The material on this disc is culled from 2 King Biscuit Flower Hour concerts recorded in '74 and '77. They've been released and re-released over & over again, endlessly it seems. The 5.1 mix adds little or nothing to the experience. Like too many concert recordings, the only channels which actually have music are the three across the front, with the rear or "surround" channels containing NOTHING but hall ambience, or, to my ears "audience noise." Unfortunately, yet ANOTHER live release by ELP which fails miserably to capture their mind-blowing expertise and power. Only those on the Other Side can experience what ELP could do to you in the 70s.
DVD-A deserves to die with mediocre stuff like this. This review is for two-channel, however. Someone else will have to comment on the 5.1, as I do not have a surround system.
The packaging is poor. There are no liner notes. They don't even state where the performance comes from, but since I own the King Biscuit Flower Hour Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, http://www.amazon.com/Emerson-Lake-Palmer-Biscuit-Greatest/dp/B000005EJ6, I can tell you that the tracks are identical to the ones in that CD, though they are in a different order. If you have a two channel system, buy that disc. The sound quality is roughly the same. I should back up a a bit and state that I do have a universal disc player that can play DVD-A. Some DVD-A's, like SACD's, have a two-channel mix in addition to the 5.1 mix. (You can select which one in the menu.) This disc only has a 5.1 mix, so my player downmixes it to two channel. The resulting sound, at least as far is this disc goes, is nothing special. I'll keep my King Biscuit Flower Hour and take this one to the used CD shop. But again, if you have a 5.1 surround system, don't go by this review.
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