"Actor: Valerie Carter"

• James Taylor - Live At The Beacon Theatre | DVD | (15/12/2003) from £6.69   |  Saving you £-0.70 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Sensitive singer-songwriter, soft-rock poster boy, baby-boomer troubadour: James Taylor has outlived the stereotypes offered by fans and critics alike by simply staying his musical course and continuing to refine his familiar, deceptively mellifluous style. This 1998 concert displays Taylor's craftsmanship and easy rapport with both his band and his audience to satisfying effect, offering a repertoire that draws from his entire career while providing a generous selection of songs from his Grammy-winning 1997 set, Hourglass. Fans will love it, of course, but even jaded listeners can find fresh feeling and formidable expertise here.By now, Taylor's skill at low-key love songs is a given, making him an archetypal "sensitive New Age guy" on the strength of his canny mix of emotional vulnerability, romantic imagery, and understated delivery. Less obviously, Taylor has gradually transformed the shadows of disillusionment audible in his earliest songs into a nuanced acknowledgement of his own age. "Line 'Em Up," from Hourglass, typifies his skill at limning disarmingly lucid, frankly philosophical vignettes, here woven around a recollection of Richard Nixon's last hurrah, while "Jump Up Behind Me" affords a testament to self-determination ultimately as serious in theme as it is buoyant in its musical framework. Throughout, Taylor's stage band proves a thoroughbred, its accompaniment rock solid and delicately detailed, and perfectly matched to a crack backing chorus.Among the first video concerts produced with DVD in mind, Live at the Beacon Theatre has been in heavy rotation in home demonstration suites ever since its release, an achievement understandable after hearing the crystalline 5.1 mix engineered by Frank Filipetti, who shared a Grammy as co-producer on Hourglass and snagged a second award for his engineering of that album. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Jackson Browne - Going Home | DVD | (29/08/2005) from £18.92   |  Saving you £-7.93 (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.99

  For more than two decades Jackson Browne has been one of the most compelling artists in popular music. In August 1994 The Disney Channel presented Jackson Browne: Going Home a chronicle of Jackson's remarkable career. Jackson Browne: Going Home contains interviews performances and rare footage spanning twenty-five years featuring Don Henley Bonnie Raitt David Crosby Graham Nash The Eagles David Lindley Jennifer Warnes and many more. Selections: 1. I'm Alive 2. Farther On 3. Doctor My Eyes 4. These Days 5. Birds of St. Marks 6. Your Bright Baby Blues 7. Take It Easy 8. In the Shape of A Heart 9. Everywhere I Go 10. World In Motion 11. You Can Get It If You Really Want It 12. Good Morning Little Mutant 13. All Along the Watchtower 14. The Pretender 15. For Everyman 16. Lives In The Balance 17. Knock On Any Door 18. My Problem Is You 19. Too Many Angels 20. Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate 21. Sky Blue and Black 22. Before the Deluge 23. Running On Empty/ Credits