Something Corporate – Live At The Ventura Theater

Right away I am going to presume that you know who Something Corporate is and like them, why else would you be reading up on their DVD? So I’m going to skip the little history blurb about them and just jump straight into the review.

On any DVD, the first thing the viewer sees (not including the cover) is the main menu. And if you’ve ever seen one, you know they can be a pain in the ass. Some are hard to navigate, look ugly, and you have no idea what section your selecting until it plays. Luckily, Live At The Ventura Theater doesn’t fall victim to that. The menu looks amazing, its clear, and very easy to navigate. Surprisingly there are two options on the main menu which closely resemble one another, there is “Play All” and “Play Concert”; and since I had only heard about this being live, I was wondering what the “Play All” one was. Essentially, they are the same things. The only difference between the two is that the “Play All” part features some behind the scenes footage before the concert actually starts. Each band member gets a little feature to themselves, but Brian and Clutch are the biggest features. With Brian arriving in town looking for drum sticks and Clutch bowling the best game of his life. This is somewhat interesting, but you can easily skip it if you choose to.

I was worried about how this DVD would look, because the few clips I saw on the internet looked really dark. Fortunately, they didn’t do too bad. The image is clear and vibrant, not grainy at all. It does, at time, get a little dark, but that’s due to the crazy lighting effects. It’s impossible to tell how many cameras they were actually using, but after watching it, you will be sure that there were a lot. There’s hundreds of different angles in the DVD, and only twice did I see another camera in the screen. The first time was in Walking By, where they focus on Andrew’s piano a lot. There you can see the tip of the camera ingeniously sitting on the side of the piano recording shots that would be impossible for a person to get. The other time was during Konstantine I believe. The only bad part in the filming aspect of the DVD is that at times, it is shaky as hell. The camera is flying all over and really wobbly, making it difficult to decipher what’s going on; but other then that, its recorded really well.

As for Something Corporate‘s performance, it is really well. Andrew’s vocals are right on hitting every note. The sound is clean and crisp, and the lighting goes perfectly with the music. For slow songs likeRuthless the stage is swamped in a soothing blue, while faster songs like Only Ashes are bombarded by red. The only weird thing is that after almost every song, they turn the lights off completely and then bring them back in as the next song starts. Its good to do it once or twice, but not after every song. But from the nine-minuteKonstantine, to the acoustic Wait, to the closer Punk Rock Princess, Something Corporate put on an amazing performance.

The bonus features on the DVD are a little sub-par. The “Behind The Scenes” footage is the same footage you see when you click “Play Movie”, so that’s not much extra. The pictures in the Picture Gallery are nice and from various different shows. But that’s all in the bonus feature section, they probably could’ve thrown a few extra things in there, but it is just bonus, so you can’t ask for too much.

Overall, its a good DVD. Like any live DVD, if you are a fan of the band and want to see them live for the first time or have a solid copy of their live performance, then pick it up. But if this is your first look at the band, I’d spend my money of their CD instead.