SOMEWHERE IN SOUTH AMERICA... - LIVE IN BUENOS AIRES

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A terrifically rewarding experience .

To me, music is emotion. If certain album does not create any emotion to me, forget it! Without emotion how can music serve as center of energy for my day-to-day activities? And this live DVD is the kind of album that creates great emotion and energy for me. I watched it again for the fifth time last night and .. man .. I could not just see, quietly, on my screen while sitting on a couch, but this is what I did: I stood up, move my body as if I'm a guitar player and emulating what I saw on the screen, I shout whatever piece of lyrics I knew (sometime misspelled, but who cares? Only me watching the screen) and you know .. my pulse was racing rapidly. It rocks! Yeah . Steve Hackett and his excellent band have made it again! A great show that satisfies every single thing on my expectation list: rock show vibes, brilliant musicianship, precise delivery, high energy .everything! You name it. No single mistake at all. Quite honest I tell you .. since I owned the Time Lapse live set laser disc many years ago, I always enjoy the live performance video from Steve Hackett. Unfortunately, I've never seen him real on stage, I can only collect the video, not watching real show. Pity me . Who knows, Steve will play here in Jakarta? Hope so. It's a dream comes true for me ...

The Performance

The album was recorded in Buenos Aires, Argentina in early 2002. The show starts with a dimming light and ambience music through "The Floating Seventh" that continues with a hard driving and complex music as opening part of glorious "Mechanical Bride". WOW! The show just started but my adrenalin has exploded! I can not clearly describe what I feel when this song is performed. The song itself represents a combination of rock, jazz, classical as well as horror movie music. The performance of drummer Gary O'Toole is awesome - heplays all the complex part dynamically with great sound. His style reminds me to Rick Wakeman's drummer Tony Fernandez. On sax, Rob Townsend contributes excellent work especially during solo with jazzy style. No need to discuss in detail about Steve guitar playing - amazing!

If you have followed Steve's solo career, I bet you would love to hear "Medley" as it combines Genesis and GTR material as well: Myopia, Los Endos, Imagining, Ace Of Wands and Hackett To Bits). I love how the pieces are linked together into one cohesive whole, with excellent and smooth transitions. "Serpentine Song" is a mellow song that features duet vocal between Steve and Terry Gregory (bass). "Watcher Of The Skies" is performed instrumentally with main feature of the band's engineer, programmer and keyboardist: Roger King. When the band performs "Hairless Heart" . I cannot bear it anymore. By definition in my book, this is a great instrumental part of Genesis "The Lamb" which has become my all-time favorite. I'm stunned with this catchy track. In this live version Steve plays (read: slides) his guitar string very smoothly and it produces a soft guitar sound that has been the "soul" of Hairless Heart, combined with terrific keyboard work. I'm stunned.

The interlude part of "Firth Of Fifth" is performed instrumentally using the arrangement from "Genesis Revisited" album. "Pollution" represents the avant-garde exploration. Steve's classic "The Steppes" with its bluesy touch performed excellently using Taurus bass pedal. "Sierra Quemada" features dynamic drumming by O'Toole. "Vampyre With A Healthy Appetite" features Steve's growling vocal. "A Tower Struck Down" represents the Foxtrot side of Steve's music - heavily influenced by his work with Genesis. "Darktown", which has been my all-time favorite, features improvised sax solo by Rob. An excellent performance. I have been so long not listening to "Camino Royale" from "Highly Strung" album and this time I see it live! Great!

The encore of the show, as you may have guessed, is Steve's work with Genesis, the legendary "Horizons" which usually continues with "Supper's Ready". This time, it's "Los Endos" that follows and it's great.

The Extra

The extra covers "Somewhere in Italy" backstage footage and interviews from the 2000 Italian tour. It's an interesting documentary to enjoy, where Steve explains each member of the band. Unfortunately the sax and bass players are different with the one in Argentina. But I especially like when Steve gave a chance to Roger King who had been the engineer and programmer to play keyboard and performed live at the first time with Steve. In fact he is an excellent keyboard player even though he looked so serious during the show in Argentina. And also, I enjoy the story when Roger O'Toole (drum) was first approached by Steve after he saw a gig where O'Toole contributed as drummer. Steve also explains his vision about his music where he combines the elements of rock, jazz, classical and world music. The rehearsal footage before the show is also excellent.

Summary

Please discount my rating if you may considerit's too naïve because I'm giving this one as full five stars rating. If you are a die hard fan of Steve, you would end up with the same rating. But if you're prog buff, I'm sure you will NOT rate this DVD set less than four stars. I'm pretty damn sure on this. EXPERIENCE IT! Keep on proggin' .!!!

Progressively yours, GW

I'm sure that a majority of Hackett fans would say that they prefer hearing his Genesis and early solo material, and there's a fair amount of that in this concert. I admit to being part of that majority, although I also like his all-acoustic albums such as "Bay of Kings". So. I appreciated the fact that there are a few quiet numbers here and there. The main weaknesses, as I see them, are Hackett's singing (which is adequate), the generic quality of many of the latter-day songs, and the addition of saxophone to songs such as "Los Endos" (!!!). These are the kinds of complaints that have to do with my own quirky tastes, and should not stop the reader from purchasing this DVD.

The tour accompanying the release of To Watch the Storms for Steve Hackett produced two very strong live videos, the first being this one, filmed in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The sets in both of these videos have somewhat similar flows, but the song choices are drastically different when put up to comparison. Sure there are songs that appear on both such as Mechanical Bride and Los Endos (the latter being a Steve Hackett live staple), but thankfully there is enough diversity in the two dvds to make a purchase of both worthy and not just overkill. Anyway, this live disc is very dark (in terms of lighting) and the sound is crisp and there's a nice balance of instrumentation. There is indeed more emphasis on the guitar, but that was expected becasue ever since Hackett left Genesis his sound became very guitar oriented.

Opening with a short ditty that breaks into a ripping version of Mechanical Bride, one can tell from the get go the intensity and great musicianship from the group. The sole problem with this dvd, though, is too much emphasis is put on Hackett through the camera lens, there are maybe one or two shots of Terry Gregory the entire show, almost the entire thing is focused on Hackett, which may not seem bad to the naked eye, but I'm a person who likes a nice balance of shots between every member to show that there isn't a real bias in terms of camera shots used (call me crazy for feeling that way, too). Anyway, there are some real nice live additions and inventions added here. For instance, Medley has a nice balance of Hackett material, including Ace of Wands, a bit of Los Endos (which would ultimately end the show), Hackett to Pieces, and Please Don't Touch. It's a high intensity instrumental that comes off really well.

Watcher of the Skies on this dvd also gets an instrumental treatment, only the instrumental sections of the song are played (which is a significant portion of the song anyway). Firth of Fifth also gets the expected shortening for just enough time for Hackett's legendary solo. Hackett seems to balance his shows nicely with instrumental and vocal-led material, but this show shows a little more bias to the instrumental side of his music (and the second dvd from this tour has more balanced half and half feeling). Little instrumentals like Wall of Knives and Pollution come off as nice little interludes between the more expansive pieces (such as the epic The Steppes and Vampyre With a Healthy Appetite). One of my favorite songs on this entire disc is In Memoriam, mainly because the backing vocal sounds dead on to the harrowing studio counterpart, which in my opinion was the true highlight of Darktown.

In the end, Hackett's Somewhere in South America is a nice dvd set, but in my opinion Once Above a Time is a better dvd. Sure some of my favorite songs are here (The Steppes, In Memoriam), but I like the overall balance of the Budapest show in Once Above a Time better than this one. My main gripes in this one lie in the fact that way too much emphasis is put on Hackett, and I'm a person who likes to get a lot of shots of all the musicians because at certain points in the song they may be doing something more interesting than what Hackett is doing. But that's only a tiny problem I had with it, overall this is a fantastic dvd that I think all fans of Hackett and Genesis would fall in love with. 4/5.

The former Genesis member loves to perform in "warm" theaters like this one- Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires. His concert is taken during an unforgettable performance dated November, 2002. Naturally immortal tunes such as "Hairless Heart" and " Firth Of Fifth" are still able to drive my tears after all these years, cause actually our favourite progressive music has never found its true and definitive vital lymph in the recent years- talking about some new prog bands - even though these latter have been involved in order to reach the same goal...But coming back to the present concert, Steve is able to make our dreams come true, especially when We think of the whole progressive music scene like a never ending story!!! The audience of the theater is fantastic, being so careful in order to follow every instrumental passage by Steve during his long solos... as for this reason He's very happy and enthusiastic about this gig and excited by the audience as well , so at the end you would like to listen to some other new songs (and watch him playing live in this manner...), cause the show seems timeless and Steve is always young!! He has so much fun when He plays the acoustic and the electric guitar, passing through some different music styles, such as for instance the symphonic music, the fusion mood or some other "cocktails" of intelligent music genres...so for me it's enough to recommend this DVD to every fan of great music.

There are many sides to the night

Of all the music DVDs that I have, this one might be the one I have watched/listened to the most. This is a fantastic performance! It was also a perfect starting point for me to look into Steve Hackett's solo career. The set list showcases all the different aspects of his entire career from his Genesis days till the present.

The very 21th Century Schizoid Man- like The Mechanical Bride opens the show with a bang (The Floating Seventh is not really a song in its own right). The medley that follows is also absolutely great and features small pieces of Genesis (Los Endos), GTR (Imagining and Hackett To Bits) and Hackett's solo material (Myopia and Ace Of Wands). Both Hackett himself and his band are in great form. Another highlight of the show is the great versions of Camino Royale and also inspired performances, here entirely instrumental, of old Genesis songs (Watcher Of The Skies, Hairless Heart, Fourth Or Firth, Horizons and the closer Los Endos, this time in full!). Fourth Or Firth is stripped down to Hackett's amazing guitar solo only. Probably the best guitar solo in the history of music. I would have liked to hear some of the original keyboard parts of that song as well, but that is minor criticism.

The heaviest of Hackett's solo material is the above mentioned The Mechanical Bride and Camino Royale as well as the dark A Tower Struck Down. However, there are sections of the set that are quite soft. The softer, slower numbers are (as always with Hackett) truly beautiful, but for some people there might be too many of them in the middle of the show. The entire section from track 9 through track 14 is all instrumental and the pace of the show slows down quite a bit. But as seen here, Hackett keeps his audience captivated throughout. With Gnossienne No. 1 and Walking Away From Rainbows the slowing down of the pace reaches its peak. This is, however, forcefully remedied towards the end of the show. And for me there is not one dull moment on the entire film.

Horizons is the only track here that Steve plays on acoustic guitar. Some people might want to have some more acoustic numbers, since Hackett is equally good at playing acoustic guitar. To these people I recommend his all acoustic DVD called Hungarian Horizons or one of his many acoustic albums.

Somewhere In South America was my first Steve Hackett DVD. I have since bought the aforementioned Hungarian Horizons, as well as The Tokyo Tapes and Once Above A Time. All of these are very, very good! But together with The Tokyo Tapes, this South American gig is still my favourite. A fantastic show that makes a perfect DVD!

I think this DVD will appeal to Prog fans of all sub-genres since Hackett's music draws from Jazz, Symphonic, Folk and Avant-Garde music; an eclectic live masterpiece of sublime beauty!

Highly recommended not only to fans of Steve Hackett and early Genesis but to all Prog fans!