Customer Reviews

See what you have been missing - By: Allan Holdsworth fan, 17 Aug 2008
Allan Holdsworth (guitar)with Chad Wackerman (drums - ex Zappa) Jimmy Haslip (bass - ex Yellowjackets, Jing Chi)and Alan Pasqua (Keyboard & piano player extraordinaire)This is a tribute to the late great drummer Tony Williams for whom Alan Pasqua & Allan Holdsworth both played with.

The camera work is very good & this was filmedin high definition( a high def released version was supposed to follow, but hasn't shown up)but is a normal DVD release. The sound is excellent & shows the band sonically very well.

Holdsworth's playing is considered & very tasteful & there is great interplay between himself & pasquain particular. Some of the tracks are new so should attract fans who don't have this material from other albums. The track listing is as follows:

1. it must be jazz
2. san michelle
3. fred
4. pud wud
5. blues for tony
6. the fifth
7. red alert
8. proto cosmos
9. looking glass

The concert length comesin at around an hour & a half.

During the tour Holdsworth not wanting to distract people from the rest of the bands contributions stayedin the backgroundin dimmed lights. he is a musician & not an egotistin any way. He is very uncomfortable with praise & adulation. For him only the music matters. In this video though you can see & hear his contribution clearly.

If you want to see one of the truly great innovators of modern electric guitar check this out.

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It gets no better - By: John Ferngrove, 14 Aug 2008
The previous reviewers 7/5 seems somewhat measly . I would have thought we are at least up into the high nineties out of 5.

In my student days,in Leeds, I had the opportunity to see Allan perform numerous times, as he was a local man before his (sad) departure for the US. Though I've got most of his stuff on CD I've always known that Allan is at his best live, as indeed some of the live CD's indicate.

Now we have this DVD & it captures the Holdsworth live experience perfectly. The sound is flawless & huge. The camerawork is great. In the solos we see plenty of fingers, rather than the back of the drummers head or some pretty girlin the audience, as can get so frustrating with this kind of thing. (Sad to say, you don't tend to get many pretty girlsin an AH audience, him being one of the ultimate guitarist's guitarist). Being a guitarist myself then, it's always great to see some fingers, not that they help me to understand any better what the man is doing, it just adds to the awe & baffled wonderment.

As to the other musicians, sorry to wax so much about Allan, but at 50 years of age I'm still immature enough to worship my guitar heroes . The rest of the guys are, of course, all of the highest calibre. Chad Wackerman I've known & admired since his Zappa days. The bassist Jimmy Haslip is new to me but he turnsin some wicked solos on his meaty six string. The name Alan Pasqua rings a bell from somewhere that I'll have to check out, but he rounds out the band perfectly.

Some of the compositions are familiar to me, but some sound like they might be new (can't find any credits anywhere). It's nice to see that the compositions are getting back to a level of sophistication that Allan seemed to have been losing since Sixteen Men of Tain, which while having the usual terrific solos was compositionally rather dull & flat. On this disc we see a nice balance between solos & compositions, where each serve the other, which is how it should be.

This is now the ultimate Holdsworth artefact, replacing my previous favourite - Hard Hat Area. Holdsworth is at his best live, & a live performance is best presented visually, as DVD or whatever comes next. I therefore hope that this is the first of several.

Addenda:
i) I did find some creditsin the booklet & Pasqua last played with Holdsworthin Tony Williams Lifetime thirty years ago.
ii) I take it back. There is a pretty girlin the front row who's clearly digging it, big time. Bet you she's a guitarist though.

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Supreme musicianship - By: leonel cardoso, 12 Aug 2008
A must for the Holdsworth fans (and everybody else).
You just have to hear/see it to believe it...
Best just heard...
7 stars out of five.