Search - The Seekers: At Home and Down Under on DVD

The Seekers -- the early years

Zugzwanged | 01/30/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This DVD is a "double-feature" consisting of what were originally two specials for Australian TV.



"The Seekers At Home" celebrates the group's triumphant first homecoming in 1966. In this black-and-white production, Athol Guy provides a bit of narration which loosely strings together the performances (mostly on stage) of 16 songs from the group's early repertoire, including a cigar-chomping, bowler-hatted Judith Durham on piano for "Whistling Rufus." The video is rather grainy and the sound is subpar; still this is an interesting snapshot of the group's early days.



The 1967 production "The Seekers Down Under" has the group performing 15 songs at various locations in Australia, once again strung together by a loose narration. This feature is in color, and the sound and video are passable, although the latter is still a bit grainy. Most of the performances are outdoors with studio sound tracks, except for four numbers from the historic Myer Music Bowl concert. My favorite number is the rousing rendition of "Myra" with Judith leading a conga line. The connection between song and location is often amusingly strained, and at times inexplicable: Why "Red Rubber Ball" in a vineyard?



This DVD is in PAL format and Amazon warns that it is Region-2 encoded. However it plays without problem on my Windows computer using either Windows Media Player 11 or an ancient version of PowerDVD. It belongs in the collection of any serious fan of The Seekers, and as I've noted there is some special interest for fans of Judith Durham in particular. On the other hand, if you don't have the "World of the Seekers" DVD, I would get that first, as the sound and video on that DVD are much superior, and capture the group at their peak, just months before their breakup."