One of my favorite modern day blues guitar players is Stevie Ray Vaughan. I think it is tragic that he was taken in the midst of a successful career. We are fortunate that a few of his concert performances have been captured.

This concert, Stevie Ray Vaughan - Live at the El Macambo is an hour set recorded at the El Macambo, a small venue in Toronto, Canada in 1983. He is with his band Double Trouble. Tommy Shannon on bass and Chris Layton on drums. I would say Stevie was in rare form that night, but from everything I have read and the two other concert DVDs I own by SRV, the superb playing delivered by Vaughan was not rare, it was a given.

The Set List / Concert

The show begins with Testify and So Excited, then Vaughan plays one of my favorite tunes, his cover of Hendrix's Voodoo Chile (slight return). Try as I might, I have not been able to master that spright intro that cries out wah waaah wah wah wah. However the camera covers Stevies hand on the fret board of his custom Strat closely enough that I can study it anyway! He follows up with the familiar Pride and Joy, Tell Me and Mary had a Little Lamb. Leave it to SRV to be able to take a children's nursery rhyme and infuse it with so much soul.

The club that they play seems small and intimate, Vaughan and his bass player seem to be standing on about 5 feet of stage in front of the drummer to a small but enthusiastic crowd. Vaughan wears his trademark black hat with the band of metal ovals around the brim. Throughtout the show he plays his ragged looking Fender Stratocaster replete with faded paint job and his initials on the top of the body.

A Texas Flood pours out of his guitar. You can see the sweat pour off his face as his fingers race along the fret board for those long sustained bluesy notes in Texas Flood. This is one awesome live version of the song, and if you have just heard the studio version, you haven't really heard this song. We even see Stevie play some of the song behind his back! Amazingly if I wasn't watching him do this, I wouldn't have believed it, because he doesn't miss a note.

Love Struck Baby and Hug You Squeeze You were performed next, followed by another cover of Stevies idol Jimi Hendrix, Third Stone from the Sun. For me, this second Hendrix cover tune was one of the other highlights of the show. SRV was having a blast pulling strange sounds from his guitar ala Hendrix banging on the strings slamming the tremelo bar, using a slide, and all the other cool guitar tricks that can make a Strat sing.

The encore for the show is Lenny and Wham> Lenny is a beautiful slow melodic instrumental. Wham is a straight ahead rocking tune that closed the show out with a bang.

Video Quality

Although this concert was clearly shot in the age of Video tapes, the 4:3 capture of this concert was quite good, and Stevie Ray Vaughan looked larger than life on my 105" Da-Lite Cinemavision Movie Screen. My son, who also loves great guitar players were trying to study his hands on his guitar as he played, and the camera work is so good, that you can actually see where he places his fingers and see when he bends the notes or does hammer ons. The band and the audience doesn't get too much screen time, for the most part the camera is either on Stevies face or on his guitar.

Audio Quality

The audio here is presented in two choices 2 channel PCM stereo which is good, or Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

The PCM stereo mix has a bit of a flat feel to it.

The Dolby Surround definitely has a "club" sound to it, I felt like I was sitting in a small sized Boston night club listening to this. You don't really get a spatial quality with the musicians all in particular spots, its more of a wall of sound hitting you from the front and echoing off the walls in the back. The sound quality is what you would expect from a small venue live recording. That being said, you can clearly hear Vaughan's vocals and his awesome guitar solos.

Extras

This DVD has a few bonus features. Lyrics, a timeline of SRV and a discography of all the SRV albums are listed. There is also an interview with Shannon and Layton about that show, Stevie and Double Trouble in general.

Summary

When I give this show four stars, please don't interpret that to mean that I am giving Stevie Ray Vaughan four stars. His performance is always five stars, it is outstanding and excellent. I give the show four stars, because it is only an hour long, and although the audio was good, it was not excellent. However any fans of SRV should own this disc if for nothing more than the incredible live versions of Texas Flood and Third Stone from the Sun.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD