Avoid the crowds and get your money’s worth with these spectacular concerts on Blu-ray.  

I’ve just about done with concerts.Not that I don’t love live music—nothing compares to being in the same room with talented musicians doing their thing—but it's just not worth the hassle anymore.

Where is the joy in paying $250 for a nosebleed seat, only to have to strain to hear the music over all of the Chatty Cathys, while some old drunk dude in a two-sizes-too-small Motorhead T-shirt spills Bud in your lap? With the advent of Blu-ray, I honestly cannot find a reasonable answer to that question.

So to heck with TicketMonger, I say. Take your fifteen-dollar parking ticket and shove it. These days, the best seat in the house is my Elite Home Theater Seating recliner, the sound in my media room is better than any arena, and I can drink my Hefeweizen straight out of the bottle. Fire up a few of these sumptuous concerts on Blu-ray and see if you don’t agree.

Pat Metheny Group: The Way Up—Live
Best Number: 4—“Part 3”

With no clearly defined tunes, nailing down a quick and dirty Show-Off piece from this brilliant long-form fusion composition isn’t easy, but if you insist upon skipping straight to the good stuff, check out the final movement—the imaginatively titled “Part 3.”

This passage kicks off with a Daddy-O-diggin’ groove that sets the head to bopping and the feet to tapping, while merely hinting at the full-on fusion assault that lies ahead. The delicious high-definition video offers a better-than-front-row view of the action, delivering all of the unadulterated fretboard porn that six-string fans long for, while also backing up far and often enough to capture the Keystone Cop-like shuffle of musicians hopping back and forth between instruments in a mad attempt to deliver this unabated torrent of music with only fourteen hands.

Even Pat juggles guitars like they’re on fire, lunging from acoustic to hollow-body electric to solid-body guitar with the grace and speed of a square-dancing auctioneer (a hip one, mind you).

But you didn’t come to this party looking for just another pretty picture, did you? (For those of you just tuning in, this is Pat Metheny we’re talking about here.)

While the disc does lack an uncompressed surround sound track—it’s stereo only for you lossless purists in the audience—the DTS-HD 5.1 track delivers everything from walking, loping basslines and tick-a-tack drum fills to piercing harmonica and Metheny’s bell-like guitar tones with a warmth and precision that you’ll want to climb into the middle of and wallow around in.

ZZ Top: Live from Texas
Best Number: 14—“Legs”

For something a little simpler, a bit grittier, and a whole lot more down-home, check out this blazing gig from everyone’s favorite geriatric roots-rock Texas trio.

Unlike most bands that have been together since the Nixon administration, Reverend Willie G and the boys seem to understand that we do not, under any circumstances, want to hear “one off the new album.”

Here they tear through ninety minutes worth of hits, from “La Grange” to “Pincushion,” as if their beards depended on it, against a spectacularly (but appropriately) tacky Vegas-style lightshow. Every detail, down to the mangy whiskers, stands out in glorious HD with a glimmer and glow that verges on radioactive.

Sadly, the disc’s surround mix doesn’t fare quite so well; it somehow manages to be overly bright and muddy at once. But fear not—the last time I checked, the header at the top of the page still read “Show-Offs,” not “Whining About Lackluster Sound.” The unbridled rocktitude of the uncompressed two-channel mix more than compensates for the multichannel malaise, especially on tracks like “Legs.”
Fire up the ProLogic II processing on your receiver or preamp and you’ll hear what the 5.1 should have sounded liked: a hard-driving boogie with a bottom end that sticks to the floor like hot asphalt and a crystal clear high end that sends every pinch harmonic screaming for the four corners of the room.

Shakira: Oral Fixation Tour
Best Number: 16— “Ojos Asi”

If Texas isn’t quite southern enough for you, perhaps a trip to the tropics for a concert by the world’s favorite genre-defying Columbian diva is more your speed.

Actually, calling this a concert doesn’t quite cover it—it’s a simmering stew of sight and sound that comes to a frenzied boil with the penultimate number. The eclectic production for “Ojos Asi” straddles the line between Latin and Middle Eastern, between pop and rock, between art and entertainment, between titillating and family-friendly.

A word of warning for the married men in the audience: before you queue this one up, you might want to commit to memory the mantra, “Honey, I find her act to be very empowering for women.”

The song kicks off with what can only be described as part belly dance, part burlesque routine, part one-woman tango. The screen shimmers with sparkly sequins, billowing scarves, and a luscious projected light show that seems to recede into an infinity of deliciously inky ebony shadows.

When the hair finally comes down and the curtain comes up, you might want to make sure your speakers are bolted to something in preparation for the onslaught of hypnotic beats and angelic vocals pouring forth from every direction. And please, pick your jaw up off the floor; you’re ruining it for the rest of us.

Chris Botti: Live—with Orchestra & Special Guests
Best Number: 14— “Why Not?”

After the Shakira, I’d say a full 50 percent of us are in dire need of either a cold shower or some cool jazz, and since I would greatly prefer not to participate in the former, let’s wrap up our world tour with virtuoso trumpeter Chris Botti and a few of his very famous friends at the Wilshire Theatre in L.A.

The night is filled with great vocals by the likes of Sting, Jill Scott, Paula Cole, Burt Bacharach, and wunderkind Renee Olstead, just to name a few. But the real star of the show is Botti’s incomparable band, and “Why Not?” is their shining moment.

The tune starts with a flurry of rhythm guitar licks that axe-man Mark Whitfield must have sold his soul to perfect, accompanied by a groove so tight you have to think that no one ever told bassist James Genus, “Brother, that thing was never meant to be played so well.”

Botti joins in with buttery smooth trumpeting so vibrant and tangible that you’ll just want to hug whoever cooked up the delicious uncompressed surround sound mix. And through it all, drummer Billy Kilson’s beats punch through like a machine gun set to fire in polymetric bursts.

It isn’t long before the rest of the band has to hustle to get out of Kilson’s way, as he lights into a mind-boggling drum solo that almost certainly defies a law of physics or two. And the surround mix follows suit, filling the room with snares and cymbals—a tip-tap here, a clink-clang there; here a hit, there a scat, everywhere a rat-a-tat.

Forget the fact that the eye-popping 1080p image looks like an inter-dimensional window in the fabric of reality—the privilege of hearing this five-minute interlude of drumming perfection in uncompromised, unfiltered, uncompressed 5.1 is reason enough to upgrade to Blu-ray.