New Found Glory

This Disaster: Live In London DVD (2004)

Brian Shultz

There isn't a whole lot of fault to be found on New Found Glory's This Disaster: Live In London DVD. Though you've pretty much made up your mind on the band by now, and don't need to read this to know whether or not you'll be spending your hard-earned cash on it, it's still an admirably shot, competent performance video. Both the video and audio quality is the best I've seen from most band DVDs, but is likely helped by Geffen's budget when looked at on the bigger scale. Still, it's crisp and clear and the numerous angles used make sense.

The basic premise of the DVD is that right in the middle of the set, the venue's power fails. The band is forced to entertain the audience for 45 minutes any way they can, and a fair portion of it is shown. Reggie and the Full Effect represenative James Dewees, who plays keyboards for a good number of the set's songs during the show, helps out playing some apparently improvisational moog numbers and such, and the band gets occasional singalongs going to keep the crowd enthused.

Extras on the DVD include an in-store acoustic rendition of "I Don't Wanna Know," which is a bit droning and flat in the vocals at parts, an acoustic take on "All Downhill From Here," and "Truth Of My Youth," a slideshow of various pictures set to an instrumental of the said song. Also, there's a good hour of a 'Behind the Scenes' feature which generally just shows various footage of the band fucking around on tour and such, with even some rarer songs and B-sides played as the background music for clips. Of highest note is Jordan's ability to rather flawlessly impersonate various foreign personalities.

The only true problems here may be that Jordan's vocals are pretty high in the mix, and the song choice. Though it was bound either way to be heavy on the latter albums in the band's discography, they have plenty of uptempo/fast-paced songs that could've been picked over more blasé takes ("It's Been A Summer" and "I Don't Wanna Know" could probably take well-deserved hikes). I literally passed out around the second half of the band's set. It's likely a mix of the aforementioned problems and personal bias, but the band certainly could've tried harder to keep things interesting for the 20-song set, although hearing the almost-hardcore of "Intro" live is interesting and enjoyable. The band already does a piano-accompanied, acoustic rendition of "I Don't Wanna Know" during the power failure, so I don't see a need to play it with the full band a second time once power was regained. The breakdown goes as follows: Nothing Gold Can Stay - 1 [besides "Hit Or Miss"], S/T - 4 [including "Hit Or Miss"], Sticks And Stones - 8, Catalyst - 7.

It's definitely one of those you do or you don't types. Though it sure won't convert non-followers into instant fans, it's a lot of fun for current enthusiasts of New Found Glory with a more than sufficient length of extra features.