Search - Ben Harper - Pleasure & Pain on DVD

Excellent documentary, decent live performances

12/09/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"If you are already a fan or on the path of becoming one, then this DVD is a great addition to your collection. The primary piece on the disc is the 90 minute documentary Pleasure + Pain which is a surprising, humorous, and entertaining collection of behind the scenes and biographical footage of Ben Harper and his merry band of Innocent Criminals. Be warned, there is a very limited amount of live concert or studio segments in the documentary. However, there are a handful concert, studio, and bootleg tunes on the DVD that can be accessed separately including Faded, Gold to Me, Fight for Your Mind, Waiting on an Angel, I Shall Not Walk Alone, Strawberry Fields Forever, and an excellent version of Give a Man a Home featuring the Blind Boys of Alabama. I would have given it five stars if there was more footage capturing Mr. Harper's extraordinary live performances."

Wonderful insite on a great artist.

Tobin Staley | Sacramento, CA USA | 04/18/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As a huge Ben Harper fan, I had been hoping that Ben would release a DVD of one of his live shows, because Ben Harper is the greatest performer I've ever seen live. I was a bit disappointed when I heard that his DVD was going to be a documentry. I am a big fan, so I knew I would get it eventually, but I am not typicly a fan of documentries. Besides, I thought, this would be just another low production value, behind the scenes interview. Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong. This Documentry does more to show why so many people love Ben Harper than any strait concert DVD could have. We get behind the scenes footage along side live performances, and together they paint a fuller picture than I could have imagined. Besides the documenty there is extra stand alone concert and studio footage, lot's of it, but there is no question that the documentry is the feature presentation on this DVD. I have to give it to director Danny Clinch for giving us such great insite into a band that I loved before, and love more now. He catches not just the physical actions of a moment, but also the emotions of the moment as well. His camera work is invintive, and enhances the visual rather than distracts like one might think invitive camera work might in a documentry.I can not overstate how much this documentry is important to true fans of Ben Harper. Also, if you want to win Ben more fans, next to taking them to one of his live shows, showing them Pleasure and Pain is the way to do it. On all levels this DVD is a success. As Concert footage, as a Documentry, and as another essential item that fans can put on the shelf with all his albums."