Saturday, September 23, 2006

Bruce Hornsby - A Night On The Town

This video was produced in conjunction with the CD of the same name, and reportedly RCA spent huge dollars renting a soundstage in L.A. and flying in music critics from around the world for the event. And although either "A Night On The Town" or "Across The River" could have, maybe should have, been huge hits, they weren't. However, this video remains, and the lighting and audio are of great quality, even if the director was overly enamored with trucking/arcing the front camera to death at times, partially missing some important solos in the process - if you have good musicians, it's not necessary to make every shot move to keep things more "interesting" - take a lesson from Stanley Dorfman of the BBC. Jerry Garcia's playing on two tracks on this DVD, recorded in 1990, is simply amazing - the solo on "Across The River" is the single best summary of Garcia's playing I've ever seen (I confess to not being a genuine DeadHead), the chemistry between Hornsby and Garcia is obvious. Shawn Colvin also does an excellent duet of "Lost Soul" with Hornsby here, and Bela Fleck and the late Joe Henderson appear as well. Finally available on DVD - buy it...you will play it to death.

Bruce Hornsby.com

"The End Of The Innocence" With Joe Henderson

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am currently researching this video and have a couple of corrections for you: It was taped at Paramount Studios in 1990 not 1991. Also your reference to "Capitol" spending the money to do the taping is incorrect -both this video, on VHS and DVD as well as the CD featuring Wayne Shorter in place of Joe Henderson, were both funded and released by BMG/RCA, not by Capitol/EMI. My research right now is to determine the exact timing of both the music recording session and video event -i.e., which came first -Shorter or Henderson as guest star. The other talent (Shawn, Jerry Garcia, Bela, etc.) are common to both the audio and video incarnations of this project.

Tom Meek said...

Thanks for the feedback, and I've noted the changes, as it sounds like you're into this project in a major way. I'd suggest dropping Bruce a line and asking him about the timing question you have...I'll ask him about it the next time if/when I see him.