One Off: Rick Wakeman's "Grumpy Old Picture Show" DVD

As I was catching up with some computer issues the past two nights, I popped in a recently acquired DVD. It was a random selection and I held no great hopes for it, but it turned out to be a pleasant diversion.
RICK WAKEMAN – Grumpy Old Picture Show DVD (MVD Visual)
My first serious college boyfriend had a huge mural painted on the hallway outside his dorm room – the inner gatefold painting from the “Tales of Topographic Ocean” LP. It was quite well done actually, and Yes music was constantly booming from his stereo (along with Fireside Theatre albums). So Yes has retained a soft spot in my heart, even though the former boyfriend doesn’t. As prog rock went, Yes did some of the best.

According to Wikipedia, and as initially announced on the official Yes website, Wakeman will not be joining Yes on their 40th Anniversary tour, but will instead be replaced by his son Oliver. The elder Wakeman has been touring with a solo show - an evening of biographical stories and music, captured here one night in Dunstable, England.

Wearing a coat that hits the ground when he sits down to the keyboard and a hefty paunch that falls over his belt as he walks around the stage, he tells bawdy jokes amid stories about growing up, getting sober and playing music, including some tales of his days with Yes and beyond. (Sample quote from a tale about porta-loos, and how he thought he had found a private alternative: “I had lovely wee and then I got a round of applause.”)

There are some hokey “very rare footage” sketches hosted by a BBC-style presenter and dropped in between the chats, like Wakeman portraying a bratty schoolchild in sex ed class (appropriately accompanied by rim shots). Musically, there’s a nice take on “Eleanor Rigby,” plus a few duets with his clear-voiced daughter and a few rather snoozy new agey instrumentals and prog rockers played with guest musicians who are dropped in via a video screen. The climactic version of “Starship Trooper” is a particularly nice choice gone particularfly bad (the singer sucks). Wakemen still excels in advanced synthesizer noodling, some of which sounds better now than it did Back in the Day of Wretched Excess.

Production wise, the DVD is no marvel of technology; just a straight-forward capture of a one-man show from a guy with a scruffy, genial and self-deprecating style – which, frankly, I never would have attributed to the Rick Wakeman of Yore. Much like Ray Davies’ 1996 one-man story-telling show, "20th Century Man," it’s a nice model for classic rockers looking for a new way to reconnect with old fans.

And so, because I count music DVDs, that ratchets up the
Year-to-Date O/CD Tally: 117