VIDEO: Mahavishnu Orchestra - "Live in New York" - (Hunter College '72, Bananafish '73, Palace Theatre '73) [DVD]

 

 

In Hinduism, Mahavishnu (Devanagari) is an aspect of Vishnu, the Absolute which is beyond human comprehension and is beyond all attributes. Well, when you watch this extremely enjoyable video by the legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra, then you will see for yourself why "Mahavishnu" is a perfect name for this incredible band!  In the early seventies, both audience and critics were "shocked" by the performance of this band. It was almost beyond human comprehension and for some it was a "spiritual adventure" into musical dimensions never heard before! Their musical style was an unprecedented blending of genres: they combined the high-volume electrified rock sound that had been pioneered by Jimi Hendrix (who McLaughlin had jammed with on his initial arrival in New York as part of the Tony Williams Lifetime), complex rhythms in unusual time signatures that reflected McLaughlin's interest in Indian classical music as well as funk, an improvisational concept that was rooted in jazz as well as Indian music, and harmonic influence from European classical music. The group's early music was entirely instrumental; their later albums had songs which sometimes featured R&B or even gospel/hymn styled vocals. In the aforementioned two albums, though, the group goes from an intense fusion of upbeat genres (a representative example of which is the song "Vital Transformation") to very serene, chamber music-like tunes, such as "A Lotus On Irish Streams" and "Thousand Island Park", which are compositions for acoustic guitar, piano and violin; or from low-key to extremely busy in a single piece, such as "Open Country Joy." The sound and video of this compilation DVD are synced to the best know FM & Soundboard sources by daveg9876 who really did an amazing job! This DVD is not perfect but it is highly enjoyable (see screenshots) & highly recommended !!! Enjoy, Dr. Fusion

 
Mahavishnu Orchestra:

John McLaughlin - guitar
Jan Hammer - piano, synth.
Billy Cobham - drums
Jerry Goodman - electric violin
Rick Laird - bass


Chapter point / song titles

01 - Dance of Maya
02 - Hope
03 - One Word
04 - Resolution
05 - Sister Andrea / Awakening (snippet)
06 - Hope
07 - Celestial Terrestrial Commuters

Total length : 33 minutes


DISCRIPTION

chapter 1

Film of the Mahavishnu Orchestra from a columbia records unreleased promo for an unknown single release
(you see the cover at the end of the clip.... anyone ever seen it ?) it had very badly synced audio with audience cheering covering the mismatch it would appear in putting together the promo the video editor columbia used got confused with the sound mix of the groups electric guitar, moog syntheiser, electric violin sounds and got lost trying to match them to the video for the promo to a different song (Noonward Race) and then some parts were speeded up, the film is of the band playing at Hunter College in New York May 15, 1972 which was broadcast by radio station WBAI 99.5 FM. The project must have then got shelved but a copy with this timecode was shown on possibly a pilot episode of an unknown TV show.

The video was recently placed in the video-editing timeline along with the audio from Hunter College FM broadcast and moved around untill a good match was found during this part of " Dance of Maya "
**note** it is possible the film columbia used is from grabs taken from several different songs from the concert and it is only a coincidence it best fits this part of "Dance of Maya"


chapter 2 > 4

For the first time decent video of the "in-concert" TV show has been synced to an FM recording of the simulcast from a VHS tape the "in concert " TV show filmed at Bananafish Garden in Brooklyn New York the most likely date is believed to be March 15 1973 This copy is about 2nd or 3rd generation off the taper who apparently still has his Betamax tape somewhere but in storage.

It was first synced to the audio off the Japanese bootleg " Mourning of the Eternal Five" and then sent to a McLaughlin collector for an opinion the collector had since heard of a better recording on Dime by "merday" then when that was synced another slightly better recording of the simulcast uploaded first on TTD then Dime of " bpthree " which is a little better and so this was synced and although not perfect is quite acceptable and now for first time the video has stereo audio.


chapter 5 > 7

Filmed for D.K.R.C at the Palace Theatre in New York on November 7, 1973 video sourced from 2 VHS tapes (one was slightly longer) only B quality but better than what most people have, the first 30 seconds is B- then the quality improves but alas to only B quality, there is supposed to an even better quality copy of the video around but I don't have it the good thing it has now been synced to a nice soundboard audio from the show


Trivia - The photo used for the menu was taken at the Bananafish Garden concert by the photographer Annie Leibovitz


ATTRIBUTES


Video Attributes:

Video compression mode: MPEG-2
TV system: 525/60 NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Source picture resolution: 720x480
Frame Rate: 29.97
Bitrate: 6000+


*** please note ***

text file description wrongly states the audio is LPCM it is ac3 at 256 bitrate

this is the correct audio description

Audio Attributes:

Audio Coding mode: Dolby Digital
Sampling Rate: 48kHz
Number of Audio channels: 2.0
Bitrate: 256 Kbps


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