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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
I should start this review saying I'm a fan of REM's music both old and new. I've seen them live half a dozen times, and experienced some fantastic gigs.
I wanted to love this DVD - it's all too rare given the bands history that we get a live DVD release of any kind and I was looking forward to this one arriving.
Sadly it was a little disappointing in places.
The setting was an intimate 350+ audience in a TV Studio, but the gig felt anything but intimate.
The band were there to play the mix of old and new tracks that dominated the Accelerate tour and they did it with style, great musical performance and Michael Stipes lyrics on fine form.
So why disappointing?
For me the inevitable comparison to a gig of this type was the REM Storytellers performance they recorded for VH1 around the time of the album 'Up' being released.
The setting was similar, the audience a similar or smaller size - but the gig was much more engaging.
The band were chatting and engaging with the crowd and it was witty, interesting and fun to watch.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this DVD and the production quality is high - but ultimately it has the feel of a date on a promotional tour, rather than an event the band enjoyed and an audience would wish to be in attendance for.
I wanted to love this DVD - it's all too rare given the bands history that we get a live DVD release of any kind and I was looking forward to this one arriving.
Sadly it was a little disappointing in places.
The setting was an intimate 350+ audience in a TV Studio, but the gig felt anything but intimate.
The band were there to play the mix of old and new tracks that dominated the Accelerate tour and they did it with style, great musical performance and Michael Stipes lyrics on fine form.
So why disappointing?
For me the inevitable comparison to a gig of this type was the REM Storytellers performance they recorded for VH1 around the time of the album 'Up' being released.
The setting was similar, the audience a similar or smaller size - but the gig was much more engaging.
The band were chatting and engaging with the crowd and it was witty, interesting and fun to watch.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this DVD and the production quality is high - but ultimately it has the feel of a date on a promotional tour, rather than an event the band enjoyed and an audience would wish to be in attendance for.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
This is another awesome 5 stars performance from the best U.S. band in the last 3 decades, nine out of seventeen songs are from their second best album "Accelerate".
Without R.E.M., it is so dry and non-creative in the U.S. band scene.
Don't miss it!
Without R.E.M., it is so dry and non-creative in the U.S. band scene.
Don't miss it!
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
To somewhat of a yawn, REM mine their recent history with yet another live release, this time taken from a short 72 minute live set filmed in a TV studio in Austin, Texas. Shorn of any of the staging of their inventive subsequent tour, "Live In Austin, TX" is as imaginative as its prosaic title, a bare and spartan hour and a quarter of the band performing mostly new songs on a small stage, recorded by a handful of cameras. Whilst there is plenty good in this disc and performance, the overwhelming air is one of being shortchanged - it's half the length of the gargantuan, passionate, and career-high sets of the full tour later on the year (at least four of which were filmed and broadcast on television), and captures none of the staging of that tour - the band are informal, with between song gaps of indeterminate length. The informality works out nicely when Stipe begins a conversation with two very young fans in REM t-shirts ; but also provides a fair chunk of `dead air space' where nothing of anything consequence happens. Perhaps then, I question the wisdom of an unedited performance : it's a little dull to see the band scratching their wrists for thirty seconds or a full minute as one of them has a glass of water.
Whilst all this sounds negative, it isn't. REM maintain their sparkle, and the album this show was promoting - "Accelerate" was a fine collection of songs (poorly mastered, mind you) - and a vibrant return to form. The record is well represented here, with many songs making their first visual appearance as well as a sprinkling of the better known older material. Somewhat tellingly, only a handful of the `classic' era songs are represented with Losing My Religion, Man On The Moon, Drive, Fall On Me, and So Central Rain. REM are a band that doesn't look back much, and whilst there is nothing wrong with this release, it is a spartan document that is short on length and contains no extra material at all, overall, being the sound of a goal being missed : there were far better, longer, more passionate, and visually exciting shows from this era that better capture the spirit of the band.
Whilst all this sounds negative, it isn't. REM maintain their sparkle, and the album this show was promoting - "Accelerate" was a fine collection of songs (poorly mastered, mind you) - and a vibrant return to form. The record is well represented here, with many songs making their first visual appearance as well as a sprinkling of the better known older material. Somewhat tellingly, only a handful of the `classic' era songs are represented with Losing My Religion, Man On The Moon, Drive, Fall On Me, and So Central Rain. REM are a band that doesn't look back much, and whilst there is nothing wrong with this release, it is a spartan document that is short on length and contains no extra material at all, overall, being the sound of a goal being missed : there were far better, longer, more passionate, and visually exciting shows from this era that better capture the spirit of the band.
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