The Black Crowes - Freak 'N' Roll ... Into The Fog
Performance
Production
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The Black Crowes - Freak 'N' Roll ... Into The Fog
Performance
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At a time when grunge was battling hair-metal for rock and roll supremacy, the Black Crowes were a welcome breath of fresh air during this change to the American rock landscape. Shake Your Money Maker debuted in 1990 and was fueled by the scorching cover of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle", which propelled the album all the way to # 4 on the Billboard charts. Comparisons to the Faces and early Rolling Stones were immediately flung around, and some went as far as to call the Crowes a cheap imitation. Front man Chris Robinson channeled Rod Stewart's raw, blues-rock vocals effortlessly, and the band's twin guitar attack of Rich Robinson and Jeff Cease invited obvious Richards-Woods comparisons. It didn't take long for the Crowes to really find their own groove though, as 1992's The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion saw them adding a fulltime keyboardist and replacing their original lead guitarist with the technically superior Marc Ford. The music became more jam-based, and even added new elements of gospel, blues, and southern-rock to create one hell of a sophomore follow-up. Each succeeding album would be completely different than the last, and the career spanning set list on this DVD vividly presents this band's amazing diversity of styles. Freak 'N' Roll...Into The Fog was recorded on August 6, 2005 during the Black Crowes' sold-out, five-night reign at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Auditorium. The stage was beautifully decorated in a sort of ancient Egyptian motif, with hundreds of electric candles and burning incense swirling all around. This all looks amazing thanks to an incredibly sharp, high-def, widescreen presentation. It is one of the best I have seen. The audio is nearly as impressive, and gets flaunted right from the start with the stunning opener "(Only) Halfway To Everywhere", which blows away the Three Snakes And One Charm version, thanks to the extra muscle infused by the four-piece Left Cost Horns. The rest of the set was an impressive one. The killer opening number was followed by a couple of The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion's best tracks, "Sting Me" and "No Speak No Slave", which only sprayed fuel on the crowd's fire. Every one of their six studio albums were covered by at least one song, with the first three albums getting the most play with three songs each. The acoustic instrumental "Sunday Night Buttermilk Waltz", which was included as a bonus track on the enhanced version of Amorica, was also performed along with covers of Willie Dixon's "Mellow Down Easy", and The Band's "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down". Some obvious omissions were "Twice As Hard", "Thorn In My Pride", "A Conspiracy", and "Good Friday", but it is pretty hard to bitch seeing that they played for over two hours. The Crowes delved deep into jam territory this night with wildly extended versions of "Soul Singing" and "My Morning Song", which both saw their original lengths get more than doubled. "Soul Singing" was propelled by the two sisters of soul serving on background vocals, as well as the long psychedelic, blues-rock guitar jam between Ford and Robinson that evoked Led Zep's "Dazed And Confused". "My Morning Song" went on for over 14-minutes and served as Ford's showcase piece. Accompanied by Robinson in slide guitar, this explosive guitar jam paid tribute to some of the Allman Brothers' classic Fillmore jams, and made what was barely a noticeable album cut into one of the show's highlights. Other songs like "Space Captain" had a distinct Little Feat vibe, which again showed the wealth of moods and styles in the air this night. During most of the extended jam sections, the director focused the camera on the video screen which showed amateur camcorder footage of the band out in the streets and hills of San Francisco. This was actually some nice footage that accentuated the extended jams nicely, when it was used as a backdrop, or cut to sparingly, but there were sections, lasting well over a minute, where nothing but the video was shown during some of the best guitar jams of the night. I would have rather seen Ford and Robinson trading licks. The Left Cost Horns returned to the stage for the last six songs of the show, beginning with Shake Your Money Maker's epic, soul-ballad "Seeing Things", which slowly builds into an explosive religious revival-like experience. "Hard To Handle" followed, and I found this to be the weakest performance of the night, especially by Chris Robinson. He just kind of winged it, skipping/forgetting many of the lyrics, as if he hadn't performed the song in a few years. The song was extended an extra five-minutes by tons of great improvisation, which more than made up for the lackluster start. During "Let Me Share" the ride, Chris breaks out his harmonica and jams alongside Ford and his baby brother who are each tearing it up on the slide guitar. He keeps the harmonica out a little longer to turn "Mellow Down Easy" into a new Crowes' classic. The real highlight of the show was saved for last, and was delivered in the form of my favorite Black Crowes tune, "Remedy". Instead of starting to sound tired after more than two hours of tearing it up, it's like they all took a big shot of Kentucky moonshine and decided to make this THE definitive version of the song. Did they ever succeed! Chris turned in some of his best vocals of the night, the guitars were at their loudest and raunchiest, and Ed Hawrysch's incredible piano performance really put things over the top. They closed the show with a great version of the Band's classic "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down", but I found this to be extremely anti-climactic after the ferocious performance of "Remedy". They should have reversed the order of these two songs. The production quality receives the highest marks all around. As I stated earlier, the picture doesn't get much better than this, and with the exception of focusing a little too much on the video screen at times, the camera work was exceptional. Great close-ups off key solos, and nice, long, lingering shots that captured the atmosphere of the show perfectly. Both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio tracks were included and they both sounded fantastic. Each of the instruments and vocalists stood out sharply, and the surrounds were utilized perfectly to place you right in the middle of the performance. Fourteen-minutes worth of bonus footage is also included and consists of backstage footage, rehearsals, and the band traveling through San Francisco. You even get a few intimate shots of Mrs. Robinson, otherwise known as Kate Hudson, who you surprisingly get to see serving as band makeup artist. I was always a big fan of the Black Crowes, but this DVD has made me a BIG fan. If this performance were to be released on CD, I believe it would go down as one of the defining live documents of this great band. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - April 2006 |
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Audio Transfer |
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Set List |
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Running Time: 136 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - March 2006 |