Tangerine Dream Album: “Live in America 1992 [DVD & CD]”

If you are a TD fan, you will certainly want this DVD, but what you may not know is that this release is nothing new. It is the "Three Phase: Past, Present, and Future" video that was originally released on VHS and laser disc in 1993 and has been out-of-print now for many years. So now, with very bland cover art work--making it look like a bootleg, here is the first DVD release. "Live in America" as it is now called, is a deceiving title. There is some live high quality footage, but it is scattered in between music videos and archival views similar to

home movies; not to say that's bad! This is actually an excellent 50 minute presentation!

But there are other problems. The audio part of the DVD transfer is fair at best. I hear crackeling sounds and distortion every now and then, and with a sometimes dysfunctional main menu the DVD itself is on par with the bootleg looking graphics.

It is too bad TDI (Tangerine Dream International) did not get or want the license to re-release this otherwise great video. I am hoping that someone other than this company called Respect will eventually get to do a better release. Usually it's excellent when a long lost video finally gets released on DVD, but don't get too excited as this entire package falls short in the quality department! I'm glad I still have my laser disc version!

The 4 stars are for the original program content only. The DVD quality gets only two stars, and the packaging gets NO stars. (This review pertains to the current Respect release.)

First time I've ever seen this concert DVD.Not great,but fairly good.Show was taped on October 25,1992 at the Paramount Center in New York.Plenty of beautiful images,scenery and a little bit of psychedelic visuals spliced in with the tunes the band performs.Tracks I liked the best were "Treasure Of Innocence","Oriental Haze"(I'm sure this came from the 'Risky Business' movie),"Phaedra" and "Hamlet".Quality of the live footage of the band onstage isn't the best,but acceptable.Decent German 'new age' electronics at work here.Simply let the music take you away.

This is only of interest to die-hard Tangerine Dream fans who enjoy this particular stylistic phase of the band. Musically it is some of the most dynamic and emotive music ever produced by Tangerine Dream. The downside of that is that it is also some of the most stylistically derivative music ever produced by Tangerine Dream, resembling very closely a number of artists, most notably Joe Satriani.

While it only provides edited fragments of the show, the sound mix is preferable to the live album from the same tour, 220 Volt Live.

This is a repackaging of the original Miramar release titled "3-Phase", which was broadly distributed on VHS Hi-Fi, but I do not believe there was ever a DVD of the original version officially released.

In the process of removing the "Miramar" name and graphics from the program material, some additional trimming was done, most notably, the beginning of the first track abruptly cuts in on this release, whereas the original had an intro that was part of the song. In fact, I made a personal copy of the DVD restoring the missing portions captured off of my old VHS copy, but I'm just obsessive that way. It is entirely viewable as released.

The biggest benefit of this release to the Tangerine Dream fan are the fragments of archival film included in the videos for the songs "Hamlet" and "Logos".

The music is great but the picture quality is lousy. It might be Ok on a small screen but but on a projector screen it fails miserably.

Had been to one of their concerts and seen most of what's on the CD live. This sounds wonderful on a big screen with powerful sound system. Favorite track is actually the last one during the credits. It's a compilation of old concert footage with great low frequency sound! Get carried away cranking this one!! Just about wore out the VHS version of this. They don't tour much in the US so it's a good fix till next time.