Sarah McLachlan

This polished live performance of Sarah McLachlan in 1998 features a solid performance by Sarah & her backing band, clean audio & video, and some short but sweet talk between songs explaining what inspired them. The track list on the DVD is as follows:

1. Good Enough (see my note below!) 2. Building a Mystery 3. Ice Cream 4. Sweet Surrender 5. Hold On 6. Elsewhere 7. Possession 8. Aida 9. Witness 10. Angel

It's presented in Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Stereo or DTS Digital Surround.

The "bonus feature" is simply a music-only track list which, I suppose, cuts out all the between song banter.

The songs are very nice to listen to, whether you're a hardcore SM fan or not. The performance carries a bright, optimistic vibe throughout with lots of smiles and happy expressions.

Now the bad. While overall I recommend watching this, there were 2 severe let-downs for me. First, "Good Enough", arguably her most famous song, is inexplicably edited down to practically nothing. We just get the last chorus & ending which clocks in at a mere 1 min 13 sec. Hello??? Was Melvin asleep at the mixing board and forgot to hit record? Or did they screw it up so badly that they had to nix the song? Who knows, but it was certainly a noticeable cut.

Second, this may not affect you, or you may even prefer it this way, but the excellent, dark, requiem "Hold On" was changed from A-flat minor to the cheerful key of A major, and the chords were changed, dumbed down from the original haunting progression to a very cliché "I-IV-V". These are the chords used in, for example, "La Bamba", "What I Like About You", "Good Lovin" and the Peewee Herman "Tequila" Song. It sounds OK, and like I said you may not even notice except that you'll feel that the song is no longer dark & yearning but instead it's kinda peaceful. But considering that the song was inspired by a woman's desperate love for a man slowly dying of AIDS, you'd think they'd keep the ominous atmosphere which her original version set so powerfully. Again, who knows. Maybe VH1 had a little talk with her backstage and told her not to be so depressing.

But aside from those 2 points, I have no complaints. I'm not even what you'd call a real SM fan, but I'm certainly happy to have this DVD in my collection.