John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and Friends: 70th Birthday Concert (Blu-ray)

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The guys may be having a party onstage, but the audience is surprisingly sedate and well-mannered. It's a mixed crowd, and maybe that has something to do with it. "Kids Got the Blues" is a song about how pleased Mayall is that young people are also getting turned on to the blues, and as he sings we get a reaction shot from the crowd that shows a young girl with braces sitting with her father, and a crew-cut boy with his dad. Tough to get rowdy when kids are there, but then again this isn't a house party atmosphere. The stage lighting is pretty calming--a deep blue with the equivalent of "stars" shining in the background, with green spotlights adding targeted color. It's not a high-energy concert, insomuch as there's no leaping, strutting, jumping, or attempt to rouse the fans with anything but the music. And in fact, there are probably only a handful of times when the performers really hit warp speed on their individual solos. But the 70th Birthday Concert is solid blues entertainment from start to finish. Put this on when you have a gathering and you'll have a constant wash of good old-fashioned thumping blues to get your party started.

Video:
Concert lighting can be tricky for filmmakers, and it can spread a layer of grain across the visual field just as easily as the music washes over everything. Up-angle shots particularly lead to grainy backgrounds. But when you see two-shots and close-ups shot from the stage just directly behind performers, the colors and clarity are beautiful, the black levels strong, and the fleshtones are natural looking, even under the blue glow of concert lighting. It's just that the video quality varies significantly as camera angles change. Mostly the concert is shot onstage, and it's transferred to disc using an interlaced scan (1080i) and VC-1 encode. The 70th Birthday Concert is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen.

Audio:
The concert audio options are LPCM Stereo 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1, or DTS-HD Master Audio. Only the DTS-HD is a dynamic track. The LPCM is surprisingly limp and front-heavy, with the sound never straying too far, as if it were tethered like a dog to a stake. The 5.1 distributed the sound better, but it still had a flat timbre. But when I clicked to the DTS-HD option? It was instant "ahhhhh." I was worried there wouldn't be a single audio option that delivered the concert with rich-enough bass and crisp treble notes so we could appreciate those wild keyboard finger rolls-and an audio option that had the sensitivity to pick up on some of the slide guitar work that Taylor was doing in the background while others were playing solos. Same thing with Barber's blues trombone. It's the DTS-HD that picks up the auxiliary instrumentation the best, and this track delivers a top-notch sound that's still concert-mode rather than full surround. But at least the sound jumps off those front speakers like a baseball off a corked bat.

Extras:
There isn't a lot here, but enough to make it worthwhile. Three Bluesbreakers warm-up songs that were cut from the concert appear as bonus tracks: "Grits Ain't Groceries," "Jacksboro Highway," and "California." But the main bonus feature for Mayall fans is an interview with Mayall that has subtitle options in English, French, Spanish, and German. Mayall appears on-camera, but the set-up shots are behind-the-scenes clips of the band arriving at the venue, fans arriving (and showing their tickets to the camera), and some exterior shots of Liverpool. Mayall talks about the concert and how it came together, and, of course, what it means to him. Along with the liner notes, this roughly 10-minute interview gives a bare-bones background on the band and the milestones he's logged.

Bottom Line:
For a 70 year old, Mayall puts on a mean concert. His keyboard and harmonica playing has a nice jazz improvisational quality to it, and when he plays both instruments at once it's a treat to watch. Among concert highlights are the duet he does with Clapton on "No Big Hurry," "Hoochie Coochie Man" with Clapton taking the lead, a supremely energetic "I'm Tore Down," and the big finale with everyone onboard, "Talk to Your Daughter." If I were at this concert I may have wondered why more people weren't standing and dancing instead of just a few people shown on-camera. It's not the kind of music that's conducive to sitting still. Hours after this concert, I still had the blues going through my head. And that's a good thing.

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