Black Oak Arkansas - First 30 Years

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful band------ Poor DVD!!!!
Review: BLACK OAK ARKANSAS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL BANDS OF ALL TIME, HOWEVER THIS DVD DOES NOT DO THEM ANY JUSTICE.
THE SOUND QUALITY IS TERRIBLE AND THERE ARE NO CAPTIONS TO HELP US DISTINGUISH THE SONG LYRICS.
IF YOU'RE A FAN OF THE BAND AS I AM, YOU'LL BE BETTER OFF LISTENING TO THE CD'S INSTEAD.
ALTHOUGH WHAT CAN BE EXPECTED FROM AGED MATERIAL ANYWAY?
THE FOOTAGE IS QUITE OLD AND THEREFORE THE SOUND IS NOT THAT GREAT.
MY RECOMMENDATION IS TO PASS ON THE DVD AND SEE THEM LIVE INSTEAD!!!

Rating:
Summary: surprisingly good quality for seventies film footage
Review: I almost put this one back on the shelf. I was thinking, Okay- maybe one or two decent clips from the seventies, then on to boring interviews from aging, fat, bald/gray band members...what a pleasant surprise! The main body of this DVD is some killer footage from their 1974 show. I saw them on this tour, and had forgotten just how good they were.
I am extremely leery of film footage of rock concerts from the seventies: most of the time the stage lighting was inadequate for film cameras ( and especially those behemoth video cameras if they were videotaping instead ), the typically monaural audio track is woefully poor...and, biggest gripe of all pertaining to film, the sound and picture virtually NEVER match up! Not the case with this one. The Albert Hall footage is amazingly good quality, with picture and sound in perfect sync, although the subsequent Charlotte footage was disappointing ( by the way, anybody catch the ELP road cases during that backstage shot...Tommy Aldridge and Carl Palmer on the same stage...doesn't get any better than that! ). I had forgotten what a showman Jim Dandy was. If there's a pebble in my shoe about this footage, however, it's that too much of it was spent on JD...and not enough on Tommy Aldridge, arguably the best American rock drummer of the seventies. This guy was twenty years ahead of his time! NOBODY was playing double bass drums the way he did in the early seventies...you can believe that all the "young lions" of today ( Charlie Benante, Mike Portnoy, Lars Ulrich, etc ) cut their teeth listening to TA. The audio mix is pretty good, but of course you can't hear his bass drums the way they mix them today. Check out the end of "Mutants"...I feel sorry for any double bass drummer that had to follow BOAs set. Why did they delete "Up" from the Albert Hall footage, only to cut in from a poor sidestage angle toward the end of TAs solo ( and black and white to boot! )? Overall, though, a very good DVD of this band. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: What the excitement was all about!
Review: The heyday of Black Oak Arkansas,however short,or long in some opinions is finally on DVD.AND I HAVE IT!Such a fun,unique,outlaw rockin' band.They had the sound the typical teenage wannabe wanted.From the raw,grizzled vocals,the guitar army,the machine gun-like thunder of the double bass drums.And what a show they could put on.1974-Frankfort Kentucky-Black Oak Arkansas w/special guest.The special guest was very good,BOA blew them off the stage.All the tunes in the DVD are very memorable to all us forty-somethings.The footage is also very memorable(all fun).When I first viewed this I(as a mature adult)had forgotten what a powerful show they did put on.The one thing that truly stood out in my mind at the live show I saw was the finale that is not on the DVD.A tune called "UP"that featured double lead guitar and probably the best drum solo I ever heard,picks up at the drum solo(a short change).Regardless I am very satisfied with this item and would recomend to all forty-somethings and any curious enough to want to see one of rocks best bands during their heyday.By the was,the special guest mentioned for the BOA concert was LYNYRD SKYNYRD.

Rating:
Summary: BOA memories
Review: This DVD has the best quality Black Oak Arkansas footage available today. If you are a BOA fan this is a must have!
While the title says "First 30 Years" there isn't anything recent from BOA on the CD. The title is misleading. It's mostly old stuff from the 70's, but it is still great.
The song list on the DVD is as follows:
Diggin' For Gold
Hey Y'All
Back Door Man
Hot & Nasty
Hot Rod
Mutants Of The Monster
Taxman
Jim Dandy
Jail Bait
Bump & Grind
Hey Y'All (reprise)
Dixie
If I Could Love You
Swimmin' In Quick Sand

Rating:
Summary: Black Oak's Early Glory!
Review: While this music retrospective won't go down in history, such as The Who, "The Kids Are All Right," it is certainly a unique taste of Southern rockers Black Oak Arkansas, who rose to fame in the early 1970s and continue to perform to this day.

For anyone who missed out on the band's heyday - that includes me - this DVD is an opportunity to relive at least a little of those high times.

The title - First 30 Years - perhaps leads one to look for recent footage of BOA, but the only recent thing I saw was a brief - yet interesting - interview with frontman Jim Dandy (he of the throaty vocals and scrub board playing skills).

Highlights include footage from London's Royal Albert Hall, and an old b & w interview segment, with an inside look at the band's old tour bus. Most of the songs from London are quite good, performed in their entirety. Equally good or better versions of some of these - "Hot And Nasty," "Hot Rod," "Mutants" - can be found on the essential BOA CD - "Raunch And Roll," a killer live set that originally turned me on to the band.

My complaints about the DVD are mostly pretty minor.
1) Could easily have been longer and more comprehensive. How about an interview with original founding member Rickie Lee Reynolds?
2) BOA often played tv shows like "Midnight Special." Too bad rights to some of those clips weren't obtained.
3) Where's Ruby Starr? Her name appears on the DVD case, but I must have missed her footage somehow. Was it that short?
4) More band history - what exactly led to their decrease in popularity as contemporary music moved into the '80s? Where do they fit with contemporaries like Skynyrd and The Allmans, those two pillars of Southern Rock?

In that, BOA is something of a mystery. I think they rock harder, and in a more fun way, than the above mentioned. Obviously - and it's been said by numerous others - Jim Dandy was the forefather to a variety of other showmen, including David Lee Roth and Brett Michaels.

The band's legacy should not be discounted. While perhaps much has changed since the party hearty days of 30 years past, BOA's catalog of original releases are well worth a listen, and I am told they still put on quite a show, even if the venues aren't huge coliseums. I only wish I had been there, for example, at Charlotte Motor Speedway. With this DVD, I can pretend, and hope that the Wild Bunch will gallop into a nearby town someday soon!