Puddle of Mudd – Striking That Familiar Chord

Do you remember Puddle of Mudd? Of course you do, everyone does. In 2001, they busted into the music industry with Come Clean which spawned four major radio and MTV hits. Everyone fell in love with the classic rock songs like Drift And Die and Blurry, I even had a mini fan site for them up for a few weeks before working on something else. Sadly, after they released She Hates Me, Puddle Of Mudddrifted off into the has-been pile. Sure, they released another CD in 2003 called Life On Display, but who knew that? I only found out like four days ago, so its safe to say it went unnoticed. Nevertheless, the L.A./Kansas City rock band doesn’t want to go quietly into the realm of nothingness, so as their fans wait for the follow up to Life On Display, they decided to release a live DVD called Striking That Familiar Chord.

Equally important, the two things that break or make a DVD are the sound quality and image quality, and Striking That Familiar Chord succeeds in both aspects. Visually, this DVD is amazing and is easily one of the visually best live DVDs I’ve seen since Yellowcard‘s Live At The Electric Factory. The colors are incredibly vibrant and you can see everything crystal clear. The filming is done very artistically,almost like it was on Much Music or something as they zoom in and out effortlessly and fade from one member to another instantly. Even with all the different camera angles, and there are lots, you rarely see ant camera men in the video – in fact, I think I only saw them once the entire video. Really, just the sheer clearness of the performance makes it worth a watch, and any live DVD fan will easily agree. Sonically, they sound great too, there isn’t really any feedback or any weak moments, it is all very easy to hear and watch.

But after looking at the technical aspect of the DVD, you need to look at the performance as a whole; and sadly, Puddle of Mudd don’t keep up with the technical sides of the DVD. I used to be a fan of the band, but not so much anymore, and their live show didn’t really change my mind much. Sometimes, it is even boring. Like the guitar solo on Drift And Die isn’t entertaining, it is monotonous and just seems to drag the song on aimlessly. They sound good, but don’t really go over and above the expectations of a concert to make it more memorable and the band “commentary” is easily one of the weirdest set ups I’ve ever seen on a DVD. Instead of talking over top of the performance like on most commentaries, it cuts in and out of it between songs to get the members stories, and half the time they aren’t even about the performance. It’s just really weird.

As a little added bonus, they also have four acoustic performances (with the weird commentary if you want) on the bonus features. And like the concert portion of the DVD, the filming for the acoustic set is don really well too. Instead of just one camera covering them all, it moves around and has close ups and fades ins and everything, which was pretty impressive.

Overall, the technical aspect of the DVD will please any fan of live videos, but performance wise, they seem to be lacking some badly needed energy.