Heart - Alive in Seattle (2003)

Originally released on DVD in 2003, Heart: Alive in Seattle is part of the opening salvo of live concert HD DVD releases from Image Entertainment. Alive in Seattle was recorded on the last stop of the Heart's 2002 "Summer of Love" tour, and this performance captures the band at their tightest.
The setlist concentrates on Heart's '70s output, with right at half of the set culled from three of the band's earliest albums. Their most popular songs "Crazy On You", "Magic Man", and "Barracuda" are present and accounted for, naturally, as are such popular but less iconic singles as "Dog and Butterfly" and "Straight On". It seems as if frontwomen Ann and Nancy Wilson are trying to put the decade that followed behind them, and Heart's mid-'80s transformation into pop-balladeers is almost entirely glossed over. Their eponymously titled 1985 album went platinum five times over in the U.S., and of its slew of hits, only "These Dreams" has made it onto this disc. Ann and Nancy also perform a stripped down version of "Alone" from their 1987 follow-up, and "Wild Child" is it for Heart's handful of releases from the '90s.
It's not just a "greatest hits, live!" disc, though. Heart pulls out several covers, starting with a hard-charging tear through "The Witch", an early single from fellow Pacific Northwestern rockers The Sonics. Nancy Wilson apparently shares her husband's taste in music; "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" is that other song of Elton John's prominently featured in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, and it makes an appearance halfway through the set. Heart had frequently been likened to Led Zeppelin early in their career, and Alive in Seattle is bolstered by a pair of Zeppelin covers: "The Battle of Evermore" and "Black Dog".
Four newly penned songs make it into the set as well: "Sister Wild Rose", "Heaven", "Two Faces of Eve", and "Break the Rock". The pre-song banter continually mentions that these would appear on an album that they were on the verge of recording, although I don't believe any of them made it to "Jupiters Darling" when that CD was eventually released. The newer material is alright; there's not a "Barracuda" for the new millenium in there or anything, but they don't bring the performance to a grinding halt, and sometimes that's good enough.
Despite an emphasis on crunchy guitar-rock, the band also spends around a third of the set with sparse, acoustic instrumentation, focusing on Nancy's nimble fretwork and Ann's powerful vocals. With "Mistral Wind" and "Heaven" as bookending segues with the full band, the remainder of this stretch of the performance is purely anchored around Ann and Nancy. The power ballad "Alone" is performed with just a single acoustic guitar and subdued keyboards, for instance, and "The Battle of Evermore" retains the acoustic guitar and mandolin instrumentation of the original Zeppelin recording.

Tracklist:
01. Crazy on You
02. Sister Wild Rose
03. The Witch
04. Straight On
05. These Dreams
06. Mistral Wind
07. Alone
08. Dog and Butterfly
09. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
10. Battle of Evermore
11. Heaven
12. Magic Man
13. Two Faces of Eve
14. Love Alive
15. Break the Rock
16. Barracuda
17. Wild Child
18. Black Dog
19. Dreamboat Annie
20. End Credits

Extra:
- Photo Gallery


Features:
- Direct Scene Access
- Interactive Menu