Music Concert/DVD Review: 'John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan'

-
© 2009 Windstar Productions and Eagle Rock Entertainment.  Cover photo © 1981, 2009 Stars and Stripes
On October 13, 2009, Eagle Rock Entertainment (through its Eagle Vision distribution arm) released John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan, a DVD that presents a performance by singer-songwriter-actor John Denver recorded live at Tokyo's NHK Hall in May of 1981. Featuring a set of 18 songs that were, at the time, among Denver's "greatest hits," this 72-minutes-long presentation captures one of America's greatest performers at the apex of his musical career. It also gives viewers who were born after Denver's all-too-soon passing in 1997 a time machine into the past to see the then-37-year-old superstar charm his mostly-Japanese audience with his natural wit and gentle demeanor as well as with his musical gifts.


 (Note: The above video is from another Eagle Rock Entertainment concert DVD.)

 Filmed in 1981, this concert captures John Denver at the height of his commercial success in front of a warmly welcoming Japanese audience. Backed by a superb band, John delivers hit after hit in his distinctive, intimate style and connects with the audience with sincerity and humor. Highlights of the show include "Take Me Home, Country Roads," "I'd Rather Be a Cowboy," "Leaving on a Jet Plane," "Matthew," "Back Home Again," "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," "Rocky Mountain High," "Annie's Song," and many more. -  Back cover blurb, John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan

 John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan consists of the following playlist:


  1. Starwood in Aspen
  2. Take Me Home, Country Roads
  3. Follow Me
  4. I'd Rather Be a Cowboy
  5. Leaving on a Jet Plane
  6. Goodbye Again
  7. Rocky Mountain Suite
  8. Matthew
  9. Fly Away
  10. Dancing With the Mountains
  11. Back Home Again
  12. Thank God I'm a Country Boy
  13. Sleeping Alone
  14. Rocky Mountain High
  15. Eagle and the Hawk
  16. Annie's Song
  17. Calypso
  18. Sunshine on My Shoulders

The region-free DVD contains one of the two live concerts that aired on Japan's NHK television network during John Denver's tour of the country back in May of 1981. The footage was lovingly and carefully restored by a California-based digital production team (Enliven Entertainment of Santa Monica) led by executive producer Harold Thau and producer Barry Ehrmann. 

The task of upgrading the archival material (presumably originally stored on videocassette) for the DVD format involved video restoration and color-correcting by David Marriner and Marc Schrobilgen, while the audio restoration and 5.1 mixing were handled by Peter A. Barker.   

The DVD has no extra features or post-concert interviews with John Denver, nor does it come with subtitled lyrics. It does, however, come with an insert that, in addition to the credits and a DVD-case sized reproduction of the NHK promotional poster from May 1981, contains an essay by Lowell Norman about Denver's personal connections to Japan (he had lived there during one of his Air Force pilot father's tours of duty). In the two-page essay, Norman not only gives readers an overview of Denver's Spring '81 tour in Japan, but also delves into the singer's affection for the country and its people. 

All in all, this 2009 DVD is a wonderful window into the past that gives us a glimpse of a now-legendary American artist at the height of his professional career. John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan is a showcase for feel-good music and uplifting songs about love, nature, and our common bonds as people. 

Whether you are a life-long John Denver fan or are just now discovering an artist worthy of being counted in the ranks of America's greatest musicians along with Stephen Foster, George and Ira Gershwin, Hoagy Carmichael, and Irving Berlin, John Denver: Rocky Mountain High - Live in Japan is definitely worth adding to your collection of concert DVDs. As John himself might have said, "It's far out!" 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's 'It'?

-
Image
How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year 1958, which is where parts of  11/22/63 
Read more

Talking About 'Band of Brothers' (HBO Miniseries): Why were there no black soldiers in the Band of Brothers TV miniseries?

-
Image
Band of Brothers,  sadly, reflects one of the sad realities of American society in the 1940s - racial segregation in the armed forces. Although there  were  a few all-Negro (as blacks were referred to in those days) units in the U.S. Army and the Army Air Forces that served with distinction in the European Theater of Operations, most black servicemen were assigned to non-combat units in Supply of Services and other support forces. Most of these soldiers were truck drivers, anti-aircraft gunners, barrage balloon handlers, engineers, stevedores, clerks, cooks, corpsmen, and so on. Only late in the war (fall of 1944 and winter/spring 1945) did large numbers of black infantrymen see combat against German forces, and even then they served in all-black units commanded by white officers. © 2001 Home Box Office, Dreamworks SKG, and Play-Tone Pictures The 101st Airborne Division was an all-American unit made up of individuals from many different groups - Easy Company’s first C.O.,
Read more

Bolero: The One Movie I Have Seen That I Wish Could Be Erased From My Memory

-
Image
If you could have 1 movie that you’ve seen in the past erased from your memory, what movie would that be and why? That’s easy.  Bolero. © 1984 Cannon Film Group Now, I have seen more than my fair share of movies that, for one reason or another, I don’t enjoy at all or once liked but have changed my mind about as I have grown older.  Me Before You  is an example of the former;  Avatar  and  Midway  are exemplars of the latter. But writer-director John Derek’s softcore porn movie disguised as an “adventure in ecstasy” is still the dumbest, most boring film I ever paid a movie ticket to go see in an actual multiplex. It’s so bad, in fact, that my friends (yes, I went with a coed group of buds from college) and I decided, collectively, that as spectacular as Bo Derek looks naked, she was way too old to play a nubile if naive girl in her 20s. The story was just a barely-there plot woven together around a series of nude scenes (including the obligatory girl-girl scene) that
Read more