DVD Jack in the Green: Live in Germany
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Jack in the Green is.....
Pure Gold Vintage Tull. First, we have a DVD without breaks or comments during songs - Full Songs are Great. I find other DVDs with the comments and chatter mid-song a distraction.

The picture quality is excellent, even with the picture expanded. For the age of the film stock I was surprised at the clarity, even in the brighter scenes. I noted a prior review which indicated the picture quality was grainy - Mine was not through a 480P DVD player (Does not upconvert) and a 1080I 50 inch TV.

As some reviewers point out, the surround sound is a bit off - But with some tweaking of your system, the sound is excellent. The dolby 5.1 does sound somewhat muddy. The DTS soundstage has good high notes, but the low bass was just a little quiet. The stereo soundtrack actually sounded pretty good, but still needed slight improvement.

I tried a few other sound modes in stereo with different decoder settings and was still not completely satisfied. I found the best setting was to set the DVD audio to DTS 5.1, and then set my amp to 7 ch stereo - WOW - what a difference. The sound filled the room perfectly and the sub-woofer was ripping.

Never to Old to Rock and Roll....

j.

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Rating: - anything <5 stars misses the point
it's Christmas in july, folks, with an unexpected present right under our noses! anything on dvd from tull is a treasure; these performances are great watching for anyone who thinks the band closed up shop after its 70s heyday. the sound here is excellent, the video is excellent - although perhaps a bit too ian-face-focused in the early part. dvds referenced in other reviews here, while good in their own right, are from shows within the past five years; the appeal of JitG is that it's stuff from nearly two decades ago - some even older. without a doubt a worthy addition to any fan's library.

now if we could just get a complete APP or TaaB show... or the Tampa show on the TOtRnR tour... or a MitG show with the string quartet... or...

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Rating: - Irregular quality
This is a mix-up of old materials. Recorded shows, mostly. The first songs, for instance, were recorded quite a long time, and the image quality is very poor (sometimes, appallingly poor: lots of grain). Sound is not too good, either, at least in the first songs. I'd say it's not up to a minimum quality standard, frankly. I wouldn't bother to buy it if I've got other DVDs with Jethro Tull material. Only for Jethro Tull fanatics who must to have everything the band has published...

From a quality point of view, I'd go better with
"Jethro Tull: Live at Montreux" or, yet better,
"Ian Anderson Plays the Orchestral Jethro Tull" DVDs

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Rating: - An excellent DVD *
I've been a Tull fan most of my adult life and have all of their commercially released albums and CDs as well as their DVDs. I was fortunate enough to be in the Air Force stationed in Germany during this period from 1983-88 and was at the "Out in the Green" concert (although we dubbed it the "Out in the Rain" concert and I still have the ticket stubs). I also was fortunate enough to have attended the Rocksummer 86 concert which was outstanding.

The first 9 songs on the DVD are from 82 and feature Ian when his voice was still strong. "Hunting Girl" is the only song from the 1986 "Rocksummer" tour followed by a slightly different version of Thick As A Brick from the "Out in the Green" show.

Skip to 1993 next and one of my favorite Tull songs "My Sunday Feeling". You can tell Ian's voice has deteriorated some and he struggles to hit the high notes. The last two songs from 70 - 71 from the Beat Club feature "With you There to Help Me" and (as previously mentioned) fades into "By Kind Permission Of" which sounds almost identical to the Living in the Past rendition.

Overall, for a Tull fan, this is a must have for your collection. For the casual listener, a mixed bag. While there are great songs featured, the last song, "Nothing is Easy" is just a rehearsal and Ian has some type of pain in his left side causing him to stop in the middle of the song. They try to play it through again, but they get about half way through, then Ian holds his ribs and says he can't play it. Fade to black. When I watched it I was thinking, what the hell was that? Why bother including a half hearted attempt at a rehearsal song? They might as well have feature the guy sweeping the floor after the show. They definitely should have left that on the cutting room floor and included a live or at least a complete rehearsal song. Also as previously mentioned, the camera work leaves a bit to be desired. Not the quality, the picture is excellent, but why keep showing 20 seconds of the audience watching the show and people going in and out?

Overall, an outstanding DVD but the editing, at least for me, left a bit to be desired.