New "Live in London" DVD

[davidgra]

Hi Chris.

It's 34 minutes long. 34:19, to be exact, from the beginning of the actual concert footage.

Tracks are:

Help
Love Is Surrender
And When He Smiles
Rainy Days and Mondays
Bacharach/David Medley
For All We Know
Sometimes
Close to You
We've Only Just Begun
Superstar

"Superstar" is the only track not from the 1971 BBC broadcast. Maybe they included it to round out the track listing to an even 10 songs?

David

 

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

My copy finally arrived today and would agree with everything David has already said.

I will add a few things. As David mentioned it is a DVD, all the logo's are correct everywhere, I guess for the age of the concert it's pretty clear, still I agree that this was lifted from the Japanese broadcast because at the top right corner of the video is BS2 (maybe Sakura can chime in but isn't that a Japanese logo?)

I am very glad to have this on DVD. It is not super exceptional quality and will not blow you away (if your thinking high DVD quality it's not) but it is still rather good. Maybe this is why Richard did not block this.

I didn't realize how much glare the lights created with Karen behind those drums on the first few songs, but I guess this was the 70's. What I didn't like was how the songs do not flow smoothly into each other, there is a stop and start between songs. After Karen sings Love is Surrender at the end Karen gets up and takes the mic like she is going toward center stage then the video stops and starts again with And When He Smiles which is again Karen sitting down so I'm not sure that flows correctly with how the original concert was. I don't have this so maybe someone can tell me.

Another reason I'm glad to have this is it's really a memorable concert to have on this DVD, Karen at her finest and really close up shots of Karen drumming, shows how much she loved playing drums.

I think the highlight for me was Rainy Days live vocal and how Karen switched up some of the phrasing makes it really cool and seeing her in good quality video is great.

It's really a shame Superstar is so poor and so dark, it's almost appears to be from a VHS because there is a spot at the end where the tape jumps like VHS tapes do. Karen gave a great live reading of her vocal. From what you can see she really gets into this song with her whole body and feels every note.

It's a bootleg but hey with the Carpenters video you take what you can get. If an official release is ever made from this special I will be the first in line to buy it but for now I'm glad I bought this.

Maybe someone else could ring in but to me it looks like Superstar at the end was actually from the same concert just from a poor VHS transfer and didn't match the rest of this Japanese transfer

 

[JAZZ4JEFF]

I can't add much more, except to say it's awful!

I traded a fellow fan for a copy of this special when the BBC aired it in the 90's. My VHS copy is better than this. I just can't believe that Richard knows about this.

 

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

Well I guess my review was based on not having it at all and in that case for me it's not bad just not great. I never saw the BBC version cause it wouldn't play for us in the U.S. when it aired on the net. I long for the original concert where it would have flowed smoothly between songs instead of this stop and start on this bootleg.

Still it was only $10.00. I see Amazon now has updated pics of the inside disc and back cover on their website.

 

[betossantana]

There was a torrent avaliable online once containing the whole BBC4 Evening With The Carpenters (1971 BBC performances, Only yesterday documentary and Live At The Palladium show), don't know if it's still alive:

http://www.leadsister.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9970&st=150#

http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/index.php?search=BBC4 Carpenters Night&sort=seed&fz=&zs=&cat=

 

[SakuraSYayoi]

betossantana, welcome to forum!


I wondered if this is unauthorized again, but I pre-ordered it on Feb 14th. Amazon JP would have shipped it on March 11, but they couldn't and sent me delay email. I should have canceled, but they shipped it yesterday, I'll receive it soon.

Why can American company/people sell/upload bootlegs? Where is RIGHT?
BS2 is Japanese TV NHK BS2 logo. NHK repeated the program several times. Most on BS2 but they aired it on normal wave once. It didn't have the logo.

I watched it on NHK and watched it on BBC iPlayer, pretending as I was in the U.K.. Didn't it have lyrics of songs that Doug Strawn sang as well at iPlayer?

Here in Tokyo the bill which may make us not to express freely might have passed last month.
Recently CNN has reported Japanese adult game several times. The game was not popular in Japan, but some American seemed to like it, banned the official copy, and CNN taught people that they can download bootleg. Strange.

Sakura

 

[scottb]

David,

How does the audio sound? Is it stereo or mono? Can you rate the audio sound quality on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best?

About 10 years ago VH1 aired a good portion of this concert. I have it on VHS and it looked and sounded quite good. One reviewer on Amazon said that his tape of the VH1 airing sounds better than the DVD.

Thanks

Scott

OK, the LIVE IN LONDON DVD has arrived. It is a real DVD, not a DVD-R or DVD+R, but the packaging is minimal -- just a DVD case with a front and back cover (front cover as pictured in post above), and the disc itself.

There's a main menu, giving you the option of selecting "Play" or selecting an individual song title. If you select "Play," you get a brief FBI notice (funny how a bootleg item has an FBI notice on it), then video of a gentle stream flowing over some rocks as the production credits are shown.

Once you get the program itself, you notice immediately that this video was taken from a Japanese broadcast of the 1971 BBC concert, not the BBC broadcast. (Maybe Korean or Chinese, not sure if the characters are actually Japanese or a different language). The song titles are shown in English and Japanese, and the song lyrics are shown as captions in English at the bottom of the screen. There is NO option for turning of the captions, so you have to see the lyrics while you watch.

The video quality is quite good, at least for the 30 minutes of the BBC 1971 concert. At the end of DVD is footage of a different televised concert from about the same era -- I'm not sure which concert it is, but Karen's hairdo is very similar to the one in the BBC footage. The song from this concert is "Superstar," and it looks and sounds absolutely awful. It appears to have been taken from a 4th or 5th generation VHS copy.

So the first 30 minutes of the DVD are good, and the last four minutes are terrible.

And that's it. Nothing more. For what it is, it's not bad, although it could have been better if they had used the BBC's version of the broadcast instead of the Asian version.

David

 

[davidgra]

Scott, the audio is in stereo -- but it's artificial stereo, like what they used to do to mono LPs. "Electronically rechanneled for stereo." It's not a good sound. I agree that my VHS copy from the BBC (mono audio) sounds better than this DVD.

Rating it, I'd say it's about a 5 out of 10. It's clean, without noise or distortion, but the hollow sound of the artificial stereo is pretty bothersome.

David

 

[gypsyangelheart]

I definitely prefer my bootleg, but I don't regret buying the new DVD since the price was reasonable. My bootleg appears to be the entire BBC broadcast. The new release cut Tony Joe White out. I understand the new release is catering to Carpenters fans and probably thought fans wouldn't be interested, but it was great seeing the Carpenters support other artists. I like Tony, so it was wonderful to see him perform. If anyone is interested, here's the link to his official site.. http://www.tonyjoewhite.com/ .
Karen: "...I just want to thank Tony Joe White for being with us because it's such a gas working with him. Isn't he great?' *claps* So sweet.

 

[canarymu]

thank much for sharing. great!!
__________________

 

[Rick-An Ordinary Fool]

Today I finally got around to extracting the audio only from this DVD using the software program DVD Audio Extractor. It separates them into each track and then I titled them making wav files uncompressed (to get the best possible quality).

So even though the audio quality is very poor from this DVD, I have been really enjoying having new audio to listen to of the Carpenters in my car. I really think that Rainy Days and Mondays is the real gem here, it's almost like hearing a whole new recording of this song since for me I don't believe I have heard her sing it this way live before.

...trying to get the most out of my money for this bootleg...

 

[CarpentersToYou]

It's a shame they couldn't have used one of the more recent broadcasts of this special, but at the same time I am grateful that they have put it on DVD. It may be a bootleg, but at least fans are able to see this footage. It's beyond me as to why Richard would rather have them cash in on such a release instead of giving them quality releases and making beaucoup bucks off of it.