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    Del Shannon - Live at the Castle Hill RSL
    Warner Vision/Warner Vision . R4 . COLOR . 65 mins . E . PAL

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    Rock 'n rollers generally play the Australian RSL circuit for one of two reasons. They're either on the way up, or they're on the way down.

    So here is a special Australian DVD of Del Shannon, a 1960s one-hit wonder (to be fairer, a several-hits wonder), filmed in 1989 at the Castle Hill RSL Club. He looks like a waxwork dummy that has been left too long under a solarium sunlamp; the vocal prowess matches the appearance. The backing group is uninspired, just going through the motions. The RSL audience however seems to love it. Well, we all have our own icons - if it had been Roy Orbison up there instead, I'd have been loving it too...

    To make things worse, he's not content with resurrecting his big hit, Runaway, but has the temerity to venture onto the turf of seriously great artists such as Roy and Dion di Mucci, not to mention Jimmy Jones of Handy Man fame.

    Now why did I mention Jimmy Jones after saying I wouldn't mention him? That was really daft - about as daft as releasing this talent-free DVD, which does scant justice to a man who deserves to be remembered for what he was a couple of decades earlier, not for this sad concert.

    (And thanks Chris W. for your timely comments!)

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    The film quality appears to be from a good video source. Not outstanding, but certainly good enough to do justice to this concert. It looks of much the same quality as a video recorded from free-to-air television. Not brilliant, but not unwatchable.

    The audio is standard two-channel stereo of again fair-to-average quality. Nothing to shout about here. As with a lot of 'average quality' concert DVDs, the sound on these discs sourced from pre-digital days seems to scrub up better on transfer than the image. I've noticed the same on my Region 1 disc of Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music's Greatest Hits - average to poor video quality; great sound.


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  •   And I quote...
    "Rock 'n rollers generally play the Australian RSL circuit for one of two reasons. They're either on the way up, or they're on the way down. This DVD shows Del definitely down-down-under. "
    - Anthony Clarke
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