By Bill Ivory Larson Sep 7, 2010, 14:11 GMT
When my redactor, the wonderful A. Mac, asked me if I’d be ambitioning to jot a review the mark current nine-disc collector’s version carton set of SOUL TRAIN from Time Life I absolutely jumped at the chance. I said “groovy,” “outta sight” and “right on!” Like so many kids across the country I grew up watching Soul Train.
I’d alternate on my TV in Chicago (Soul Train’s birthplace) and watch as the biggest and brightest African-American musical artists of all time and of the time strutted their material each week (some with the biggest afros, whacked-out styles and highest platform shoes I’ve ever seen) and made us all get up and dance. It was truly some of the first “water-cooler” chat I memorize growing up, and in educate we’d discuss who sang/performed what that weekend ahead as we ate lunch or worked from class to level. Simply put, you just felt cool watching it, like you were invited to the biggest and best party in the globe.
So yes, I was entire geeked up to devour and treasure these DVDs. However, afterward watching them always, I have to say, I am very torn. After grabbing this TRAIN, watching its classical performances and riding the wheels of nostalgia I feel that afterward the human who built this set at Time Life didn’t have much SOUL.
But let’s begin with the heart and,CSI NY Season 7, afterward on, come from the art. Ready?
ALL ABOARD!!!
Soul exercise actually was “the hippest tumble in America” while it debuted August 17, 1970 (I was connate the same year, however I am slightly younger, having been born in December). It came at all times when the civilian rights manoeuvre and dark power were then newer parts of the fabric of our country, and showed how a small mini show could acquisition steam and chug its course into popup civilization history. Launching itself into syndication in 1971 the show featured stars lip-synching their melodies (much favor talents did on white counterpart American Bandstand). Except this time, the sound, look and feel were funky, black and beauteous.
The entities the nine-disc Soul Train DVD set does right, is occupy and maintain on-demand many of these performances from such classic, timeless artists, many of whom are no longer with us, and send them behind into our alive chambers.
Artists like Barry White, Luther Vandross, Ike and Tina Turner, The Commodores, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls, Smokey Robinson, James Brown and extra, who either sang live on the show (Barry White’s full orchestra is someone to behold) or lip-synched (Marvin Gaye even memoranda how badly he mouthed the words to his own songs much to the smooth baritone chagrin of host Don Cornelius).
Either way, it didn’t matter. Black music artists, because really the first time, were creature featured on a show hosted along a black man. It was groundbreaking, and nothing could stop those wheels from cornering as we coiled into the seventies.
And when I am talking about key representations featured on the DVD I have to say a few that had the maximum center and just blew me away:
Ernest Isley playing guitar on the Isley Brothers’ cover of “Summer Breeze”
Bill Withers’ live performance of “Use Me”
Ike and Tina Turner performing “Proud Mary”
Watching THE Jackson 5 perform songs when Michael was still young and innocent (and pre-many plastic surgeries), and when Jermaine was the one being groomed for super-stardom.
The live edition of “That’s What Friends Are For” performed by Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder from the first Soul Train Music Awards show
These performances and so many more are causes in themselves to watch this DVD set…
…but notification I said “watch,” not “own.”
Why do you ask? It all goes back to how Time Life fails in conveying the masterpiece.
This DVD set skips bring offthe place chronologically. Each DVD, with the exception of the last disc (33 minutes of highlights from the first daily Soul Train Music Awards) jumps from an year to the other, periodically from an decade to another. Really?!
Couldn’t someone at Time Life (or whoever pulled these clips to sell) give us a wonderful train ride along time and pop culture by at fewest lining up the performances by year/decade. I mean how fun would it have been to see the show evolve from the seventies to the two-thousands, to see the artists and their music alteration over the years and see the show go from “the little show that could” to the juggernaut it finally became? It truly would have been a stone groove!
But noooooooo! These discs bound bring offthe area. I can see what they were trying to do. They tried to make the DVD segments look like you were watching whole shows (complete with the classic show opens) but it fails and you’re not watching whole shows, and it fails for it seems like the producers of the DVD didn’t care enough to have some, well, soul.
Why no have a bevy of special features including a compilation of the Johnson Products Company’s hair concern commercials? They are awesome and fun apt watch, yet on these DVDs they come up here and there instead of in one systematized and chronological order.
What about having a special feature devoted to how they supposed the noted show open featuring the animated train and the infamous “Soooooooouuuuuuuuul Train” voice-over? And the interviews which include the main core of the “special features” on definite discs are dry and boring, especially those featuring Don Cornelius, himself, whose voice, while still rich and classic,Torchwood, could (and did) put me to sleep. They should have spattered clips from the show’s nearly 40 years into those interviews to expiration life into them instead of having just static talking heads give stock responses people not be {awake|wake up} enough to hear.
Just to illustrate how sloppily-edited this DVD set is, during Episode 45, there is an fully out-of-place live interview with actress Vonetta McGee talking about her “upcoming” film project “Shaft in Africa.” O.K., yes, that was chilly, but it was like even the DVD makers fell asleep and left the master running as it recorded. Having the interview contained made not sense, and only would have if you, another, made a special feature out of the wonderful array of black artist throughout the show’s history who gave interviews to Cornelius, again signal how all of distraction accustomed Soul Train to subserve the wonderful go of African-Americans.
Lastly, the “caboose” record, a “best of” the first-annual Soul Train Music Awards was just darted in, it seems, to give the set variant record to pump up the price. It’s only 33-minutes long. I mean why not put the whole show on the record? It’s not rocket science? Why just put select (albeit) large performances on such a waste of a disc when you could have attempted people a contingency to own history and own the first historic Soul Train Music Awards show with it’s artists, vogues and amazing faces (look in a young Denzel Washington and even younger Janet Jackson sitting in the spectators)?
Sigh. What incredible time capsule opportunities wasted.
Again, I’m not attempting to be completely down on this DVD set. It is truly awesome to watch and value the time at any celebration or get-together just to look the amazing styles (especially Cornelius’ green velvet suit, with matching two-tone green shirt and wide-ass tie) and assorted trips down the Soul Train disco line. However, at $275 (!) it is not worth it, especially in these hard economic times. Sure it’s fun, but it’s like paying for what’s assumed to be a huge swanky seven-course dinner and being only served frozen, store-bought appetizers.
I can only dream what this DVD set could have been with the right people after it, people who not only loved the show but love how much DVD and technology can bring you and me as purchasers. Instead we pull into the station from a pretty long trip (13 hours!) musing about how much we DIDN’T get to see. And you’ll not convince me that in the almost 40 years of this show’s history the sparse selections here were all the “best” they could come up with.
Soul Train was the epitome of cool, but scandal on Time Life again for asking for so much money and delivering so little. You shouldn’t wager your bottom money because the DVDs ultimately aren’t the stone gas you’re led to trust they are, honey. Totally hire ‘em on Netflix.
And, by the way, if you really absence a Soul Train special that’s full of history, fun and life retard out if you can VH1’s 90-minute 40th-anniversary tribute "Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in USA." In just 90 minutes I got more history, tidbits and behind-the-scenes sorcery than in the entirety of this run-of-the-mill “ask” for money.
This is Bill Ivory Larson signing off until afterward time hoping you adore, peace and…SOUL!
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Date:2011-4-23 【Return】
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