Jon Anderson – Tour of the Universe (2005)
Solo song performances with visuals
Studio: Classic Studio T/MVD Visual DVD7045X
Video: 16:9 color
Audio: English & Italian DTS 5.1, DD 5.1, DD 2.0
Subtitles: English
Extras: The Golden Mean, Golden Music – How the Golden Mean influences composers such as Bartok and Debussy, Lyrics with audio
Length: Feature: 72 minutes; Extras: 83 minutes
Rating: **
Jon Anderson has been the distinctive high, almost countertenor voice in the band Yes, as well as in collaborations with Vangelis and others. His very New Age lyrics were recently compared by a colleague of mine to coming from words written on randomly-shuffled file cards to end up rhyming but with little sense in them. No matter, with the great music and his special delivery of them they frequently can become extremely dramatic and effective.
The original material for this DVD was a live recital of some of his songs which Jon gave before a small group at the XM Satellite Radio studios in Washington, D.C., accompanying himself on a Renaissance-appearing lute of some sort. Then a clever video mixer went to town on the original footage and combined it with every sort of trippy New Age image imaginable – some just flowing across the screen, and others having Jon’s image while performing superimposed upon mountainsides and skyscrapers. Some of the image sequences are most innovative and appropriate with the music, while others seem to be just playing around with the special video effects.
However, the whole thing is spoiled by being in actuality a thinly-disguised commercial for XM Radio. The satellite system should be paying the viewer for watching this rather than the viewer purchasing the DVD.
– John Sunier
