The concert was being performed at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia and being broadcast live on the radio. He performed most of the songs on the album and a few others he had yet to record, including The Ballad of BIlly the Kid and the beautiful and moving Rosalinda (Memo to Billy or his handlers, please release this concert on CD, if just for Rosalinda, one of the most beautiful pieces of music he has ever written. Why he never released is is beyond me. If you are unfamiliar with it, look it up on You Tube). I loved the concert and in particular, the song Captain Jack, which became a radio hit in Philadelphia.

The Cold Spring Harbor album was a disaster as it was mastered improperly and Billy left the business and was playing at the Piano Bar at the Empire Room in Los Angeles, not knowing that Captain Jack had become a hit in Philadelphia. The song eventually came to the attention of Columbia Records, who signed him to a recording contract and the rest, as they say, is history. While his live shows were always great and had excellent sound, I always found his recordings, whether in studio or in concert to have mediocre audio and video. The Live at Yankee Stadium DVD for example looks and sounds awful. With HD and lossless audio codecs, I was hoping that this would change so I was eagerly awaiting the release of the Live at Shea Stadium Blu-ray, hoping it would be a huge improvement over Billy Joel’s prior video releases. Unfortunately, other than the video, it falls short, way short.

Concert 

At the time of the concerts which form the basis of this release, namely July 16th and 17th, 2008, Billy Joel had reached the big six oh as in 60 years old. Not surprisingly, he has lost a step on two, especially vocally, since he was in his prime in the 1970′s and 1980′s. He no longer really has the vocal range to do some of his material, which is why Say Goodbye to Hollywood and the hits from his doo wop homage recording, An Innocent Man were not performed at these shows. Nevertheless, while falling a bit short of his best, this is on the whole a fine show with a song list that is fairly representative of his entire career, with a few tunes included that casual fans might not be all that familiar with.

The concert includes a total of 25 songs in order of appearance: Prelude/Angry Young Man, My Life, Summer, Highland Falls, Everybody Loves You Now, Zanzibar, New York State of Mind (with Tony Bennett), Allentown, The Ballad of BIlly The Kid, She’s Always a Woman, Goodnight Saigon, Miami 2017, Shameless (With Garth Brooks), This is The Time (With John Mayer on guitar), Keeping the Faith, Captain Jack, Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel), The River of Dreams/A Hard’s Day Night, We Didn’t Start The Fire, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, Only The Good Die Young, I Saw Her Standing There, Take Me Out To The Ballgame, Piano Man and Let It Be.

The highlights of the concert have to be the two songs performed by Paul McCartney, I saw Her Standing There and Let It Be, both of which are sensational. As a fan, I am most fond of Billy’s albums from Turnstiles to The Nylon Curtain, which I view as his best, so it would have been great to have included I’ve Loved These Days from Turnstiles (although 4 of the 8 songs from that album are included, Just The Way You Are from The Stranger and a few others I could mention. I could have done without the Sinatraesque vocals on New York State of Mind and felt that his vocals on She’s Always A Woman and Only The Good Die Young to fall a good bit short of his best (perhaps he was worn out a bit).

Being from Philadelphia, I have heard him perform Captain Jack much better than he does here. He used to perform it with a bit of jazz piano mixed in which is now totally gone. On the plus side, the addition of the string section sounded great on a few of the tunes such as Lullabye, The Ballad of Billy The Kid. The addition of the horn section was notable too and as a result, Zanzibar from 52nd Street sounded sensational. I am sure that most fans will find this set and the performances to be great. However, I find that his current band, pales in comparison to band that he toured with in his prime. Missing are the deep and energetic bass lines of the late Doug Stegmeyer. Billy’s current drummer just doesn’t stack up well with Liberty DeVito, who was as much a part of Billy’s sound as Billy was. I don’t know why Billy and Liberty parted ways, but if Billy ever tours again, which is questionable given his double hip replacement and other health issues, bring back Liberty. Your sound is just not the same without him. Recommended for fans only.

Video  

While the video on this release is good, I was expecting better. The video features bright and bold colors and deep blacks. Where I feel that it falls short is in the level of clarity and detail, as the image is a tad on the soft side, lacking the fine detail of great looking recent concert discs such as The Jeff Beck Rock N Roll Party I have reviewed here, or the new Harry Connick, Jr. Live on Broadway disc which looks sensational. I don’t know why the video features this softness. Perhaps it is because of the cold moist mist that was being blown rather heavily onto the stage both nights to provide some degree of comfort to the band on two very hot evenings.

I found some of the framing of the image to be a bit odd and not really taking full advantage of the wider screen format that HD offers. I also found a bit of noise in some of the darker portions of the image. While the image overall is good, it just falls a bit short of the quality that I had been expected and certainly falls short of some of the newer concert releases I have seen on Blu-ray.

Audio  

While I was a little disappointed with the video, I was really shocked with how poor the multichannel audio is here. Not to sugar coat it, it really sucks. This is the first concert disc that I have heard on Blu-ray were I actually prefer the PCM uncompressed (24/96) stereo mix to the multichannel mix, which in this case is offered as uncompressed PCM 5.1 at 24/96 and Dolby Digital 5.1. And by a wide margin. The PCM stereo track sounds like a decent CD and has much better bass, dynamics and center fill than the multichannel tracks have. However, it is not without its faults, including a congested overall sound and a poorly mixed, for the most part, lead guitar track.

Both multichannel tracks sound dreadful, with no dynamics and almost no bass at all. It is amazing to hear the difference in the low end when switching back and forth between the two. The bass lines and the kick of the bass drum just vanishes. I also found Billy’s vocals on the mutlichannel tracks to sound thin and hollow compared to the stereo track, with his lower register simply not there. The audio on tis release really needs to be redone, it is that bad. Experiment if you want but, you will be better off sticking with the stereo, even though it lacks the enveloping sound of the 5.1 mix.

Special Features  

The extras consist of three bonus songs, all with special guests. In order of appearance they are Walk This Way with Steven Tyler, My Generation with Roger Daltry and Pink Houses with John Mellancamp. All of the songs were performed with Billy’s Band. BIlly disappeared during Walk This Way, sang backup vocals on My Generation and played the piano on Pink Houses. Both Steven Tyler and John Mellancamp were in fine vocal form but Roger Daltry for some reason, stuttered his way through My Generation, which was the least pleasing of the three extra songs, at least for me.

Final Thoughts  

To say that I was disappointed by the audio on this release would be an understatement as this release gets my nomination for the worst multichannel concert recording on Blu-ray to date. Recommended for fans only.

Film 

Storytelling is a timeless art and that certainly applies to films.  Yes, we have greater technologies and capabilities in movie-making than we did ten years ago, let alone fifty years ago.  Nevertheless, there are still countless classics from the past.  Wages of Fear has been built up to be one such movie, but does it really measure up?  A little earlier, I mentioned that director, Henri Georges Clouzot, was known for suspense in his films.  Yes, he does deliver suspense in Wages of Fear.  He also manages to drag out the movie in such an incredibly annoying fashion that not only did I find myself constantly checking to see how much time was left in the film, but I also debated whether or not to hit the fast-forward button.  Shame on me for thinking that, but it is what it is.  

This movie is two and a half hours in length and now that I have watched it, I can say with confidence that forty minutes could have easily been axed from this film.  The acting is good, but there are far too many occurrences taking place that have absolutely nothing to do with driving the story.  These items excel as nothing more than distractions.  There certainly are little nuances to keep an eye on that do have a discreet message behind them.  That aside, I look back on a lot of the sequences during the film and ask, “What’s the point??” 

The film has a severe tendency to drag on and while Clouzot may have had the intent to create suspense by doing this, it backfired…tremendously.  I do congratulate him on the irony presented at the film’s closure, but other than that, watching Wages of Fear is like trying to walk through knee-deep mud.  You get nowhere fast. 

Video 

I could be wrong, but I do believe that this is the first black and white film to be released on Blu-ray.  I have one question.  Why?  Is it to have the sharpest grays, blacks, and whites possible?  I do understand that this film was cleaned up from its previous appearance, but as a guest speaker said at a Blu-ray discussion at the San Diego Comic Con last year, “What’s the point of putting black and white films on Blu-ray?”  Perhaps one would need to compare this 1080p version of Wages of Fear against its “not cleaned up” counterpart.  It is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a very uncommon Linear PCM encode.  There is grain present throughout the film, but believe it or not, in no way is it distracting.  Some color films from today’s era should take note of this.  This is probably the most difficult rating I have had to apply to a movie because you have to consider the source of the actual film reel.  We’re talking 1953 black and white.  You can’t really fault this. 

Audio 

Monaural.  That means no rear speakers, no subwoofer, no complete utilization of your wonderful surround sound, period.  What else is there to be said here?  There is absolutely no pizzazz in the audio category.  There is no Dolby 5.1 or anything of the like to be found.  Ah, it seems like only a paragraph ago when I said the video for Wages of Fear was the most difficult rating I ever had to apply.  Scratch that and replace the word “video” with “audio.”  I know, I know…if the video rating isn’t going to suffer based on the original source, how can the audio?  Good point.  However, the video is clean as far as black and white goes.  The audio has gone through restoration but it’s still dead to the senses.  Hooray for the eliminating the pops and hisses, but this category is for surround sound audio. 

Special Features 

The extras on the Wages of Fear disc, labeled as “Supplements” on the menu, are few but bear some meat as far as their running time.  Only the first extra regarding the assistant director appears in High Definition as 1080i, as the rest are in a standard def presentation.

• Michel Romanoff – a piece about the film’s assistant director (22:26).
• Marc Godin - a segment about the co-author of the book, Clouzot: Cineaste (10:09).
• Yves Montand - This is an interview from 1988 with the lead actor of Wages of Fear (5:00).
• Henri Georges Clouzot: The Enlightened Tyrant - A French documentary with English subtitles about the acclaimed French director (52:34).
• Censored - An interesting look at the scenes cut from Wages of Fear for its 1955 U.S. release.  It also goes in-depth to discuss the media’s view on the film at that time (12:12).

Final Thoughts 

As a French-based film set in South America, it includes dialogue in Spanish, Italian, English and of course French.  It is certainly a multi-cultural film, but does not really put its shoes on until the latter portion of its run-time.  I expected more out of this but the story was such a mish-mosh early on that it left a bad taste in my mouth and continued to struggle in reaching some relevant substance.  There was nothing to be gained by drawing out so much of the character development or the illusion thereof.