Live in Offenbach 1978 [DVD]

... To the previous reviewer: While it is bad that you didn't receive your DVD when you wanted, that really is no reason to give this release a one star... Did you happen to work for Downbeat Magazine when Mr. Gone was released??
Anyway, to anyone interested in this disc, I suggest buying it immediately, drop it in your player, then sit back and see Weather Report as they should be seen. But be sure your DVD player will be able to play this disc. It sells as "region 0" which is "worldwide" and includes regions 1 through 6. To be honest, I have no idea of the limitations that my player has (United States), and this disc played perfectly. On to the disc: This concert was during the tour when I first saw Weather Report live, so it holds some strong melancholy feelings for me, bringing back intense memories, so I am partially biased with my impressions. The disc has 18 (eighteen!) tunes on it, which I believe may be the entire show. If I'm wrong on this, please correct me. But it is chock-full of a variety of fantastic WR tunes, no filler. The opening with Black Market made me grin from ear to ear while my mouth hung open.... Some of you already know this, but the melody for Black Market was played on an ARP 2600 and Joe Zawinul reversed the polarity of the keyboard so the high notes were on the left and the low notes were on the right sides of the keyboard, the complete opposite of a normal keyboard. The melody has that "Zawinul" sound from not only the timbre of the synth but the feeling extracted from that backwards keyboard. I've known about this for decades but had never seen it... until now. Throughout the disc, Zawinul does a superb job holding down all the keyboard chores, especially on tunes like "The Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat". Pulling that one off live must have been hair-pulling, trying to figure out which parts to play and which to leave out as the studio recording has too many overdubs to perform it "exactly as recorded" live. And Zawinul does not use a sequencer for this particular tune... just more proof that he commanded full mastery of his instrument. A joyous highlight from the DVD is Jaco's solo... very similar to what was heard on the "8:30" record those many years ago. This version is not quite as polished since this was performed before the "8:30" concert, and Jaco clearly "perfected" the performance as the tour progressed. However, it is still amazing and well worth the price of admission.... There are bits of riffs I've never heard Jaco do before. See the master at work years before the copycats came along. Wayne Shorter's sax work seems subdued until he is given the chance to cut loose.... and when he does, his playing is nothing short of astonishing. Peter Erskine gets to fulfill all the drum chores without a back-up drummer or percussionist. He does such a great job, you hardly notice the missing percussion parts. All of this being said, I believe this is the Weather Report DVD we have all been waiting for. The others DVD's are good... even great. But this particular show seems to have Weather Report at their peak during the Jaco years. And Jaco himself was at his peak here... If you are a "Jacophile".. you must get this disc.
Regarding the quality of the medium itself... the sound is not as great as I wished it could have been. But considering this was performed back in 1978, there is no way it's going to hold up to the current crop of live recordings. I noticed Wayne Shorter's sax getting lost in the mix a few times. The camera work is pretty good, the angles varied and there are many shots of Zawunul from overhead. But, as with all music videos I've seen, there is the usual issue of showing a band member when you can clearly hear someone else jamming away..... Note to all cameramen (and women)... We want to SEE the artist soloing when they are taking a solo... not a different band member just playing backup. But fortunately there is not a lot of this on the DVD and you get plenty of shots of Weather Report hard at work. And when ever the stage is lit with red lighting only, the video seems to have bleed-through and the edges become undefined. But again, considering the age of this recording, it is easy to overlook these issues when considering the concert in it's entirety.
Overall, this is a fantastic document of Weather Report playing live during their prime (with Jaco). There may not be a better live video recording of Weather Report out there, either now or in the future.

This DVD is not DVD region 1. That means that it will not play in your DVD player once it arrives if you live in North America. I bought the DVD from an American Company and they were shipping it to an address in America, I would think a warning on the DVD stating that it WILL NOT play unless you have a multi region player or you are able to hack into you dvd player and change the code so it will play are in order. If I ever travel to Europe I will be sure to bring this DVD with me so that I can watch it!

I don't own the boxed set (Weather Forecast) from which this concert was originally included, but I do own a Sony-Legacy pre-release copy of the original DVD release. I can definitely say this is an improvement over that release. However, if you already own that copy I would say this reissue probably isn't worth it. That being said, the audio is markedly better and the video seems somewhat clearer, although inescapable videotape artifacts remain in places. Although the audio is labelled as "stereo" it sure sounds like mono to these ears. This material was carefully remastered by Marko Schneider and having been produced by Tony Zawinul, it's probably safe to say that this is the best version of this particular concert we will ever see. Of course the material is totally great, the material from the somewhat controversial (in its time,) Mr Gone benefits considerably from the expanded and highly spirited treatment it receives here. Bottom line: if you don't already own it (and if like me you already own all the other stuff in the boxed set,) this is definitely the version to get.' Nuff said!