Styx - Caught In The Act: Live 1984
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DVD details
Actor: Dennis DeYoung, James Young, John Panozzo, Styx, Tommy ShawBrand: UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, Enhanced, Live, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
DVD Release Date: 2007-12-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&M
Product features:
- Multi-platinum album selling legends Styx dig deep into their rock arsenal and release on DVD for the first time their concert video CAUGHT IN THE ACT. Recorded during their KILROY WAS HERE tour in 1983, this concert video centers around this concept album s theme of a futuristic society where rock n roll is banned by the masses. Remastered in 5.1 surround, experience the band sic hits at the h
DVD Reviews of Styx - Caught In The Act: Live 1984
DVD Review: could be better
Summary: 2 Stars
Im a longtime Styx fan. The DVD is not up to snuff. poor recording. Sound is more like a VHS tape. good for my collection ,not for repeated veiwingDVD Review: An absolute delight from start to finish
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the overlap area between being a rock fan and being an opera fan. DVDs like this make me glad I'm both.
"Rock operas" aren't thin on the ground by any means, but with one exception these attempts uniformly fall short. Rock is generally focused on the instruments, often lead guitar and drums. The job of singing is all too often left to the one member of the band who sounds least bad, or else it's shared around democratically like an unfortunate chore. At best, voices are often considered a "chick thing" or else somewhat cheap and commercial.
Because of this, the rock opera is often a contradiction, since an opera isn't quite a "play in music" despite its initial characterization as such in Peri and Monteverdi's day. Opera is a play in voice -- not just a musical story but specifically a sung one. The voice must be at the heart of the music, and few rock bands have made the musical choice to put a voice at their centers, with limited exceptions.
One of those exceptions was the popular rock band Styx during the 1970s and 1980s, which boasted not only excellent songwriters and musicians, but a lead singer with a strong, high voice and charisma, and a very strong bent toward glitzy theater. Taken together with a healthy dose of melodrama, these qualities resulted in (in my humble opinion) the only rock opera to truly achieve operatic status, "Kilroy Was Here." It's not a perfect work by any means -- any more than Peri's "Euridice" was in 1600. And lead singer Dennis DeYoung's voice, while excellent for rock, does not approach either the hall-filling power and icy purity of Freddie Mercury nor the baritone-like belt and near-obsessive refusal to go off the center of the note of Steve Perry.
It is, however, a clear third in the triumvirate of Rock Altinos, the old-school countertenors using the pre-Alfred Deller definition of men who sing in the alto register in a full and natural chest voice (or nearly in DeYoung's case, more of a half-and-half along the lines of Art Garfunkel than a true natural male alto). A pretty, clean instrument with good penetration and ring, DeYoung's voice and his love of the concept album (the spiritual inheritor of Baroque opera) goes a long way to making "Kilroy" succeed where most other rock operas have failed to make a dent.
For many people my age, the story of Kilroy is one the broad strokes of which we know already: rock singer Robert Kilroy (full name: Robert Orin Charles Kilroy, or R.O.C.K. of course) was framed for murder and put in jail by a totalitarian government determined to do away with rock music. At the time, this was a more immediate concern for many bands during the heyday of evangelical types insisting that they had found backward satanic messages inserted in the songs of most popular bands. The inoffensive Styx was among the top targets for this sort of accusation.
A young rebel named Jonathan Chance (lead guitarist Tommy Shaw) intercepts coded messages from Kilroy after the latter escapes from jail, and the two meet at the eponymous Paradise Theater where Kilroy recounts the tragic tale to Chance. Midway through the story, the scene shifts to a live performance, and the band whose history we are following becomes simply Styx in concert.
The conclusion, with Kilroy bequeathing a guitar to Chance and a reprise of the well-known "Mr. Roboto," is played out before the concert audience itself, which has become part of the story.
The general plot is as loose and campy as any during the heyday of Baroque opera, and the artifice fades away completely during the concert, reasserting itself periodically. The musicianship is excellent, and even though Shaw who was not pleased with the theatrical direction that the band had taken, all the band members throw themselves enthusiastically into their assigned parts, with the brothers Panozzo playing both prisoners and brownshirted thugs and guitarist James Young as the face of censorship, the dictator Dr. Righteous.
Just as in the heyday of Baroque opera though, the vocal soloist is at center stage for most of the story (although he does not dominate the concert unduly). It's this that makes "Kilroy Was Here" most like the operas that it takes after. Again, DeYoung's is not a trained voice in an operatic sense, but it's a clear, pretty instrument with respectable power and the range necessary to turn heads. And it's not every day -- certainly not in the world of opera! -- where the owner of a respectable voice is also a gifted composer with an innate sense of storytelling.
The music consists of the hits that most people today recognize from the album itself plus several from previous albums such as the infectious "Too Much Time on My Hands" and "Snowblind," an anti-drug anthem that was ironically one of the songs said to contain masked nefarious backwards messages. (DeYoung replied to the accusation with the acerbic comment that the band already had its hands full making the music sound right forwards.)
The entire short film, taken from what is obviously an old analog source sadly and thus with all the image quality of an old VHS tape, can be found along with the concert that it leads into on the DVD, together with many promotional videos for older songs by the band before the days when such things were called "music videos" and made to be widely broadcast. The entire package is a great look into the high water mark of an excellent rock band as well as a tantalizing peek into what the world of opera might truly have felt like two and a half centuries ago to audiences in the pit and pigeon loft at the Teatro di San Carlo on Carnival night. Kilroy's entrance and dramatic reveal would have been the envy of Marchesi and Caffarelli, and every librettist in Italy would have been rushing home to their quills and paper to pen stories of mechanical men and martyred musicians in a world where the government exerted infinitely more control over artistic expression than any rock band could ever have imagined.
DVD Review: Not their best, but still plenty good!
Summary: 4 Stars
I saw this tour back in 1983 when Styx hit the Texxas Jam in Houston (along with Ted Nugent, Triumph and Sammy Hagar as I recall...), but unfortunately after a long day of really hard rock, the person I was with who drove pretty much demanded that we leave when Styx went into "Babe" and some of their softer stuff. Extremely disappointing to me because I love the Kilroy Was Here album (well, some of it) and am always up for a theatrical live performance.
So now, some 26 years later, I get to see what I missed. All in all, this is not Styx at their peak I wouldn't think. As many reviewers note and history has documented, most everyone in Styx apart from Dennis DeYoung hated going so heavily down the concept road, particularly when it came to the live shows. So this was the beginning of the end. I'd like to see a full-length concert from the Paradise Theatre tour a year or two before or even something from the late 70's but hey, this is what we got.
And all in all, it's still good, although as noted in many other reviews, the picture quality appears not to have been retouched in transfer from vhs. Still, the KILROY WAS HERE album and tour dn't fully deserve the negative views so many fans seem to hold, and either way, it's a concert from the classic Styx lineup plus plenty of bonus videos, all for $10. How can you go wrong?
DVD Review: excellent concert
Summary: 5 Stars
this video is a must have in any rock fans collection! they do all their hits, nothing is left out. Dennis DeYoung will always be the best singer in rock/pop (shame on them for touring without him now)! And James Young and Danny Shawn are two of the best guitar players in history. highly recommended!DVD Review: A Must-Have for Fans
Summary: 5 Stars
Caught in the Act is a great way to spend your evening. Anyone who loves Styx NEEDS to get this DVD. The surround sound makes you feel like you're right there in the crowd with a front row seat, and Dennis and all the others are performing just for you. Some people have said the picture isn't all that great; I politely disagree. Yeah, it's not Blu-Ray quality, but I think the picture is quite clear: it's clear enough that you can see the beads of sweat on the band members' faces. The whole concept of the film is very imaginative, although it is sad to see that the image the extremist Christians project is all that the world sees, and makes people assume all Christians are as fake and controlling.
The music is an absolute blast. All the songs are great, with especially good renditions of "Come Sail Away" and "Too Much Time on My Hands", the latter one being just as funny and silly as the in-studio video. Even though there was mounting tension in the group at this point, you can't tell when you watch the concert. Everybody looks like they're having a good time (though one has to question Tommy Shaw's sanity when he jumps into the crowd during an especially long guitar solo). Oh yeah, and there's the added bonus of in-studio music videos, including the hard-to-find video for "Don't Let It End" and "Borrowed Time".
Overall, this is something I will watch again and again. One should note that there is some scattered bad language throughout the show (so if you have some junior Styx fans, you may want to have the mute button ready).
p.s. No, that is not your DVD player spazzing out during "Cold War"; the weird-looking picture is intentional.
Description of Styx - Caught In The Act: Live 1984
Multi-platinum album selling legends Styx dig deep into their rock arsenal and release on DVD for the first time their concert video CAUGHT IN THE ACT.Recorded during their KILROY WAS HERE tour in 1983 this concert video centers around this concept album s theme of a futuristic society where rock n roll is banned by the masses. Remastered in 5.1 surround experience the band s classic hits at the height of their career like Mr. Roboto and Don t Let It End as well as their concert staples like Come Sail Away Blue Collar Man and Too Much Time On My Hands. As an extra bonus the Styx video archive has been included featuring their four pre-MTV music videos for Babe Borrowed Time Boat On The River (all from 1979) and Come Sail Away (from 1977). Also included are all of their music videos from the concept album KILROY WAS HERE including Heavy Metal Poisoning Don t Let It End Haven t We Been Here Before and Mr. Roboto along with four more music videos making this the ultimate Styx fans dream come true DVD collection.Format: DVD AUDIO Genre:?MUSIC DVD/LIVE PERFORMANCES Artist:?STYX Rating:?NR UPC:?602517373112 Manufacturer No:?B0009295-09General DVDs
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