Umphrey's McGee: Live Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Umphrey's McGee: Live Blu-ray Movie Review

Local Fighting Irish Band Makes Good

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 7, 2012

In addition to booking venerable acts with established reputations, the Soundstage series on Chicago's PBS station, WTTW, has also done its part for new, up-and-coming musicians. What better candidate than the local group of improvisational talent known as Umphrey's McGee, who first got started in 1997 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and all of whom hale from locales in and around the Windy City?

I should acknowledge at the outset that viewing this disc was my first acquaintance with Umphrey's McGee, whose name is the result of a fateful intersection of the band's original monicker ("Hubert Humphrey's Traveling Band featuring Flappy McGee"), a shorted-out microphone and a well-lubricated Rodney Dangerfield acting as emcee. Although I, too, am originally from the Chicago area, I had left long before Umphrey's McGee got their start, and for many years they were known almost exclusively to audiences in live venues and at music festivals. Their first studio album, released in 1998 and cheekily titled Greatest Hits Vol. III, received little promotion and was not widely distributed. It was intended primarily as a marketing tool to help the band book performance dates, because its members weren't all that interested in creating studio music, at least not at the time. They're live performers whose style harkens back to the tradition of great jazz improvisers—the difference being that Umphrey's McGee doesn't play jazz. They play everything.

As the band's reputation has grown, it has learned to use digital marketing tools to expand its audience. Its twice-monthly podcasts consisting of selections from recent concerts are popular downloads. The "UM Live" program offers recordings of a show for sale immediately after its conclusion and thereafter online. Even if the music isn't to one's taste, Umphrey's McGee is worthy of attention as a case study in how technology can bring content providers and fans together rather than becoming a bone of contention.

For those who prefer a more traditional format, Soundstage provided it. Umphrey's McGee's performance was recorded in 2007 (according to the band's website), and a one-hour version featuring seven songs was shown on WTTW in February 2009. E1 Entertainment released a two-hour extended version on DVD featuring thirteen songs the following June; also included were two bonus tracks from a later performance at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. The earlier DVD is out of print. Image Entertainment is releasing the extended concert on Blu-ray (and re-issuing it on DVD), minus the bonus tracks.

The line-up for Umphrey's McGee consists of Brendan Bayliss (guitar, vocals), Jake Cinninger (guitar, synthesizers, vocals), Joel Cummins (keyboards, vocals), Andy Farag (percussion), Ryan Stasik (bass) and Kris Myers (drums, vocals). (Original drummer Mike Mirro left the band in 2002; Myers was selected from hundreds of audition tapes.)

One listening is not enough for a full appreciation of the band's multi-layered compositions, which have been built up over years of jamming and performing. The songs have lyrics, but the bulk of each number is devoted to instrumental exploration of exceptional range and uncanny precision. Almost every conceivable strain of rock, funk, blues and heavy metal weaves through the band's work at some point, but none of the shifts feel strained or arbitrary. An integrity pervades every note and phrase, the kind that only comes from musicians with a carefully considered and deeply felt sense of the tonal universe they've constructed.

The phenomenon is most striking in songs that are anchored in a distinctive style, such as "Great American", which opens with a samba-inflected Latin beat. Eventually, though, it evolves into something that reminded my ear of the early Allman Brothers (accompanied by a neatly coordinated shift on the part of Bayliss and Cinninger from acoustic to electric guitars). One might be tempted read some sort of "theme" or "statement" into the title about finding unity in typical sounds of the two Americas, but the members of the band make it clear in banter between numbers that their song titles are completely random. Given their penchant for jocular album titles (Songs for Older Women, Local Band Does OK, Safety in Numbers, Death by Stereo—who gets the movie reference?), I'd hesitate to disagree.

The band's precision can be readily observed in the song "Higgins", which is based in a reggae tune from which it veers off in unpredictable directions, always returning to the classic "off beat" or "ska stroke" rhythm that gives reggae its distinctive sound. This is no mean feat for six musicians to perform, especially when they do it repeatedly, without apparent effort, and without any obvious "conductor" leading the way.

Watching the audience (which, it must be acknowledged, skewed considerably younger than the usual Soundstage crowd), I could see that many members knew these songs well—more than a few were greeted with applause of recognition—and I began to wonder how many of Umphrey's McGee's fans follow their work the way die-hard fans of jazz greats like John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk would follow them, listening to the evolution of songs through performance and improvisation. Indeed, thanks to innovations like podcasts and web distribution, Umphrey's McGee's fans are no longer limited by the logistics of travel. They can keep up with the band from anywhere. I don't know that I've been converted to that degree, but I'm looking forward to hearing this concert again.

The complete song list follows; songs marked with an asterisk are those that were included in the PBS broadcast, according to Soundstage's website:

1. Oceans Billy
2. *Higgins
3. *Got Your Milk (Right Here)
4. *Out of Order
5. Great American
6. *The Bottom 1/2
7. Walletsworth
8. *Believe the Lie
9. *Eat
10. Words
11. *Morning Song
12. Alex's House
13. Glory

Umphrey's McGee: Live Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Image's 1080i, AVC-encoded Blu-ray for Umphrey's McGee: Live is just how bright the picture is. This isn't a result of excessive contrast, but rather an effect of the lighting design for this particular Soundstage show. Whether this was the band's choice or the production team's is impossible to say, but it does complement the band's "garage band" aesthetic, which has them playing in street clothes instead of costumes. It will be interesting to see whether, as the members of Umphrey's McGee advance into later years, they're still willing to appear under such unforgiving illumination or instead find themselves embracing the more flattering shades preferred by the aging acts I have generally reviewed at Soundstage.

Contrary to its usual practice with two-hour concert discs, Image has opted for a BD-25, which may account for the greater prevalence of video noise and aliasing on amplifier grilles and other patterned surfaces than has been typical in this series. Other than these faults, however, compression artifacts were not observed, and the image sported the clarity and detail one would expect from a hi-def video capture. Color, black levels and contrast were appropriate, and interlacing artifacts were not observable while the image was in motion. (Screencaps are a different issue.) While maybe a hair's breadth below other discs I've seen in the series (and not enough to deduct a half star), this is a worthy addition.

Umphrey's McGee: Live Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track reflects HD Ready's usual approach to mixing concerts recorded for Soundstage. The viewer is placed in the position of an audience member with the sounds of cheering and applause directed to the surrounds, while the band and vocalists remain spread across the front soundstage, with some degree of presence in the surrounds to create a sense of space and depth. In general since its early outing with the band Chicago, HD Ready has avoided localizing specific instruments to left or right, but occasionally here it has chosen to anchor Cinninger's lead guitar to the left speaker, when he is carrying a specific "voice" within the mix. This approach is always risky in a concert recording, because the picture editing constantly shifts the position of the players, while the sound editing leaves them in the same sonic positions, but HD Ready has been sufficiently conservative that the technique doesn't become distracting. As usual with the mixes for Soundstage, their quality is demonstrated by the ability to pick out the individual instruments, even the separate layers of percussion contributed by Farag and Myers. Here is a band dedicated to live performance, brought to your listening room with the finest technology available for reproducing it.

(Note: A PCM 2.0 track is also available for all selections.)

Umphrey's McGee: Live Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras are included on the disc.

Umphrey's McGee: Live Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In addition to their expert musicianship, Umphrey's McGee should be congratulated for their inventive use of technology to expand their audience for live performance, rather than allowing it to limit them. Although this Blu-ray disc is the highest and best form of concert presentation available today, it is almost a throwback to an earlier time, when one considers the advances the band has pioneered. A 2007 concert? Right now there are fans listening to the concert the band played yesterday. We Blu-ray geeks are behind the times. Recommended.