STORYBOOK - TALES FROM EUROPE AND JAPAN

Fans of Lana Lane were waiting for a live DVD for a long time. And, finally, in 2004 Storybook (subtitled Tales From Europe and Japan) came out. I was hoping for a full length show, but what we got was a compilation of live performances between 1998 and 2003. There are 20 tracks and as a bonus we have interviews with the musicians about every track: the menu has the option to listen to them before each song or to go straight to the music. As one might expect the repertoire is fantastic with live renditions of all major classics. But be aware that there are a lot of overdubs too: in fact Lane's husband and keyboardist Erik Norlander explains in the booklet that in one case, during the 2002 tour, all guitar - and visual - parts of guitarist Arjen Lucassen had to be erased and re-recorded by Peer Verschuren, due to the low quality of the former delivering during that tour. Incredibly, and much to the credit of the editors, you hardly notice that when you watch the video.

The quality of the music is absolutely spotless, as you can expect from a Norlander production, even if the word overdub screams in several occasions. Still, the music is great most of the time. On the other hand the visual quality of the tracks varies a lot: the most recent footage, on the 2002 and 2003 torus are the best and the only ones to feature multi camera shots. They are the best ones visually, but not great for today's (or even then) standards. The early ones, which unfortunately contains the top classics, are little more than amateurish affairs. Such bombastic and symphonic epics like Symphony Of Angels deserved better visual to match its stunning musical performance here. Another ironic and odd point is the fact that the low quality video songs are the ones with the classic line up that included guitarists Neil citron and Mark McCrite. On the 2003 tour there is only one axeman, the aforementioned Verschuren, and although he is very good, you'll end up missing the trademark guitar harmonies of Citron and McCrite. The latter also proved to have a better voice to harmonise with Lane than Kelly Keeling (who toured on 2002 and 2003).

Overall all the performances are very good and leave little or nothing to their studio counterparts: the sole real deception here is Through The Rain: this powerful tune should be a live show highlight, but Lane and Keeling two part harmony is no match to the three part studio version. Besides, the guitar solo is not as good and, for some unexplained reason, Norlander's stunning Hammond solo is included on this version. A real shame. But, let's face it, this is the only real bad move.

In the end I feel that Storybook has more of a historical value, specially for the Lane and the people involved, but was not what most fans, me included, were waiting for so long. I guess they got the message, for only one year after that Lane and Norlander would release the Tenth Anniversary Concert, a full concert video with a stunning band performance that captures Lane's show in all its glory. But that's another story.

This one has good moments, but is also too uneven visually. You can enjoy it in parts. 3 stars.