Roxy Music: Live at the Apollo


Image, color, NR, 109 min. plus supplements, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS, fullscreen, $24.99, Street: July 8; First Run: DVD premiere

Not a sad or desperate affair, as is the case with many reunion concert tours (Guns & Roses, anyone?), the seminal British art rock combo Roxy Music's 2001 regrouping clicked on both a musical and commercial level, as can be witnessed in this concert recorded at London's Apollo Theatre. Four core members of the band, led by singer Bryan Ferry and guitarist Phil Manzanera, playing together for the first time in 18 years, work their way through a well-chosen cross-section of the Roxy's catalog, offering tasty readings of "Mother of Pearl," "Love is the Drug," "Avalon," "For Your Pleasure" and 16 other numbers. A 17-minute featurette by Laminmoor and Scarlett Productions finds the touring staff hard at work trying to recreate their richly textured studio sound for the concert stage (and they do a fine job of it), and members of the band offer the kind of comments one has come to expect from aging rockers jumping back into the music world ("The songs came right back to me." "This item would go for a lot on E-Bay." You get the idea). Fans undoubtedly will want more face-to-face with silky-smooth crooner Ferry, who apparently didn't sit down for an interview but instead pops up in some press conference footage. "What's the new look of the band going to be?," inquires a reporter during one such sequence. "Gucci, of course," smiles one of rock 'n' roll's most impeccably dressed frontmen. --Cyril .Pearl


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