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Dom Robinson reviews
Unplugged
- Cat.no: 501489
- Cert: E
- Running time: 73 minutes
- Recorded: April 10, 1996
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 14
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, PCM Stereo
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-enhanced: No
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 5
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Discography, Timeline
Alice in Chains: Unpluggedlines up Jerry Cantrell, Mike Inez, Sean Kinney and Layne Staleywithout their electric implements of musical deliverance.
An audience of 400 saw the grunge-rock band perform on the MTV Unplugged stage in New York,their first performance in three years. The set mainly takes in tracks from theEP’s Sap, Jar of Flies and the album Dirt. Three of the tracks –Frogs, Angry Chair and a new song, The Killer is Me, were notbroadcast on TV before.
I’ve never been a fan of the group since their music is hardly ever played on theradio, particularly since they haven’t released a single in the UK in four years.Listening to this DVD though, while we are first provided with the soft, liltingtones of Nutshell and the drugged-up-sounding Brother whichsurprisingly still draws you in, as the concert progresses it doesn’t half soundlike the now-defunct Nirvana. If you’re a novice, like myself, close youreyes and try to tell the difference.
Of course, this band never got in the limelight so much because the lead singer didn’tblow his head off with a shotgun…
Their singles chart history in the UK to date (August 2000) is as follows :
The picture is bog-standard 4:3 fullscreen, like all MTV Unplugged features,but while the picture is sharp and fairly well-detailed, the obvious NTSC-PALconversion does have an effect. However, there are no artifacts visible andthe average bitrate is 7.72Mb/s, often varying wildly around that mark.
Released in Dolby Digital 5.1 sound with PCM Stereo as an alternative option,the monotonous Kurt Cobain-like rantings and the same three guitarchords don’t sound a great deal different in the former sound format as theydo in the latter.
Extras etc. : Chapters :
There are 14 chapters, one for each song as well as the intro sequence, whilethe end credits come within the last chapter. The track listing is as follows :
- 1. Programme Start
2. Nutshell
3. Brother
4. No Excuses
5. Sludge Factory
6. Down in a Hole
7. Angry Chair
8. Rooster
9. Got Me Wrong
10. Heaven Beside You
11. Would?
12. Frogs
13. Over Now
14. The Killer is Me / End credits
Languages/Subtitles :
All the songs are sung in English, or more usually mumbled out and thereare no lyrics to singalongaAlice with onscreen.
And there’s more… :Only a couple of things: a brief Discography covering up to their greatesthits album and a Timeline – a series of stills with info and pics from theforming of the band in early 1987 to the aforementioned ‘Best of’ release onJune 29th, 1999. Once you’ve read them once, I doubt you’ll go back to them. Menu :
Silent and static picture of the cover.
Obviously this disc will only attract fans of the band – £19.99 is not aprice that would inspire an impulse purchase from anyone – but many of those willalready have the video. With scant extras and not much use made of the Dolby Digital5.1 sound, this isn’t easy to recommend to anyone at full price.
For me, while I started to get into the first couple of tracks, call me a philistinebut the rest just followed in the same vein.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.