The Charge

Bikes! Babes! Bands!

The Case

I really can't stand when people (or musicians as the case may be) wind up being the good time party boys who like the fact that they're in a band and refer to women as "babes." It reminds me of the hair metal tripe of the '80s that I couldn't stand and quite frankly enjoyed watching wither on the vine.

So without being really familiar with their music, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I watched Nickelback perform at Sturgis, South Dakota, during the 2006 Bike Week. The only thing I knew about them was that they started to become famous with the 2001 hit "How You Remind Me," and they wrote the single from the first Spiderman film, "Hero." 2005 found them achieving huge success. With the release of their album "All the Right Reasons," they saw five of those songs achieve Top 20 status, with three breaking into the Top 10. The popularity of the songs on the album has led to over seven million copies of it being sold, and as it so happens, influenced the Canadian group's trip to Bike Week to perform for over 35,000. The play list from that concert is:

• "Animals"
• "Woke Up This Morning"
• "Photograph"
• "Because of You"
• "Far Away"
• "Never Again"
• "Savin' Me"
• "Someday"
• "Side of a Bullet"
• "How You Remind Me"
• "Too Bad"
• "Figured You Out"

Now when it comes to Canadian rock acts, I'm probably not the brightest bulb in the lamp, but Nickelback (based on the sales I mentioned earlier) appears to be quite popular. But when I was listening to and watching this show, I saw a bunch of guys who don't really do anything all that original on stage. Oooh, the singer sees a whole bunch of sunburnt and beer-marinated boobies in the crowd, he's a rebel vagabond! If he was such a rebel, he wouldn't be copying Def Leppard or Kelly Clarkson songs titles. The music isn't entirely mind-blowing either; when you listen to it without the video on, it sounds kind of…ordinary. But to use another Canadian as a vocal comparison, it sounds like Gordon Lightfoot had just downed three quarts of white vinegar before doing a show, and decided to go electric. It was a wholly uninteresting performance for this particular music enthusiast.

Technically, at least it was filmed in high definition and it presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. For standard definition it looks mighty sharp, with no edge enhancements, a clean print and detail that is much better than expected. There's a Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 soundtracks, a simulated surround track (which comes through as a two-channel surround track) and a DTS track, all of which sound solid and spatial with a dynamic soundstage. There's even some bonus material here which amounts to some interview footage and a music video, but that's about it.

From a novice's point of view, Nickelback is live and performing in Sturgis, but the rest of it is a little grey. As performers, they've got a long way to go before they do something that borders on original. Creatively, there's not really a whole lot there either. For fans of the band, a quick note that there is some censored swearing (for whatever reason), so purists might not like that development. If you like the band, you'll like the concert, but not nearly enough to buy.

Oh yeah, and stay off my lawn.

Similar Decisions

• Paul McCartney: Memory Almost Full (CD/DVD)
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• Awake: The Best Of Live (Deluxe Version CD/DVD)

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