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Superstars In Concert DVD including Pink Floyd - coverReleased in Brazil, 2003; produced and available from DVDBrazil.com and also available from FloydStuff.com.


Like the Stamping Ground Festival, also released recently by the same company, footage from this film has been a stalwart of many collections of Floyd material on unofficial video tapes. Superstars In Concert (also known as Rock City) has been hard to find for some time now.

It was a film put together by Peter Clifton, and covered live performances by top bands between 1964 and 1973. The performances were filmed at different venues, and there is no similarity in camerawork or direction!

Superstars In Concert DVD including Pink Floyd - Roger WatersThis DVD was originally issued with the Brazilian magazine, "DVD Total", and indeed there is an electronic version of the magazine included in full on the disc. Each page is shown and a close-up of the text pans up the screen. The text is in Portuguese and moves quickly, so if one wanted to read it, heavy use of the pause button would be required! The magazine included a large feature on Pink Floyd.

Select the DVD from the initial menu (as opposed to the magazine cover image), and the resulting menu features an insert of the final segment of Careful, along with the appropriate sound. You have the option of selecting Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, if your equipment supports it. However, before you get too excited by this prospect, see my comments below about the sound options...

Superstars In Concert DVD including Pink Floyd - Nick MasonFor those who understand such terms, the disc is in NTSC format (basically, US TV format, which many worldwide TVs can cope with), has no region coding (can be played on any DVD player), and runs for 97 minutes (I won't explain that one!).

The film kicks off with a nice vintage Rolling Stones (with Have You Seen Your Mother...), then moves to The Animals, a typically restrained Arthur Brown, Otis Redding, more Rolling Stones (including the legendary courtroom video of We Love You, notable if only for Keith looking the most together of them all!), Cream, Blind Faith, Cat Stevens, the incredible Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Joe Cocker, and Ike & Tina Turner, before hitting Pink Floyd.

Each song is captioned - first in what looks like Malaysian, then English. Sadly, many of the performances are curtailed - dramatically in some places! The film quality is fairly variable. Whilst it would have been nice to see the picture a little sharper, the print used for the digital transfer is a good one, with little sign of age and damage (there is little sign of scratches or blemishes on the whole) and no sign of digital artifacts creeping in.

Superstars In Concert DVD including Pink Floyd - Explosion on stageA lot is in black and white (due to the age of the footage) and naturally, the majority would have been recorded in mono. The 5.1 soundtrack is therefore very much pseudo surround. When the rear speakers kick in, it sounds like a tiny delay is used to fool the ears.

Nevertheless, you can also select Dolby Digital stereo, which is probably in most cases still one channel more than the original recordings were made in! Whatever format you select, you get a clear, reasonably crisp sound representative of the times.

The Pink Floyd performance included in the film was shot at the Dome Theatre, in Brighton, England. This venue was host to Floyd on quite a few occasions - not least the first performance of Dark Side Of The Moon live! Like the Royal Albert Hall, it is circular (and used to be the royal stables, strangely enough!) but the acoustics are excellent. It is therefore little surprise that the band would have been comfortable with their show there being filmed for posterity.

The recording was made on 29th June 1972, and was a superb performance lasting nearly eight minutes.

Superstars In Concert DVD including Pink Floyd - Roger WatersThere are many nice close-ups of Roger, and good shots of the others in the band too. Sadly, Rick gets little attention from the cameramen.

The explosion at the crescendo of the song gets good coverage (as the picture here shows) and the film gives a good idea of what an early seventies show would look like, for those unlucky not to have seen one.

Such little in concert footage of the band is known to exist, and be in circulation, so something like this is a true gem. The footage has been unavailable legitimately for many years, so to be able to buy it in good quality, on DVD, is great.

Superstars In Concert DVD including Pink Floyd - David GilmourWhat would be better, of course, is if the rest of the footage of this show was made available; it is believed that at least the whole of the second half was filmed. A mouthwatering prospect - One Of These Days, Echoes, Careful, Set The Controls, and Saucerful Of Secrets!

If the first half was also filmed, that's Dark Side Of The Moon too! So, quite a nice set really, and quite desirable... Back to reality, and hats off to the producers of this DVD for at least making this footage available. With the quality of some of the other performers and songs, this title is definately worth consideration...

 
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