Buddy Guy - Live: The Real Deal With G.E. Smith & The Saturday Night Live Band

I LIKE BUDDY GUY ALOT AND HAVE MOST OF HIS CD'S, HOWEVER THIS DVD IS NOT THAT GREAT. I GUESS I WAS EXPECTING IT TO BE HIS CONCERT FROM THE CD BY THE SAME NAME, WHICH IS GREAT. THIS DVD IS SHOT AT VERY CLOSE ANGLES AND ALMOST IN BLACK AND WHITE. THE CONCERT FOOTAGE IS DONE IN A KIND OF A DRAB BROWN COLOR. THIS IS A BIOGRAPHY DVD ALSO. LITTLE INTERVIEWS MIXED IN WITH THE SHOW.ANYONE WHO HAS SEEN BUDDY KNOWS HOW INTENSE HE CAN BE IN CONCERT AND THATS PART OF HIS CHARM, BUT THIS DVD LEAVES ME FLAT. THERE ARE OTHER SHOWS ON EBAY THAT ARE MUCH BETTER SUCH AS THE NORTH SEA JAZZ FESTIVAL SHOW IN 2002. IF YOU WANT SOME REAL BUDDY GUY, THATS THE ONE............

Well as I have said many times in my reviews material on most living Blues Legends is very scarce! Buddy Guy has been in other peoples' releases for the last 10-15 years but does not have much of himself in concert format (when will they release the German "Musik Pur" concert!!). I have read the previous reviews and basically agree with them, this concert is short, its in monochrome due to the lighting (but it's a good "club" effect), and the set has no extras or bonus material. Buddy is interviewed over the top of several songs and it's, at first, a bit annoying.

However, the actual set is great and has many of his most famous tunes. The actual presentation is fabulous and the band the SNL group with GE Smith (who played with many people including "Hall and Oates" in the 1980s and was musical director of the excellent "Tribute To Muddy Waters" show with Buddy as a guest) is excellent. The bonus here is Johnnie Johnson, the great blues pianist and Chuck Berry collaborator, is a guest as well and does a couple GREAT solos!! He doesn't get much credit either, as usual (and he was also in the Muddy tribute concert as well!!).

The set is interesting it begins with "I've Got My Eyes On You" (A tune Buddy wrote with Willie Dixon at Chess) from his early days in the 1960s. You can see a very good Black and White film clip of this tune with young Buddy really getting into it in Rhino's Blues Masters Vol 2 DVD. Buddy also gets in to it here and even breaks a string. He switches polk-a-dot strats (this design on Guy's signature start comes from his mother's dress pattern) from Black to Red it's edited look for it! Later in the set he returns to the black axe. "Sweet Black Angel" is of course the risque Blues standard made famous by Robert Nighthawk and others in the 1940s and 50s. "Talk To Me Baby" another well known tune done by Sam Lay and others. See Sam Lay do this tune on the Martin Scorsese series "The Blues" in the "Fathers and Sons" film at the Chicago Blues Festival.

"My Time After A While" is one of Buddy's first hits (he even tells an interesting story about how he recorded it at Chess). It was covered by John Mayall. This number is really excellent and he really does this well. "I've Got News For You" is another good tune from his middle period. "Damn Right I've Got the Blues" is of course from his comeback LP in the early 1990s when he had been without a recording deal for some time. It's one of the reasons he started this Legends club-to have a regular job!!

"The First Time I Met the Blues", which also opens up the film "Lightning In A Bottle" which had an version of this tune, was one of the great tunes from Buddy's famous Vangard recording in the 1960s. It was originally a tune by the great Blues Pianist Little Brother Montgomery. The set ends with "Let Me Love You Baby" a strong Wille Dixon tune and an ode to Chess Records where Buddy was a session guitarist. The set is good. This DVD is interesting and historical. If you are a Blues lover you won't be disappointed and the price is lower than most other Amazon DVDs!

This is a must have DVD for any fan of the blues, and particlarly, a fan of Buddy Guy. There is not really much out there focusing on Buddy, there are some compliations of which he is a part. This is around 1 hour of pure Buddy, along with G.E. Smith, the former leader/guitarist for the Saturday Night Live Band. It was filmed at Buddy's own Legends Club in Chicago. Any fan of Buddy knows how much emotion he puts into his playing, and this recording catches him at his best. He and G.E. are two of the very best in the blues business, and they thoroughly enjoy exchanging amazing guitar riffs with each other. Buddy plays some of his great tunes: Damn Right I've Got The Blues, My Time After Awhile, First Time I Met The Blues, Let Me Love You Baby, Talk To me baby, I've Got My Eyes On you, Sweet Black Angel, and I've Got News ForYou. In between cuts are bits of interviews with Buddy highlighting his career. The audio is excellent, very crisp and bright. It can be played in stereo or 5.1 surround. The video is overall pretty good, although there is a bit of graininess at times when then camera pans into the background stage lighting. My biggest beef with the video is that that color quality is not great. It almost looks like it is done in sepia tone like old photographs. I don't konw if that was done intentionally or not, but personally I think the color could have been a lot better. Ironically the color gets much better during the last song. It's almost as if the camera operator/mixer tech woke up and realized something was amiss with the color quality. It seems to come alive over the last few minutes. As I stated up front this is a must have dvd. My only other gripe is that it was done back in 1996, and it is only now on the market 10 years later. What the hell is up with that??????