Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker

Rating:
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: This DVD has no special features. No Charlie Parker discography or interview, which are common features on musical documentary or concert DVD's nowadays, but it didn't say anywhere that it would feature anything special, so I guess I shouldn't be disappointed.
I'm not a Parker junkie although I have studied his music. Still this documentary didn't teach me anything new. They went through everything you've seen on jazz-history-TV-programs, so there weren't any surprises, but there were a couple of highlights, like the TV appearance he made with Dizzy playing Hot House (the only song performed from start to finish on this disc), but the whole documentary could have been more insightful musically (and longer - it runs a little less than an hour). This film was made in 1987 - four years before Miles died. It would have been very interesting to hear what he, for instance, would have had to say about his collaboration with Bird, but Miles' name is mentioned here once in haste.
Something that bothered me about the people who were interviewed was how close up they were all the time - it would have been nice to see the camera man finding the zoom OUT button.
Well, anywhooo... it's nice for refreshing your musical history memory enough not to forget that Bird lived.
The quality of sound and picture are four out of five. Accepatable but not much more at almost full price...