3RDEGREE - NARROW-CASTER

You think with a name like Progday 2009 of a huge festival Pinkpop type, but in the United States and with just prog. About this DVD 3RDegree view sees a small field but a somewhat sneue campsite where a small group of older people regularly sit on camping chairs listening to musicians ditto. Shocking, but that is the reality of most prog concerts.

To some extent it applies to this whole concert recording. On a small podiumpje without light show (and also at midday) plays a super-concentrated and band, no frills, a lot of music. The live feel is hard to find, an exciting show it is not. This is also directed to a minimum. I count four or five cameras, including a pair of home, garden and kitchen contraptions on fixed stands. Also in the audience is no excitement to be found. It has been enjoyed, but too few people for mass hysteria. There is also a lot to say about the stereo, which mainly lead singer put Dobbs in the sun, but the sound is much better than the picture, making it one does not seem to fit with the other and create more distance.

That's the bad news be over, because otherwise there is very little to criticize this band. I wrote the review of all the reunion album  “Narrow-Caster” 3RDegree is rather complex, yet fairly accessible prog with many singing and a focus on keys. If the band in full swing, you hear a sound that is many times greater than the somewhat clumsy DVD shows. We must therefore look through it.

Because there is very good player, around two long tracks shows the band barely a stitch. This is especially clever of Nobel drummer, who was always difficult pieces in a short time had to rehearse, but you also have admiration for Dobbs, which pieces of text over very difficult melodies and pressing need now is a superb play. And the battle to be lit with his unruly instruments.

3RDegree makes itself not easy with this music. You only need a few spins the numbers go, but at a festival where you accidentally encounters can be a long trip. You see the audience dropping off a little after an hour and the concert ends with fewer spectators than where it started. That is a shame, because the four men playing an impressive set, where Me & Sarah Jane clear Genesis influence is not the best song.

It's actually not a happy face consonant. Here is a great band, which is much larger and better known would be for a handful of people seen as mainly based on the first row is filled into the headliner. They will never be bigger or more famous, because in this industry is that very few. Pity and, given the performance on this DVD, very wrong.

Erik Groeneweg

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