Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Phil Collins: Live At Montreux Blu-ray Movie Review

Genesis was only the beginning. . .

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 10, 2012

It may be strange to remember it after all of the hit singles, the ubiquitous music videos, the Grammys, the Oscars and all the other acclaim that has come to Phil Collins through the years, but once he was best known as “that guy who replaced Peter Gabriel in Genesis”. Collins had already racked up considerable performing credits before his days with Genesis, including (believe it or not) a stint as The Artful Dodger in Oliver! (the same role that first brought fame to future Monkee Davy Jones). Collins’ nascent acting career was sidelined by his increasing interest in music, and after a short stint with Flaming Youth, a band that never really captured the brass ring of chart success, Collins answered a low key ad for a drummer and soon found himself hired as part of a new band called Genesis. Collins was often shunted to the background in the early days, relegated to singing backup, though his drumming chops were formidable enough that he was able to parlay them as barter when Brian Eno utilized Collins’ percussion on an album, sans pay, in trade for Eno producing Genesis. When Peter Gabriel decided to leave Genesis to pursue a solo career, many wags opined that it spelled certain doom for the band, and the fact is the band seemed intent on looking elsewhere for a new lead singer, reportedly auditioning hundreds of people before realizing, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, that there was no place like figurative “home”, finally settling on Collins. That “settling” turned out to be a major coup, unexpected though it was, and Genesis was suddenly catapulted into worldwide success, especially on American shores, that it had never before experienced. Collins, like Gabriel before him, wanted to pursue a solo career, though unlike Gabriel, he did that in tandem with his Genesis duties. As a result, Collins has attained a rare feat shared only by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson of having sold more than 100 million albums as both a solo artist and member of a band.

Collins starts the concert out with a bombastic drum solo (actual a trio, along with two of the other percussionists augmenting the band) which might not rise quite to the “18 minute solo” level, but which is an unusual and invigorating way to get the adrenalin pumping, especially since Collns’ music is often thought of as kind of vanilla, at least by critics. After the drum sequence, a large band magically appears on stage and we’re off on a whirlwind tour of many of the songs that have helped to define Collins’ long solo career, both as a pop artist and a writer for films.

The concert hits a number of Collins’ biggest hits, and it’s especially nice to hear beautifully constructed ballads like “Against All Odds,” which is done in a simple, spare style that emphasizes its heartfelt lyric. (One of the biggest travesties in the entire history of the Academy Awards was the bizarre decision to have Ann Reinking perform the song—along with her “interpretive dance”—the year the song was nominated.) There’s a very good balance, though, between more laid back numbers and up tempo tunes like “Sussudio”. Collins is in fine voice (though see the audio section below for some important information) and the band sounds great as well. There’s also an unusually large contingent of backup vocalists upstage right that help to give several numbers a nice choral component.

This is a sort of marathon concert, coming in at well over two hours (the extra running time shown above is because this Blu-ray also contains Collins’ 1996 concert with his big band), and Collins keeps his energy high for the entire evening, even if he’s perspiring copiously as the night wears on. There are some very nice arrangements here, which don’t perfectly mimic the original album cuts but which reflect their general sensibilities most of the time. Aside from a large percussion element, there’s also a full brass contingent along with the usual rhythm section. That’s legendary bassist Leland Sklar in Collins’ band, an iconic player who has the best beard in rock, far outdoing the ZZ Top boys.

Phil Collins Live at Montreux’s main program is the 2004 concert, but Phil’s 1996 concert with his big band is also included as a supplement. The set lists for these two concerts are as follows:

2004

01 – Drums, Drums and More Drums

02 – Something Happened On the Way to Heaven

03 – Against All Odds

04 – Don’t Lose My Number

05 – You’ll Be in My Heart

06 – One More Night

07 – Can’t Stop Lovin’ You

08 – Hang in Long Enough

09 – True Colors

10 – Come With Me

11 – Groovy Kind of Love

12 – I Missed Again

13 – Another Day in Paradise

14 – No Way Out

15 – Separate Lives

16 – In the Air Tonight

17 – Dance Into the Light

18 – You Can’t Hurry Love

19 – Two Hearts

20 – Wear My Hat

21 – Easy Lover

22 – Sussudio

23 – It’s Not Too Late

24 – Take Me Home

1996

01 – Two Hearts

02 – That’s All

03 – In the Air Tonight

04 – Invisible Touch

05 – West Side

06 – Against All Odds

07 – Hand in Hand

08 – There’ll Be Some Changes Made (featuring Tony Bennett)

09 – Milestones

10 – The Los Endos Suite

11 – Always

12 – Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me

13 – Sussudio

Phil Collins: Live At Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Phil Collins Live at Montreux is presented courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is generally a nicely sharp looking high definition presentation, though as seems to be the case with so many of these live concert productions, blue lighting presents problems of banding and posterizing. The bulk of this outing is all about Phil, and the many close-ups catch everything from a Band-Aid on one of his fingers to the perspiration slowly dripping down his face as the night wears on. Removing any lighting issues which sometimes cast strange hues on the proceedings, colors are nicely saturated and accurate appearing.

Phil Collins: Live At Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As is usual for these Eagle Rock live concert releases, three audio options are offered, lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 mixes, and a standard lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. While fidelity is outstanding on the two lossless tracks, there are couple of anomalies that keep them from achieving a higher score. First off, the bass is mixed inordinately high, becoming overwhelming quite a bit of the time. More troublingly, Collins sings with a wireless microphone, and either the signal was not very good or for some reason the mixing engineer decided to mix him so far down that whenever he moves his mouth away from the very tip of the microphone, volume drops off alarmingly and he simply can't be heard. If you can get past these two issues, there's a wealth of excellent sonic activity here, with especially bright and vivid sounding percussion and some great backup vocals. Dynamic range is excellent and despite the mixing and/or technical issues, the music is reproduced with brilliant clarity for the most part.

Phil Collins: Live At Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Phil Collins Big Band Live at Montreux in 1996 (SD; 1:33:39) features more jazz oriented (mostly) instrumental versions of Phil's tunes as well as jazz standards (see the main body of the review above for their set list). That's none other than Mr. Quincy Jones conducting.

Phil Collins: Live At Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Phil Collins Live at Montreux puts the lie to those who claim that Collins' music is paper thin. While it's true that Collins may not push the structural envelope as firmly as his lead vocalist predecessor in Genesis, Peter Gabriel, regularly does, Collins also has an innate ability to craft instantly memorable tunes that often feature gorgeous changes and more often than not rather thoughtful lyrics. This Blu-ray also offers copious evidence of Collins' versatility, first in his guise as a pop-rock superstar with the 2004 concert and perhaps more interestingly as a proto-jazz drummer with a big band conducted by Quincy Jones doing some unusual arrangements of Collins' material along with jazz standards. What's immediately apparent in both of these concerts is how affable Collins seems to be in "real life". He has an ease and simplicity about his performing style which is refreshing in this era of over-hyped music icons, and it's notable that both of these concerts are inarguably about the music, not the glitz. Though there are some niggling issues with both the video and audio on this release, overall there's so much great music here that this release comes Highly recommended.