Toronto Rocks
Performance
Production
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Toronto Rocks
Performance
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Toronto Rocks was the massive benefit concert organized in support of the SARS relief effort for the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which had been hit particularly hard by the outbreak. The concert went down on July 30, 2003, and was billed as "the largest ticketed single-day event in music history", as approximately 490,000 people were in attendance. This review is of the American, single-disk version of the concert. There is also a Canadian, two-disk version who's extra disk includes performances by all of the support acts including Sam Roberts, Kathleen Edwards, La Chicane, The Tea Party, Blue Rodeo, and Sass Jordan (w/Jeff Healey), who didn't make it on the American version, except for a short overview in the special features section. The DVD starts off with an introduction by Dan Ackroyd and Jim Belushi, who are calling themselves The Have Love Will Travel Revue for this show. They return throughout the concert to provide horrible between set filler material up until The Guess Who take the stage. I like Ackroyd and Belushi, but they were pretty pathetic on this day, and added little to the show. They should have edited out the two songs they performed and included a few more from Rush and AC/DC, who were unforgivably underrepresented here. The first band to be shown was Canada's own Flaming Lips, who came out to a stage full of costumed characters who were dancing merrily about and bouncing huge inflatable balls around, like a scene from Alice In Wonderland. They perform two songs that I thought were pretty lackluster, but I, admittedly, am not the biggest fan of The Lips. The Isley Brothers come out next and immediately set things straight. These old R&B legends simply smoked, turning in inspired performances of their 1960's classics "Who's That Lady", and "Shout". Ernie Isley must love competition because he certainly seemed eager to show the crowd that he could hang with the big boys, Keith, Angus, and Alex, who would soon follow him on the guitar. Talk about updating an old classic with a modern rock sound. Jesus Christ! "Who's That Lady" sounded like it was being played by a combination of Joe Satriani and Carlos Santana on guitars, as Isley cranked up the volume and distortion and just frigging WAILED, playing behind his back, behind his head, with his mouth, upside down - you name it. I've heard him be compared to Hendrix before, but I ignorantly paid no attention to it. He's got my attention now! This doesn't mean that the song wasn't still melodic and funky as well - it was all of the above. Ronald Isley's vocals were equally impressive and their band sounded kind of reminiscent of Santana's band, with loads of percussion and a killer rhythm section to fill out the sound. This was, hands down, the best performance of the entire concert. They followed this up with another great performance of their classic "Shout", which leaved me wanting to hear more. Unfortunately they were trimmed down to a two song set. Putting Justin Timberlake on after the Isley Brothers was some kind of a cruel joke, and the crowd didn't seem to appreciate the humor, as JT spent most of his time dodging plastic water bottles and boos being hurled at him. This was edited out of his performance, but was shown during the special features section. To his credit, he was a very good sport about it all. Prior to beginning his song, "Senorita", he nervously addressed the rock and roll masses, using the best "wigger" accent this side of Eminem, "I think I'm here for the same reason you're all here, and that's to see the motherfucking Stones!". Yeeaaah, Dog! Mercifully, he only performed one song. Next up were a few local boys, The Guess Who, featuring a newly svelte Randy Bachman on guitar. I hadn't seen these guys in a long time and they are looking and sounding great. Burton Cummings' vocals, have not lost a step, and Bachman's guitar solos sounded fantastic, as they ran through two of their biggest hits "American Woman", and "No Time". The next band are the main reason I bought this DVD, and they are Toronto's own beloved Rush. God, people either mercilessly hate these guys, especially Geddy Lee's vocals, or love them like they love sex. I LOVE sex! It was somewhat refreshing to see Rush perform a rather stripped-down, daylight set like this, after seeing them so many times through the smoke and lights of a full-blown headlining show. This set particularly highlighted their virtuoso musicianship and great songs. They sailed through three of their best know songs "Limelight", "Freewill", and "The Spirit Of Radio", the latter being preceded by an incredible instrumental take on The Stones' "Paint It Black", which blended perfectly into the famous opening riff of the song. Now that Rush had the crowd worked up into a frenzy, AC/DC hits the stage and tears into that obscure little pop ditty called "Back In Black". Have you ever heard 490,000 maniacs scream "OH FUCK YEAH"!? These boys just never seem to let me down. I have never seen a bad, or even average, performance by these guys. They always deliver the goods. Angus Young pours his heart and soul into every performance, and Brian Johnston treats the crowd like it was their first time ever seeing the band. Unfortunately, "Thunderstruck" is the only other song we get from AC/DC, on this DVD, even though they played a full 12 song set. This DVD cries out for re-release/extended version. Closing the show are the headliners to headline all headliners, The Rolling Stones. These guys never cease to amaze me, not only because they are all still alive, but because their performances continue to be so damn strong. 1998's Bridges To Babylon tour was their best in the last twenty years, and now five years later, with the band members all pushing sixty years old or more, they once again churn out an admirable performance. The producers favoritism definitely fell on The Stones here, as they got six songs listed on the DVD. Keith immediately whipped the waiting crowd into a frenzy as he walked out from behind the speaker stacks playing the opening chords to "Start Me Up", to open their set. After slowing things down a little with "Ruby Tuesday", Mick straps on an electric guitar and leads the band into "Miss You", which features a guest appearance by Timberlake, who proceeded to get booed and pelted with bottles again. Keith must have been having flashbacks to Altamont when he stopped playing momentarily to point out the bottle throwers to security guards and to scold the offenders. During the special features interview, Keith explained his actions: "The main point is that I don't want to get hit and I don't want Charlie ... or Mick getting hit", stressing that he was not rising to Timberlake's defense. "If they've got a good aim, they can hit Justin. He's not in my band." Frigging priceless or what? Next up was a nice treat. AC/DC comes back out to jam with The Stones on the blues classic "Rock Me Baby". Angus and Keith are both playing these huge, Gibson hollow-bodies, with hardly any distortion, and just proceed to tear it up as they trade tasty licks back and forth. They closed the show with highly energized versions of "Satisfaction" and "Jumping Jack Flash", where Mick made me believe he could go on doing this stuff for another twenty years. Both the audio and video presentations were very good, especially for an outdoor stadium concert, shot mostly during the day, under the bright sun. The colors looked a little washed out at times, there was a fair amount of blurry shots, and the sun created a few problems with the picture, but that was understandable for this type of show. Overall the image was pretty sharp and the nighttime performances looked great. The main audio track provided is a Dolby 5.1 surround mix that provides an excellent stadium concert atmosphere, by effectively mixing the audience in the rears and keeping the music spread across the front channels. The subwoofer channel was worked admirably and provided a clean, rich bottom end to balance things out. All of the bands were mixed equally well and sounded excellent. The biggest annoyance was the rapid camera angle changes, which are explained below. The most intriguing part of the special features was a segment called "Director's Chair". This was a bizarre inclusion that consisted entirely of the director yelling out camera angle cues during AC/DC's "Thunderstruck". Now I understand why the direction of most concert videos is so horrible. This guy was literally yelling out camera angle changes at the rate of two per second. "Number nine, go to two, ten, twenty-three, give me six, eleven, one....", DAAAMN! So the next time you are watching an editing nightmare like Iron Maiden's Rock In Rio, or Rush's Rush In Rio you'll understand why. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - August 2004 |
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Audio Transfer |
Video Transfer |
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Set List |
Performers |
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Running Time: 120 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - June 2004 |