ALL AREAS: LIVE IN BONN 2002

At last! A complete show by the classic Saga line up captured on a video with a great production and excellent sound and lightning! Recorded during their 2002 tour supporting their House Of Cards album,, it was also marking their 25th anniversary as a recording outfit. It show the band in a powerful performance through 15 songs. All Areas Live in Bonn is a true document of how Saga knows how to give the audience a tremendous show.

Those guys play many intricated passages with a smile on their faces, like they were just drinking water. Even if everyone here is in top form and does his best there´s no way to avoid mentioning Michael Sadler´s charismatic perfomances : the guy has a fine voice, great stage presence and even leads the normally shy german audicence into several sing a long parts. And, of course, we also have the brilliant, resourseful, creative (and very underrated) guitarrist Ian Crichton: his tasteful licks and solos are all over the place. Not bad if you remeber Saga has 3 keyboard players!.

There are many highlights here: the blistering opening with Careful Where Yo Step, main keyboardist Jim Gilmour taking the lead vocal duties (and a clarinet solo!) on No Regrets, the acoustic version of Time´s Up, and a definitve version of the epic Don´t Be late. In fact, I found all the tracks very well done and even the drum solo (actually a drum duel with Steve Negus on the acoustic set and Michael Sadler on the eletronic box) is quite good. The production is top notch, the sound is simply perfect (you can hear everything very clear and balanced) and the quality of the images is great.

The down side of this DVD is the lack of bonus material like interviews, backstage shots and things just like that one should expect from a 25th anniversary celebration. Besides, any fan will notice the absence of several classics that should have been included in their set list. Ok, it is impossible to satisfy everyone and they had a lot to chose from since they started, so some stuff missing was to be expected. But still I wish they had played more.

Conclusion: with some more songs, it would have been a five star rating. As it turned out, it is ´only´an excellent show by a very underrated band that proves once and for all they are as good on stage as they were on studio. Pehaps even more so! And I´m glad their classic line up finally appeared on a DVD that do justice to them. 4,5 stars.