimenti, Godchaux, Russo, Gordon, McCombs, Weir, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff)
• *He's Gone (Chimenti, Russo, Godchaux, Weir, Gordon, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff)
• *Eyes Of The World (McDougall, Chimenti, Simon, Godchaux, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Lauderdale, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff)
• Scarlet Begonias (Chimenti, Craig Finn, Tad Kubler, Russo, Godchaux, Weir, Gordon, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff)
• Don't Let Go (Chimenti, Finn, Godchaux, Graboff, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Wilson, Simon)
• *Days Between (Chimenti, Casal, Russo, Weir, Gordon, Kaufman, Wilson, Cohen)
• *Franklin's Tower (Chimenti, McDougall, Casal, Russo, Simon, Weir, Wilson, Godchaux, Gordon, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff, Tomson, Lauderdale)
• *U.S. Blues (Chimenti, McDougall, Casal, Russo, Simon, Weir, Wilson, Godchaux, Gordon, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff, Lauderdale, Finn)
• Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad (Chimenti, McDougall, Casal, Russo, Simon, Weir, Wilson, Godchaux, Gordon, Kaufman, Cohen, Graboff, McCombs, Lauderdale, Finn)
• Ripple (Chimenti, McDougall, Godchaux, Simon, Wilson, Tomson, Casal, Roberts, Kaufman, Weir, Gordon, Russo, Wilson, Lauderdale, Graboff)

Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Move Me Brightly is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. The concert footage is really sharp and excellent detailed, so much so that individual dust mites are clearly visible floating behind the band throughout much of the night. These sections benefit immensely from fairly bright and "normal" stage lighting, so that fine detail pops very well and the accurate looking colors appear very nicely saturated. Some of the interstitial elements vary slightly in sharpness and quality, most likely due to filming conditions and/or equipment used. For example, some footage captured at Giants Stadium looks relatively soft when compared to the bulk of the concert footage. Generally, though, this is a great looking release that suffers from none of the typical compression artifacts that sometimes plague these live concert releases.

Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Move Me Brightly features Dolby TrueHD mixes in both 2.0 and 5.1. I was frankly a little surprised that the 5.1 mix didn't more significantly open up the sound, nor did it really add a bunch of punch to the midrange and lower frequencies. But that said, both of these tracks sound fantastically clear and well detailed. The "jangly" aspects of the band come through crisply and clearly, while some of the smoother sounds, like the B3, have a velvety sound that meshes beautifully with the voices. The mix is really well prioritized, especially in some of the extended instrumental sequences.

Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bonus Performances (1080i; 1:01:32) includes:

  Dupree's Diamond Blues

  Friend of the Devil

  Tennessee Jed

  Ship of Fools

  Bird Song

  New Speedway Boogie

Move Me Brightly: Celebrating Jerry Garcia's 70th Birthday Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm a little ambivalent on some of the choices made for this documentary. I really wish director Justin Kreutzmann had given us two documentaries: one devoted purely to the birthday concert, and another one comprised of the interview segments. Alternatively, if he had at least not interrupted some of the songs to include interviews, that would have at least alleviated some concerns that I'm sure I won't be alone in experiencing. However, all of that said, there is so much fantastic music on this Blu-ray that it feels a little silly to throw the baby out with the bath water. Maybe down the road we'll get the entire concert to enjoy, uninterrupted. In the meantime, this release comes Recommended.