TOGETHER CLIFF RICHARD AND THE SHADOWS LIVE AT THE NEC 1984

[RogerF]

This is probably not the first thread on the subject but, what the heck!

I remember this video from the 80s, owned by a friend who has since denied he never owned it!
It was on VHS but - is it available anywhere on DVD (BluRay would be great but.......)?

WHY NOT???!!!

Here's the link to the whole concert on youtube for those interested but the quality is, well, youtube!

[bor64]

As far as I know it's never released on dvd or any other digital disk....officialy.
The story was, the boys weren't that happy with the recordings...


Cheers Rob

[MikeAB]

The Shads section was put out as a DVD - short obviously, and full priced I seem to recall. Still perhaps the best representation of them live?

Would be great to have the whole concert on DVD - the TV showing of course shorterned the Shads set. Typical.

Sound and performance seemed ok to me, certainly for the time.

I remember when it was on TV Cliff was also on the 'other side' in a show of his thereby splitting the audience as we did not all have video recorders then.

[drakula63]

One of the first commercial video cassettes I ever got. Birthday 1984. On Betamax. It looked and sounded great.

[Kawarthabass]

I bought the video a few years ago and it is especially good for Alan Jones bass fans like me. In addition to the great music and the performance by Cliff Richard, Alan provides a lesson in solid and tasty musical playing which shines in the audio mix. The video shows how well he could handle all of the Shadows/Cliff musical phases up until that time.
I had not seen Cliff or the Shadows for decades until that video. I was amazed at how good that configuration of Cliff and the Shadows was.
I had to get the video transferred over to the North American standard so I could watch it. I have since transferred that to a DVD.
It's a long way from today's HD standards but it is still quite good.

[RogerF]

"Still perhaps the best representation of them live?"
Well I think taken as a whole this is a very good representation of Cliff and The Shads but the Shads solo stint put out as a separate video was by no means the best recording of The Shads live IMHO. I bought the VHS video back then and just thought that it was - well - good!
But it comes nowhere near the final tour DVD which was just spectacularly good, again IMHO!!!!!


"The story was, the boys weren't that happy with the recordings..."
I can understand the Shadows not being totally happy with the results (see above!) but the concert as a whole I thought was very good indeed, certainly worthy of release as DVD.
I also had the "Thank You Very Much" VHS video which I also loved.

[Fenderman]

I had the Shads set on VHS that i bought many years ago, i was dismayed that it was only about 25 minutes long and i wasn't aware that this was part of a Cliff show, but overall i liked it.
When released on DVD i bought it but the sound quality wasn't great, it could have been improved but this could have been due to the technology of the original recording.
The same goes for 'At their very best', it wasn't and again the sound quality wasn't great but the accompanying CD had a far superior sound.

[iefje]

I have it on the original 1984 VHS issue, the re-issue of 1993, the 1998 re-issue as part of a Cliff Richard video collection and the Japanese laserdisc issue in mint condition. Unfortunately, I don't have a laserdisc player (yet).
I have made a copy of the best VHS issue I have on DVD for my own use. I have noticed though, that playing back the VHS video reproduces far better sound than playing back my DVD copy, because the audio on the DVD is compressed and the VHS video provides warm analogue audio over the entire audible audio spectrum of 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
The best current digital format for a re-issue of this concert (and certain others featuring The Shadows) would be Blu-Ray.

[chippy71]

Hows it possible to copy this to dvd?

[Fenderman]

If you have a video/dvd combi you can copy to a blank DVD. I used to have one and transferred the whole Sounds of the sixties in this way.