PHIL COLLINS LIVE AT MONTREUX 2004:
Phil Collins has been singing songs since the late 60’s to 2011 before he retired due to health problems and wanting to spend time with his family. That’s over 40 years of music and songs that he has created, which is a whole lot of songs. I bring this bit up first because until now I thought I only knew a few songs of his, such as “Don’t Loose My Number”, “In the Air Tonight”, “Sussudio”, and “Invisible Touch” but after watching this Blu Ray from his concert at Montreux I realized that I knew a whole lot more of his songs. Though what surprised me the most from watching this concert is that I learned for the first time that Phil Collins could play the drums.

Now, aside from Phil Collins Live at Montreux 2004 being a concert of realizations for me, it was also a fun concert to watch. Right at the opening the first song is titled “Drums, drums & more drums” and yep it’s a drum solo. This was where I found out that Phil Collins can play the drums, it’s also the first time I’ve seen a concert open with a drum solo(s), and it was fun to watch. I can’t rank it up there as the best drum set I’ve heard, but it was still good and it can be seen and heard that these guys are having a lot of fun playing the set. That energy is continued on throughout this 2 hour 17 minute long concert where I was able to find out that I liked more Phil Collins songs than I’ve previously knew or admitted to.

Watching this concert on Blu Ray was one of the more fun concerts I’ve watched over the years. Phil Collins puts a whole lot of energy into his songs, even though they are really not that powerful of a song, their not heavy metal, no ones in the back pounding out beats as fast as they can, but the songs have just as much power, intensity, and energy as some heavy metals. This man is all over the stage singing his songs, he has his band members following him around on stage like a Congo line, and all the dancing and energy coming out of these people make the concert and songs fun to watch. It don’t hurt any that the vocals of Phil Collins is strong and even when he’s dancing around he continues to keep the same pitch without his voice breaking any. Add in the big band that’s being played behind him with just as much energy and this concert went from me going oh great I got to watch Phil Collins to man I really enjoyed this. Even his rendition of “True Colors” was pretty good, not as good as Cyndi Lauper but him and the other sings did an ok performance on the song.

Though if you are in the mood to sit back and just listen to some instruments being played then there’s the 1996 concert at Montreux to watch. This concert is the polar opposite as the 2004 concert that I watched first. After over 2 hours of listening to Phil Collins sing with all that energy, dancing around, watching the 1996 concert almost put me to sleep. This is the Phil Collins Big Band concert where there’s no singing being done in the songs. Pretty much the only time I heard Phil Collins voice was when he would say one of the band member names and instruments they are playing. Though the songs are good, they are played with a great skill set and talent, but by watching this after the main concert I was very bored with it. There’s nowhere near the energy put into these songs as when Phil Collins is singing them. This is a good example as to how even a well played instrumental section can become less when the vocals are not backing it up, as long as the vocals are just as good as the instruments.

2004 AND 1996 IN BLU RAY FORMAT:
I’ll start with the bad first to get it out of the way. The 1996 concerts wasn’t that great of quality but I wasn’t expecting it to be. What I noticed first was that the screen size is set to 4x3 rather than the 16x9. If you don’t know these numbers what that means is with 4x3 there are the bars on the sides of the picture, but being from 1996 there was no HD so I didn’t expect any different. Quality of the picture was about as good as a DVD would have been from the 90’s, looks semi good but nothing near what a Blu Ray is capable of. However, the good, the audio levels where great, even for the 1996 concert. At no time did I touch or think about messing with my volume. Now for the good, the 2004 concert looked really sharp on Blu Ray. The colors, which there are many colors and lights popping up in this concert, look really sharp. I don’t think the concert would have looked any clearer if I had been there in person. If you’re a Phil Collins fan this will be a good Blu Ray to get.