Search - Isaac Hayes: The Black Moses of Soul on DVD

Wish I'd been there

Sir Grand Citizen | Earth | 01/17/2006

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This is probably a great show by Isaac--- too bad the audio is so tinny and high-pitched that even the most hardcore fan will turn it off after about 20 minutes. The audience seems to drown-out the action on-stage. I appreciate the age of the document, but even still... damn.
It's a shame."

I, for one, enjoyed it myself

Andre M. | Mt. Pleasant, SC United States | 05/17/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Okay, I saw this yesterday after finding a $5 copy at a local discount shop along with some last minute dark socks for work. In spite of the previous reviews, I personally thought it was quite good.

Granted, this WAS filmed in 1973 and not digitally remastered. A few annoying seventies effects such as the fuzzy double -exposures appear from time to time. But the SHOW and the MUSIC are the things here!

Ike's band "The Movement" and his lovely background singers (as well as the pit orchestra) ROCKS! The show beings with a bald female dancer doing her thing and when Ike comes out in a grand entrance (smiliar to his classic onstage introduction with Jesse Jackson in WATTSTAX a few months earlier), Ike and the bald sister dancer get together in what appears to be either a prayer, a long embrace of love, or perhaps both. In either case, it's a beautiful sight and the audience responds accordingly-and the show beings.

This is not the same song set from Ike's WATTSTAX appearance from 1972 on DVD that has the SHAFT sountrack material. This focuses on the slower love songs he made famous such as his covers of BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX, THE LOOK OF LOVE, NEVER CAN SAY GOODBYE, LIGHT MY FIRE, and his own classic I STAND ACCUSED. The ending of the latter is a sight to behold.

This is valuable, as VERY few live Soul or R&B concerts from the classic Soul and Rhythm and Blues era (late 1940s to about 1982) are domesticlally available on non-bootleg DVDs (the legendary bootlegs of James Brown's THE TAMI SHOW and LIVE AT THE BOSTON GARDEN APRIL 5, 1968 come to mind). So we are quite lucky to have this.

In one episode of GOOD TIMES circa 1974, Bernadette Stanis and her boyfriend are shown planning to attend an Issac Hayes concert. This is what they would have seen. Enjoy, and encourage DVD companies to bring MORE Classic Soul concerts from these artists in their PRIME to light!"