Whitesnake - Live In The Still Of The Night
Performance
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Whitesnake - Live In The Still Of The Night
Performance
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I always thought it was a little unfair to condemn Whitesnake to the rank of Led Zeppelin pretender. I don't think it was all that deliberate seeing that David Coverdale is from roughly the same place and generation as the Zep guys, and they were all influenced by that same group of American blues musicians. Sounding too much like Zeppelin is not a bad thing in my book, and seeing that I will probably never get to witness any new live stuff from that great band, a healthy dose of some new Whitesnake may just be the cure. Whitesnake has always been a revolving door of musicians supporting band founder and frontman David Coverdale. Live In The Still Of The Night is certainly no different, finding Coverdale again surrounded by five hired guns, who breath new life into a band that was unceremoniously left for dead nearly 20 years ago. Back in 1997 Coverdale attempted a comeback with his Slip Of The Tongue guitar-ace Adrian Vandenberg, but the resulting two albums failed to make much of an impact. This new all-star lineup of Doug Aldrich and Reb Beach on guitars, Marco Mendoza on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums, and Timothy Drury on keyboards are arguably his best band yet, and they certainly have the muscle to resurrect this blues-rock dinosaur at a time when most of these "nu-rock" bands need to be stepped on with a two ton paw. I passed on this DVD a few times before I finally decided to buy it. I figured that a 50-something year old Coverdale was probably a little too washed up to do these old classics any justice. I expected some low-budget production that would barely be good enough to entice the remaining Whitesnake faithful into shelling out twenty-plus bucks to see their hero one more time. I was way off the mark on both accounts. Coverdale can still belt out the arena-rock ballads and blues-metal anthems with the best of them, and he oozed enough charisma to keep the audience eating out of his hands for the entire show. Except for a few extra wrinkles on his face, he also looks exactly the same as he did twenty years ago. Live In The Still Of The Night was filmed at London's famous Hammersmith Apollo (or "Odeon" to us old timers) on October 20th, 2004. The show was filmed in high definition by famed concert video director Hamish Hamilton, whose work also includes U2 and Peter Gabriel. For the most part, this show looks incredible, but I found some of Hamilton's techniques a little annoying, namely his trademark use of slow motion, rapid camera cuts, and grainy black and white footage that gets interspersed throughout the presentation. Thankfully, this is used sparingly and tastefully enough as to not be overly distracting. This show couldn't have kicked off in a better fashion. With the lights still out, the band takes the stage playing a long intro that slowly builds energy and anticipation, until Coverdale finally screams, "Are you ready?!", and the light show kicks in. Aldrich then serves up the famous opening riff to the Deep Purple classic, "Burn", which Coverdale originally sang on way back in 1974. Mendoza impressively supplied the Glenn Hughes chorus screams of BURRRRRNNNN! They even tease you with a few verses of "Stormbringer" towards the end of the song. The band sounded huge, especially Aldrich's thick and crunchy Les Paul riffs, and Aldridge's heavy handed drum assault. My initial concerns about Coverdale's aged vocal chords were immediately laid to rest, as he sounded pretty damn close to his prime. Sure he couldn't nail all of the high notes, and he strained a bit at times, but after warming up on a couple of songs, it was like it was 1987 all over again. The setlist was a decent mix of old and new, going all the way back to the beginning with the Snakebite slow-blues ballad "Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City", and as far forward as the Slip Of The Tongue anthem "Judgement Day" from 1989. Wisely, they relied heavily on their hugely-successful 1987 album Whitesnake, performing six of that album's nine songs. Some of the more disappointing omissions were the Slide It In classics "Slide It In" and "Slow An' Easy", but they did bring the house down with that album's biggest hit "Love Ain't No Stranger". I know of no other band that remakes their own songs to the extent that Whitesnake has - especially when it is done within a span of a few years. 1987's Whitesnake contains metal-tinged updates to both "Cryin' In The Rain" and "Here I Go Again", which originally appeared on their fine 1982 album Saints & Sinners. "Fool For Your Loving", from 1980's Ready An' Willing, got the royal Steve Vai treatment and became a hit again on 1989's Slip Of The Tongue, which was one of the few good things about that album. Each of these killer tunes were performed this night, and they definitely received the more updated treatment. I had seen every one of these band members perform with other bands - Aldrich with Dio, Beach with Winger and Dokken, Aldridge with Ozzy and Pat Travers, Mendoza with Ted Nugent, and Drury with the Eagles. I was especially interested to see how Aldrich and Beach would handle the twin guitar duties in this band, as their styles are quite different. Aldrich is clearly from the older Jimmy Page/Gary Moore school of blues-based rock guitar. He even has a '58 re-issue Gibson Les Paul that he persuaded Page to scratch his initials into with a fork. Beach is more from the 80's, Van Halen/Steve Vai school of flash guitar, but he can still do it all. Coverdale has clearly given Aldrich the spotlight in this band, as he takes the majority of the guitar solos, and even gets two full songs "Blues For Mylene", and "Snake Dance", which were essentially his solo vehicles. Beach does add some excellent rhythm guitar and the occasional colorful solo, but was much less in the spotlight. The technical aspects of this DVD were quite impressive. I purchased the Special Collector's Edition which also includes a CD containing ten songs from the show. The DVD contains a whopping four different audio tracks, Dolby Digital stereo and 5.1 surround, DTS 5.1 surround, and the newer 5.1 SRS Circle Surround technology. Each of the surround options sounded fairly similar, with the DTS track providing a little more bottom end oomph. The rear surround speakers were barely utilized, but did provide enough ambience to recreate the live concert environment well. I found that the vocals were mixed a little too loud, so I had to turn down my center channel a few db's to compensate. The video was shot in Hi-Def using a small army of cameras, and the incredibly bright and colorful light show was captured wonderfully. A 14-minute documentary and a picture slide show were the only extras included. This was one of the rare concert DVDs that I could not turn off until it was done. Typically, I will watch about half of a show and then finish it off the next day, but this one had me playing air-guitar through all 16 songs without a break. Whitesnake fans rejoice, and run, don't walk, to pick this one up! Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - March 2006 |
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Running Time: 105 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - February 2006 |