A Night At The Family Dog (1970 Concert/Santana/Grateful Dead/Jefferson
Airplane/Eagle DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Concert: B-
It is
amazing the kinds of talent that used to tour together, or perform in special
events, especially before scalpers permanently pushed ticket prices through the
roof. You can see it in the many posters
into the late 1970s that are now classics and go for more money than you might
imagine. One of those concerts, A Night At The Family Dog, has arrived
on DVD and it is not a bad set at all.
Taped in
San Francisco in February 1970, it featured Santana in their early glory, The
Grateful Dead in full force and Jefferson Airplane in their last years before
transforming to Jefferson Starship. They
each offer good sets, though you’ll be wishing all were longer. They include:
Santana
Incident At Neshabur
Soul Sacrifice
Grateful
Dead
Hard To Handle
China Cat Flower
I Know You Rider
Jefferson
Airplane
The Ballad Of You & Me &
Poonell
Eskimo Blue Bay
The
saddest thing was to see Jerry Garcia so good here and now no longer with us,
while the most impressive moment is Santana doing Soul Sacrifice so well that you would think someone was watching
David Fincher’s Zodiac. It sounds amazing and consistent, but they do
not seem to be playing over the original hit studio recording at all. Either way, it is a concert that you should
see at least once and is more than worth your time to go out of the way to get.
The 1.33
x 1 image was shot on analog NTSC videotape and looks about as well as it can
for its age, is color consistent and is maybe a couple generations down at
worst. The Dolby Digital 5.1 tries to
spread out the sound from the original source and is a little better than the
2.0 Stereo and Mono Dolby mixes, but purists might want to try all of the
options before playback. There are no
extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
