Hallandale, FL, USA January 5, 2002 Grade: B- Time: 75 Minutes Format: 1 DVD
Set List:
18 Til I Die
Can't Stop This Thing We Started
Summer of '69
It's Only Love
Thought I'd Died And Gone To Heaven
Everything I Do...
Cuts Like A Knife

She's Only Happy When She's Dancing

Take Me Back
(partially filmed)
Please Forgive Me

When You're Gone

Heaven

The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You

Cloud Number Nine

Somebody

Run To You (cut during the guitar break)

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Sample photo (screen shot) taken from the DVD:

Sample photo (stage shot) taken from the DVD:

The Show:
In one of the weirder tour scheduling in BA’s career, this nine show tour during the Holiday season of 2001/2002 starts in the western US with shows in Vegas and Arizona, then three shows on the other side of country in Florida and then four shows back out west in California.   I suppose the three day breaks between the western and eastern shows was required to ship the equipment from shore to shore. The range of venues on this tour was also diverse.  A casino, outdoor festival venues, clubs, theatre, amphitheatre and a legendary venue to close the tour in San Francisco at The Fillmore.

This gig is part of the GulfStream Park Festival in Hallandale, FL (located in between Fort Lauderdale and Miami).  The venue is outdoors and the concert takes place during the afternoon of a multi-day holiday season festival.  The concert stage is set up in the middle of a Thoroughbred Racetrack.   As pathetic as the venue sounds, it is actually a tour stop for many acts since it holds about 10,000 people.

Seeing the footage on the DVD, it looks like one of the lamest gigs I’ve seen on DVD. I just can’t see the band being excited about playing a daytime gig for a bunch of causal who may or may not be interested in what the band is about.  The band is also on a time schedule and drops songs such as Blues Jam which results in Heaven going directly into The Only Thing...which not an effective transition.

Seeing that BA hadn’t had a “big” CD out in the USA since 1993 (So Far So Good) and the his last two projects pretty much tanked (18 Til I Die and On A Day Like Today) in the US market, there would have been very little reason for fans deep in the south of Florida to get excited about this show.

Even still, the band do their thing and deliver the best they can. Keith's dancing efforts during She's Only Happy...might be enough to please the female viewers.


The Songs:
BA added a few more older songs for the US audiences that recognize him more for his pre-1994 material than anything afterwards.  Thought I’d Died and Gone to Heaven, Take Me Back, She's Only Happy... (an audible) and Please Forgive Me

Performed, but not captured on the DVD, Back to You and House Arrest.

The Recording:
A two-camera effort featuring most of the footage filming directly from the large screens set up at for those to see from the back of the venue. The second camcorder films directly towards the stage, but from a distance that would be similar to that at the back of an arena. Whoever filmed the show put both sets of footage for some basic transitions between the two sources.

Sadly, Take Me Back experiences some audio/video syncing issues and is most is cut from this DVD. These same syncing problems happen during the encores where a secondary audio source kicks in, but not in time with the video.

If you were to listen to just the audio feed from this show, it sounds almost like a club gig based on the # of people (although 10,000 were supposedly in attendance) it sounds like only a couple hundred are into the show. You can hear the band talk to each other on stage a few times. There is a "garage band" feel to the sound as well where it appears as though you can hear the drums naturally instead of through the sound system.

Jude from New Zealand created a menu with the song listings for easy navigation and used the Anthology artwork as the background for the menu.