A glorious upgrade to what we owned previously in "The Calhoun Tapes" from the Harvested, fan-produced label. This new DVD contains all the proshot footage from a couple of shows at the old Omni in Atlanta in early November 1987 on the 3rd and the 5th and it's great. Incorporated seamlessly into the program are the videos for "Signs Of Life" and "Learning To Fly" as well as all the accompanying film shorts throughout the show. It really does have a home video quality to it, but the DVD also has a naturalness to it that the official "Delicate Sound Of Thunder" video doesn't have.
The DVD presents the setlist in pretty much the original running order and the multi-camera shots provide the director an assortment of close-ups of all the band members while interspersing the essential full stage shots to allow us the effects of the full lasers and light show along with the signature round video screen. The musical arrangements are quite strong with this Gilmour-led line-up but I've never been a big fan in the long-term. The overstated mullet-man on sax, Scott Page, gets waaay too much air time in this production as does the ridiculous gymnastic drummer/percussionist, John Carin. Why not focus a little more on Nick Mason?!? Again I digress.
Highlights of the footage presented here are the 2 Momentary Lapse Of Reason tracks, "Dogs Of War" and "On The Turning Away" as well as the Floyd classics "Wish You Were Here" and "Run Like Hell". This is really an awesome disc to throw in and play loud! The superb video and robust Dolby Digital stereo soundtrack make this a must-have for the Floyd fans in our midst. The multi-media menus are nicely produced and make for fluent navigating for the most part, though I feel that the menu panels could have been reduced to a single screen instead of 3. One odd thing I noticed is that upon the discs' ending after "Run Like Hell", it jumps right back to the beginning again instead of defaulting to the menu like most DVDs. It's really not an issue, just strange.
One thing fun about viewing this concert footage is that there is still a freshness and enthusiasm for this 3/4 reunion venturing out on tour together for the first time in 7 years. There's alot of smiling and warmth between the players which most didn't really get to see in person because the production was so large and the band were recessed back from the audience...plus, we were all too busy watching the screens, light show and occaisional props flying around! Bottom line on this DVD is that you can't go wrong, it's a fantastic disc.
