REVIEW: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live DVD Collection

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This robot is a pretty big fan of all types of music, so you can imagine my twelve-year-old-school-girl excitement when this massive collection came to me for review. Time Life wasn’t messing around when they put this collection together (at least on quantity). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live DVD collections boasts more than 24 hours of performances and speeches and another 9 hours of special features -all packed nicely onto 9 discs in a box-set. While not without flaws, I would consider this a must-own for any of you music buffs out there. You can check out my full, lengthy review of this DVD set over at my Examiner.com page, but here’s a brief rundown:

While the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has had its controversies over the years with the selections of those who are inducted, there is no shortage of pure musical greatness in this set. We are talking the likes of AC/DC, Aerosmith, B.B. King, Billy Joel, The Doors, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Johnny Cash, Metallica, Queen, R.E.M., The Righteous Brothers, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, and ZZ Top -and that lengthy list is just to name a few of the artists and bands featured in the collection.

In a set this big from The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, amazing musical performances are not in short supply, period. AC/DC and Metallica give fantastic performances, proving that they just may never be too old to rock, and rock hard. The always great Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers jam out “American Girl”. Buddy Guy, B.B. King, and Eric Clapton get soulful with “Let Me Love You Baby”. There are very few sub-par performances in this set (I’m looking at you, Paul McCartney singing “Blue Suede Shoes”), but perhaps one of the best performances to ever grace the Hall of Fame’s stage was 1988’s performance of The Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” with George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, Mick Jagger and Billy Joel -Simply. Amazing.

My biggest complaint: the organization of this set. In a word, it’s terrible. Logically, one would think that this would all be presented chronologically, but it’s not. Performances jump around from year to year, as do the speeches -in fact, some of the speeches are actually cut up and presented across multiple discs. Instead, Time Life has chosen to package certain performances together by “theme”. For instance, one of the discs is called “Message of Love” and features The Who, Melissa Etheridge, James Taylor, the Bee Gees, John Mellencamp, Bonnie Raitt, Bruce Hornsby, the Pretenders, Metallica, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Maybe it’s me, but this is a pretty random sampling of bands and only a few would represent a “Message of Love”. Each disc is like this in that they all feature an off mash-up of bands that supposedly represent a theme -the reason for this choice in arrangement is beyond my understanding. In short, with regards to the organization, it doesn’t flow at all and actually takes quite a bit away from the overall enjoyment of this collection.

While this is a very good collection, it misses on being a great collection. Despite its flaws though, I recommend this for all you music fans out there; the performances and footage included in this collection far outweigh its short comings and would make a great, historical addition to anyone’s DVD collection.

Check out my full review of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live DVD Collection as well as see a break down of all the performances featured on each disc over at examiner.com!

You can purchase Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Live on DVD exclusively from Time Life!