Stuff – Live At Montreux 1976 (Eagle DVD)

 

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

 

 

Stuff is the name of a Soul band formed by some major session musicians of the time (Cornell Dupree, Gordon Edwards, Steve Gadd, Eric Gale, Richard Tee) that had a good run of things in their time and though not much is seen or heard from this alliance, Eagle has managed to dig out a rough Montreux performance from 1975 and issued it on DVD.  The songs include:

 

1)     Foots

2)     Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours

3)     The Gadd Solo

4)     Stuff’s Stuff

5)     That’s The Way Of The World

6)     Feelin’ Alright

7)     Life Every Voice & Sing/Oh Happy Day

8)     Ode To Stuff

9)     How Long Will It Last

10)  Stuff Theme

11)  You Are So Beautiful

12)  Boogie On Reggae Woman

13)  Do It Again

 

 

They are a surprise with their own material and are not bad on the remakes, until the last few.  It is a good concert, but not great, though their ability to play is inarguable.  I liked this more than not, though the playback was an issue, but there is enough here to make me want to see more about Stuff.  At least they have a DVD now.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is poor, with digititis throughout and one of the poorest presentations we have ever seen on the usually high-quality Montreux releases by Eagle, but this looks like a bad “rathole download” off of the Internet and is very disappointing.  The PCM 16/48 2.0 Stereo is the purest track, though the DTS 5.1 and even Dolby Digital 5.1 are not horrible, but there is not much the best sound can do to distract from the poor image.  Except for two text essays inside a paper foldout in the DVD case, there are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo