live from paris - review

The Live from Paris DVD+CD arrived yesterday - ordered from Germany as Sony UK is being hopeless again. In the UK you can only get the DVD this week, the double pack is due to be released next week. And as track 2 says: "Why wait?" Here are my first thoughts on the new release:

This is Shakira’s fourth live DVD, so you may wonder whether she can add something new to the series, but as someone who knows the first three by heart I can reassure you that the new offering is a combination of the reassuringly familiar with the new and inventive.

Very familiar and mostly unchanged are the songs at the hard core of her repertoire from the 90s albums Pies descalzos and Donde estan los ladrones. As far as I can tell, she hasn’t changed a note in her own favourite, Inevitable, since the MTV unplugged concert, and Si te vas, and Ciega sordomuda are similarly steadfast reminders of the good old days.

A lovely new feature is the medley made of A'tini al-Nay (an Arabic song she used to sing as a child), the Metallica cover Nothing else matters, and her own Despedida from the Love in the times of cholera soundtrack. Travel around the world in just a few minutes. Within the same “acoustic” setting is a much-improved version of Gipsy.

Since I saw the show at Paris in December 2010, she added a lovely French song (Je l’aime a mourir by Francis Cabrel) and switched a few more of her announcements to French, which is a nice touch. My only moan about the programme is that none of the collaborators showed up (while Alejandro Sanz and Wyclef Jean did, the last time round).

The DVD with 99 minutes of concert footage and 20 mins “behind the scenes” extras is perfect as always. The CD contains as much of the concert as fits on a single audio CD (big improvement on the 5-track CD from last time!), which means all announcements and a couple of songs (Si te vas, Gordita) were dropped, and the A'tini al-Nay snippet was cut too. The sound editing on the CD is different from the DVD version; there were a couple of places where I think I heard things that weren’t so prominent in the DVD soundtrack.

Her last words on the concert recordings are “a la prochaine” (until the next time), so I’m very much looking forward to the next tour and the 5th DVD. After New York, Rotterdam, Miami, and Paris, maybe we'll hear her "live from Beirut" in four years time, complete with a full-length version of A'tini al-Nay?



(Cover of the DVD+CD pack, which comes in a CD case)
amazon.co.uk

around the world in 397 days

Now, well, that DVD:
love the concert recording, it's just perfect. Filmed beautifully, without too many gimmicks.

Also very pleased to see the bonus track with Obtener un Si -- wonder whether they recorded that in Spain, as I believe it was dropped from the setlist later.

Very happy to see the bollywood dancers and Alejandro Sanz included. Very happy with the language mix as well, I think it probably reflects the composition of her audience (both in Miami and globally) quite nicely.

Shame about the CD though, why not put the whole soundtrack on the CD, as in GreenDay's bullet in a bible, to name a random example ?

And the "Around the world in 397 days" (or whatever number it was, I wouldn't trust Shakira with the counting anyway!) docu was much too short of course, covering only India, Egypt, and the US. Should have covered all countries ! And then they nicked the "Guten Abend Frankfurt ... etc." soundclip from the previous DVD!

And isn't it amazing how many details one can spot for the first time on seeing the concert for the 5th and 6th time ? Need to watch the DVD another 100+ times to make up for the gigs I missed ...

live dvd on the horizon

The oral fixation live DVD will be out in less than a week (France: 12., US: 13., Germany: 16., UK 19.11.). Sony UK seem to be dragging their feet as always, but I ordered my copy from France, hoping to beat them.

There will be advance screenings in cinemas across the US on the 12th, and there are extracts available on MySpace and at http://www.shakira.com/livedvd/. I just watched the La Tortura clip on MySpace, and it's quite fantastic, of course. The clip is now on my MySpace profile, too.

25 days

Shakira's oral fixation tour DVD is now available to pre-order at Amazon.com and at Amazon.co.uk (though only as import -- probably that's Sony UK being hopeless again!)

40 days

... till the anticipated release date of the oral fixation tour dvd.

Track lists have been rumoured, discussed, dismissed at
ShakiraRules.

54 days

... until the Oral Fixation tour DVD is released ... hopefully! you know these latinas they never arrive on time :D

For details and discussion check Shakira Rules