Dusty Springfield – Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1979 (DTS)

 

Picture: C     Sound: B     Extras: C+     Concert: B

 

 

Dusty Springfield is one of Rock’s great voices, but her voice also transcended genre, including into Soul and Country genres.  She could also pull off standards with ease.  Dusty Springfield – Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1979 is a new DVD of her in concert still at her peak, singing her biggest hits and some other classics.  Those tracks include:

 

1)     I Close My Eyes & Count To Ten

2)     We Are Family/You Can Do It/On Your Knees

3)     Lose Again

4)     All I See Is You

5)     This Will Be

6)     Going Back/I Only Want To Be With You/Stay A While/Just A Little Loving/Some Of Your Lovin’/The Look Of Love/Wishin’ & Hopin’/I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself/I’m Losing You

7)     Son Of A Preacher Man

8)     You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me

9)     Quiet Please, There’s A Lady On Stage

10)  Put Your Hands Together

 

 

At her best, the voice is in great form and it is nice to have Son Of A Preacher Man in such a good, solid, alternate version since the original has been so often played after Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction revived it yet again.  Covers of We Are Family and I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself do not always work, but she usually delivers on her hits.  When she gets carried away with the audience, it cuts into her singing as it does on Look Of Love, but seeing her happy and laughing has benefits all its own.  She was great that night and she even gets crazy talking about “queens” in her audience, acknowledging her gay audience.  Unfortunately, some too offense (in an early PC moment) and she later gave a written apology.  Today, that would have been called too pro-Gay and she would have been labeled a left-wing subversive, so you just can’t win sometimes.

 

The 1.33 X 1 shows its age, as shot on analog PAL video, but it still has some good shots to offer and Springfield is looking good.  The sound options include Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 mixes, but it is the DTS that really brings out the fullness and richness of her distinctive voice, making this one of the best playback sources of any of her prerecorded material on the market.  A 40 minutes plus interview with in anamorphically enhanced 16 X 9/1.78 X 1 video with people who worked closely with Springfield is included and worth having on here.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo