Neal Morse - Testimony Live
Performance
Production
|
Neal Morse - Testimony Live
Performance
|
|
Neal, Neal, Neal. Why hath thou forsaken us so? Again! Why do you insist on releasing such amazing live musical testaments, with such conflictingly weak production values? - just like you did with the Spock's Beard, and Transatlantic concert videos. Is a 5.1 surround mix, and some decent cameras too much too expect, or are they that prohibitively expensive? Maybe they are. I won't dwell on this frustrating fact any longer - I'll detail these production problems at the end of the review. I just hope Morse and others like him, will put as much emphasis on the production of their future videos, as they do on the performances. Now for the good part. Testimony Live represents the absolute pinnacle of Neal Morse's talents as a singer, songwriter, musician, and bandleader. For those of you who don't already know, Morse was the leader of the American progressive rock outfit Spock's Beard, and later went on to front the prog-rock supergroup Transatlantic. He abruptly quit both bands in 2003, when his spiritual journey came to fruition, and he was "born-again" - Christian, that is. In 2004, Morse released the highly acclaimed, extremely long, double-album, Testimony, which, over the course of 29 songs, tells the story of his journey from struggling L.A. rock musician, to his newfound faith in Jesus. Many Morse fans, and progressive-rock fans in general, consider the Testimony album to be a masterpiece, but I am still formulating my opinion on the darn thing. First of all, at over two hours, it is too damn long. There is just too much boring filler to cloud over the rest of the brilliant material. Testimony would have been much better as a long single-album. Secondly, the gospel influenced numbers and the forthright Christian lyrics, which dominate the album, take some effort to swallow, especially if you don't subscribe to those beliefs. The thing that makes Testimony Live far superior to the album, is the incredible performances of the seven great musicians that Morse miraculously got to join him on this small European tour. This group includes members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and other established session musicians, as well as resident drummer-god Mike Portnoy, who played with Morse in Transatlantic, and also plays for that little prog-metal outfit called Dream Theater. On the Testimony album, Morse handled all of the main instruments except for the drums. He is definitely competent (bass, lead guitar), to great (keyboards, acoustic guitar), on all of these instruments, but having such accomplished musicians to take over these songs live, made them considerably more electrifying. Having seven other musicians (most of whom played at least two different instruments - AND sang), onstage with him, allowed the complex arrangements of the Testimony songs to be fully realized, and usually improved upon. The DVD was recorded at the 013 Club, in Tilberg, the Netherlands, on 17 November 2004. The entire Testimony album was performed, from start to finish. The album, and set, are broken down into five parts. Parts one and two detail Morse's struggles as a frustrated L.A. musician throughout the 80's and 90's, and parts three through five detail his move to Nashville and subsequent spiritual transformation. During the first two parts, the entire band are all dressed in black to represent his "dark days", and during the last three parts of the set they are all dressed in white, to represent his coming out of the darkness and being born-again. It sounds a little corny, but it was visually affective. Once again, some of the performances were absolutely breathtaking in their scope and musicianship, ranging from full-tilt, instrumental, prog jams, to light pop, to classic rock, to country, to gospel-inspired ballads. The range is staggering. The inclusion of such live instruments as the cello, violin, mandolin, saxophone, and loads of great percussion, versus having these parts sampled on a keyboard, is what really sets this show apart. Many of the songs would have fit perfectly on a Spock's Beard, or 70s-era Kansas album, especially some of the instrumentals like the three "Overture" pieces, "Long Story" (which featured a guitar solo from Kerry Livgren on the album), and "The Storm Before The Calm". Other songs are flat-out Christian-Contemporary, such as "I Am Willing", and "Oh, To Feel Him". Things bog down a bit towards the end, specifically the entire Part 5 section, when the Gospel numbers tend to dominate. OK, now for the bad part. The audio and video were, how do you say in French?, Entre Nous? - No, No, that's that silly Rush song with the French name. More like...disappointing. OK, I don't know French. Yup, Morse did it to me again, putting out a great concert with crappy production. Alright, it's not THAT crappy, but only a mediocre Dolby 2.0 mix for Christ's sake!? This is 2004 Neal. I'll lend you some money towards a 5.1 mix on your next DVD, just give me a call buddy. The 2.0 mix wasn't very good either. The center speaker handled most of the output, and the bass was almost non-existent. Luckily, using just the straight stereo option on my amplifier provided a much meatier, and more satisfying sound overall. The picture had a few problems as well. Most obvious were the problems from the stage lighting. The lights just seemed to overwhelm the cameras most of the time causing the colors to look washed out. The skin tones of the musicians didn't look natural at all. The picture was not especially sharp either, and there were plenty of out of focus shots. On a good note, the camera work was excellent, so I guess that makes up for everything else. Shit, I almost forgot. As good as I thought the "Testimony in its entirety" first set performance was, all two hours of it, the encore (or second set) was even better. It starts out with some backstage footage as the band is getting ready to head back out on stage. Portnoy asks Morse, as they are discussing songs to perform, "Waddaya think, can you handle Stranger?", referring to the Transatlantic epic "Stranger In Your Soul". Morse answers, "Yeah I can handle it!". Handle it they did my man - all thirty-something glorious minutes of it. This was the show closer, and in my opinion, it topped the performance on Transatlantic's Live In Europe video. The luxury of having real violin, cello, flute, and percussion put this performance over the top. Since practically everyone in the band could sing, the background and harmony vocals were exceptional as well. This song was preceded by the Spock's Beard epic, "The Light", from their first album, and before that they opened with the Transatlantic ballad, "We All Need Some Light". The electric violin and mandolin playing made this version also better than the original. The special features section features a tour documentary that is made up of camcorder footage taken by each of the band members. Morse gives his thoughts about each of the shows, and talks about how the album and tour came to be. There is also some interesting backstage footage captured, including lots of pre-show prayer circles. WHEEEW! Four plus hours later and we are done. It goes by pretty quick though, so that should tell you something. So, if you are a Spock's Beard fan (especially the Snow album), and don't mind hearing "God" and "Jesus" referred to about five thousand times, and are not annoyed watching Neal raise his arms reverently up towards the heavens when he sings (just like on the DVD/CD cover), you will surely love this DVD as much as I do. Looks like "Christian-Prog" might be here to stay. God that sounds cool. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - August 2004 |
|
Technical Details |
|
|
Audio Transfer |
Video Transfer |
|
Set List |
Performers |
|
Running Time: 190 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - July 2004 |