Return to Sin City - A Tribute to Gram Parsons
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Actor: Dwight Yoakam, John Doe, Keith Richards, Norah Jones, Steve EarleBrand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Return to Sin City - A Tribute to Gram Parsons
DVD Review: Disappointing triubte to a legend.
Summary: 3 Stars
So first I'll say that I'm a huge Gram Parsons fan. I grabbed this one quickly not really caring that some of the best Parsons interpreters of the past are missing. I thought, what the the heck, Dwight is here. Norah is always good and I had heard her do "She" before (Austin City Limits, I think) and Steve Earle is always solid.
Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed! I'll take the good first, though. It is certainly a good looking concert without all the usual annonying audience cutaways that plague concert films. Credit must go to director Mark Lucas and editor Ernie Fritz. (This creates a slight problem though, in that the audience almost seems dead in places with very little crowd reaction in the sound mix - not that I wanted to see the crowd, but hearing a little excitement would have been nice).
The solid performances were Farrar, Earle and Raul Malo. Norah Jones was great on "She" but the "Love Hurts" duo with Keith Richards was cringe inducing at times, although she was fine. Dwight Yoakam was rock solid on "Wheels" which he had covered on one of his albums, but I think "Sin City" was just a mess. The biggest pleasant suprise was Lucinda Williams who performed two solid songs (Sleepless Nights and a Song For You). I'm a middling fan of hers, but she was great.
There wasn't anything horrible in the way of peformances, just some questionable choices, mixing songs with performers which were not exactly well served. John Doe was particuarly out of place, and while I can understand the historical significance of Keith Richards, he's never been known for his great stage work. Susan Marshall was adequate, I suppose, but not my cup of tea. The "everybody gets on stage and jams" songs were necessary, but as usual, not very good (have you ever seen a good one?) Whether it's at the Grammys or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they're always great musicians that obviously have not spent much time playing together! It's like a soup with fish and pork in it - they just don't go together very well!
I tried to listen to the commentary track (by Gram's daughter and one of the producers), but it was so gabby, self-serving, unfocused and in need of editing that I couldn't do it for very long. (At least talk about the peformer that's on stage, or you're Dad, as opposed to meeting Sheryl Crow, which I'm sure was fascianting to her, but had very little to do with her father or the performer that is currently on stage). They claim to have had a "wish list" of performers, but I think it is almost unforgivable to not include Emmylous Harris. For history sake, for the sake of her harmonies, for her many covers of Gram's songs, she MUST be included. Whatever the reason for her absence, it's not valid to me. I think if you have a Gram Parsons tribute concert, you invite her and schedule the concert so she can be there. If you need to, you wait for her!!!
In the end, I would tell the die hard Parsons fan to at least rent it. It's not horrible, it's not a waste of time, but I don't think it's worth owning. Instead, if you don't already own it, I recommend "The Return of The Grevious Angel" on CD. This is the one tribute to own, with amazing peformances by Beck, Cowboy Junkies, The Pretenders and, of course, Emmylou Harris. While not a live album, it captures the spirit of Gram Parsons like nothing else.
Description of Return to Sin City - A Tribute to Gram Parsons
RETURN TO SIN CITY:TRIBUTE TO GRAM PA - DVD MovieReturn to Sin City - A Tribute to Gram Parsons offers clear evidence that Parsons, who died at age 26 and whose output consisted primarily of just five recordings (one with the Byrds, two with the Flying Burrito Brothers, and two solo albums), commands a degree of respect and influence these days that?s far greater than the modest success he enjoyed before his death in 1973. Recorded in Los Angeles, this 106-minute, 21-song concert features some big names (Keith Richards, Norah Jones) and slightly lesser lights (Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, John Doe) performing tunes Parsons wrote and/or recorded before his career was cut short by drug and alcohol problems (executive produced by Parsons? daughter, Polly, the concert and DVD will help raise funds to battle substance abuse). And if the material?s country-rock flavor (Parsons disdained that label, preferring to call it "cosmic American music") sounds a bit hackneyed nowadays, well, it?s not his fault; after all, Parsons was only around to help invent the genre, not run it into the ground. On this night, it?s left to the artists with unique voices and personae to lift the flavor of the proceedings from the merely pleasant to the truly inspiring, and that?s precisely what Doe ("Hot Burrito No. 2"), Earle ("Luxury Liner"), Williams (a raw, somewhat ragged, and unabashedly vulnerable "Sleepless Nights"), Yoakam ("Sin City"), and Richards (who croaks his way through "Love Hurts," a duet with Jones, and "Hickory Wind") do. After that string of remarkable performances, closing the show by bringing everyone (including the great guitarist James Burton) onstage for "Wild Horses" and "Ooh Las Vegas" may be a tad anti-climactic, but Return to Sin City is still a fine way to remember a music legend. --Sam Graham
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