Steve Winwood: Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Steve Winwood: Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie Review

Mr. Fantasy Carries On

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 7, 2011

If Mozart set the standard for a musical prodigy, Steve Winwood was, at the very least, precocious to a degree rarely seen. Born into a working class British family, he learned drums, guitar and piano and began performing publicly with his father and older brother at age 8. Over the next six years, he backed such R&B greats as B.B. King, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters on their U.K. tours.

At age 14, Winwood became a singer and songwriter with the Spencer Davis Group, where his distinctive vocals made standards out of "I'm a Man" and "Gimme Some Lovin'". By the age of 20, he'd recorded with Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and, more importantly, formed the group Traffic (with Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood), which, despite its ups and downs, remains one of the essential groups of the early 1970s. During a brief detour from Traffic, Winwood joined Cream's Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, along with bassist Rick Grech, to tour as "Blind Faith", a so-called "supergroup" whose short existence and limited output stands in stark contrast to its oversize influence. It was Blind Faith that begat a reinvigorated Traffic, as well as the association between Clapton and the band known as Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (Blind Faith's opening act) that ultimately led to Clapton's landmark album Layla and Other Love Songs under the band name "Derek and the Dominos".

Winwood retired from active performing in the late Seventies, but returned in 1986 with a series of solo albums, propelled by the new medium of music videos, which made hits out of "Higher Love" and "Back in the High Life Again".

In September 2004, the second season of the reinaugurated Soundstage series produced by WTTW, Chicago's public television station, presented a one-hour live concert performance by Winwood and his band, following the release in 2003 of his then-most recent solo album About Time. A DVD of the show was released in 2005, and Image has now issued the program on Blu-ray as part of what appears to be a series of Soundstage concert releases.

At the outset, let's clear up a point about the running time. The official length of the program is 55 minutes, which is consistent with the usual Soundstage format of a one-hour TV show. (For special occasions, like Chicago: Live in Concert, the show expands to 90 minutes.) But the Blu-ray really contains over 80 minutes of music, courtesy of three "bonus" tracks recorded during the same performance but not included in the original broadcast. All of the bonus tracks are songs from the About Time album. They must be separately selected from the disc's menu, and it would have been helpful if an option had been provided to play them continuously with the main program.

Winwood performs the set with a tightly organized, resourceful quartet consisting of Jose Neto on guitar, Walfredo Reyes on drums, Edison A. DaSilva on percussion and the versatile Randall Bramblett on guitar, keyboards and sax. Winwood himself alternates among his familiar Hammond-style organ, guitar and lute. The selections combine classics from Traffic and Blind Faith as well as new and old songs from his solo career.

Winwood was never an especially dynamic stage presence, and at age 56 when this concert was recorded, he's clearly at ease letting the musical notes and the energy of his bandmates carry the performance. What's remarkable is how little the years have changed his bluesy tenor, even as they've put lines on the still-boyish face. Watching this calmly capable older man sing "Freedom Writer" with the same timbre, modulation and inflection with which he laid down the track over three decades earlier is an interesting experience in how time and circumstance can transform a song. What used to sound like a cry of adolescent angst now plays like a lesson in hard-earned wisdom.

This is a concert more for listening than watching. After you take in the reconfiguration of musicians required for each song, there isn't much more to see. Thankfully, the director, Soundstage's Joe Thomas, resisted the urge to resort to frantic cutting in an effort to add some sort of "edge" to Winwood's style. Music video directors occasionally tried to do so, and it never worked. Winwood could do many things, but edgy wasn't one of them. Though it wasn't always easy to see in the cauldron of Sixties musical currents from which he emerged, Winwood was always one of its more positive and life-affirming voices. When success comes to you at such an early age and never really leaves, it's probably not so hard to believe in a "higher love".

The complete song list follows:

1. Can't Find My Way Back Home
2. Empty Pages
3. Bully
4. Glad / Freedom Rider
5. Back in the High Life Again
6. Dear Mr. Fantasy
7. Why Can't We Live Together

Bonus Songs:

8. Rainmaker
9. Different Light
10. Walking On

Steve Winwood: Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As with other Soundstage productions released by Image, the Blu-ray sports a 1080i, AVC-encoded image taken from HD recordings produced by HD Ready, LLC, which produces Soundstage in partnership with WTTW, Chicago. The video is consistent with that of other discs I have seen from this series, in that the source is extremely clear and detailed, with no visible combing or distortion from the interlaced format. Minimal aliasing can be spotted on fine patterns seen from a distance, but this is a minor and occasional issue. Black levels and resolved detail are very good, both on stage with the band and in pans over the crowd. As is customary for Soundstage productions shot in Chicago, the crowd is almost as well lit as the stage, which no doubt helps to account for the quality of the blacks and the level of detail overall. Colors are rich and well-saturated. The 55-minute program (or 80+-minute, with bonus tracks) has been delivered on a BD-25, which accommodates the program without compression artifacts.

Steve Winwood: Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The viewer has a choice between 5.1, presented in DTS-HD MA, or 2.0, presented in PCM 2.0. On the bonus tracks, the DTS-HD MA option only comes in 2.0 variety. The 5.1 track has been conservatively mixed to spread the five musicians across the front soundstage, with Winwood's vocals firmly in the center. The surrounds are used to give depth and spaciousness to the music and also to place crowd noise (primarily, applause) at an appropriate distance from the stage. The 2.0 mixes have been done with sufficient care that, when played back through a decoder such as DPL IIx, they provide imaging and presence that are almost as good as the discrete track. Bass extension is strong without being overpowering.

Steve Winwood: Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Since I don't count the "bonus" songs as a supplement, there are none on the disc.

Steve Winwood: Live in Concert Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The audience at Soundstage performances is always packed with the artist's diehard fans. Even if I lived in Chicago, I'm not sure what it would take to get me into that concert hall. The artists from that era who truly excited me are all dead. Those who survived to play Soundstage in the 21st Century managed, like Steve Winwood, to find some sort of personal equilibrium of talent, work, financial success and emotional stability (not to mention luck) that kept them moving forward as the world and the music industry changed around them. Winwood seemed to understand the dangers as early as "Dear Mr. Fantasy":

You are the one who can make us all laugh,
But doing that you break out in tears.
Please don't be sad, if it was a straight mind you had
We wouldn't have known you all these years.

As a technical matter, the Blu-ray is recommended. If you're a Winwood fan, you won't be disappointed.