Search - Live in San Francisco on DVD

Decent Visual - Good Audio - Excellent Performance

Jonothan Blanton | America | 02/21/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"At first glance, this looks like a fantastic deal. A cd and DVD performance by the royal family of conscious roots reggae - Morgan Heritage. With such packaging it looks like top quality visual AND audio - what a deal!

These expectations are not met.

When I first got this, I was enragedly dissapointed. The visual only got the red, gold, and green, colors that the stage light was giving off, and at least one of the three camera angles...was caught about 16 rows back in the standing room venue this was shot at, seemingly. The audio was pretty good too. The vocals and riddim is always at the forefront - melody lines can always be heard, sometimes a little better then others.

The overlying thing though is that Morgan Heritage never fails to put on a body-shaking and mind-liberating performance. Not even the riddim guitarist can stop bouncing for one second in this spirtually uplifting, intellectually inspiring, and musically grooving set.

I contacted the label too, in fear that this was in illegitamite relase - and it turns out they're the only company to have a 50-50 deal with the artists. So feel confident in supporting them.

Strong setlist, from the 'Dont Haffi Dread' tour, liberating performance, fantastic in-between-song talk, fantastic crowd, making for a fantastic accompanying CD.

One of their younger brothers from LMS comes on for a rap in 'Liberation' - as does percussionist Mr. Mojo - which makes for a really special moment.

The setlist is as follows...

1. Intro ('Binghi chant)
2. Earthquake
3. Talkin' Bout War
4. Troddin' Jah Road
5. Ready To Work
6. 1 Binghi
7. Live Up
8. New Time New Sign
9. Big Up San Francisco
10. Liberation
11. Don't Haffi Dread
12. Reggae Bring Back Love

It should be known also that the audio track for 'Reggae Bring Back Love' gets messed up on the DVD which makes for an extremely anti-climatic ending. Serves as a nice visual when you've got the CD though.

So in conclusion --- the visual would be somewhat standard if it were on VHS 10 years ago, the audio is solid for the most part, and the performance is exceedingly great.

I hope this review has given you all the information I *didn't* have when making this purchase.

Jah Ras Tafari bless."