Ike & Tina Turner
LIVE IN ‘71
Eagle Vision

This DVD+CD is from an hour-long broadcast on Dutch television of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. It’s an amazing, electrifying performance that is so intense you almost forget that they aren’t live in front of you.

The DVD starts off with the backing band, known as The Rhythm Kings, playing a funky instrumental called “Them Changes.” It’s the only DVD track that didn’t make it to the CD, which is a loss because it’s a great tune. Next, out comes both Ike and the back-up singers, the Ikettes; he leads the band on guitar and they sing “Sweet Inspiration.” Then the star of the show appears. Tina tears it up right from the get-go with a rockin’ version of “I Want To Take You Higher.”

After witnessing only her first number, I am putting all female singers on notice: Madonna, Beyonce, Britney, Ashley, everybody. I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense that a woman can’t dance and sing at the same time so she needs to lip-sync and/or use vocal tracks in concert. Tina dances her tail feathers off the entire show and still blows the roof off the sucker throughout the entire set with arguably the best voice in rock ‘n’ roll. If you can’t keep up with the standard she set, quit the business and stop wasting everyone’s time.

The set is mostly covers and what’s impressive is that Ike had the faith in the revue’s talent to know that they could pull off anyone’s songs from The Beatles to Otis Redding. The lyrics in The Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” were altered to fit with Tina singing it. And of course, it wouldn’t be Ike & Tina without their patented “nice and easy/nice and rough” version of CCR’s “Proud Mary.” The concert ends with Ike showcasing his guitar skills during “I Smell Trouble” that includes some vocal/guitar trade-offs between him and Tina.

The only odd segment is when Tina sings the soulful ballad “A Love Like Yours (Don’t Come Knockin’ Every Day). I had never heard the song before but during the presentation Ike comments on the lyrics and then later Tina repeats the lines that Ike gives her. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but it was vastly different from everything else.

The video does look its age of over 30 years even though there was restoration work done. A segment in the Bonus Features allows you to see a comparison and they did do some clean up. The audio is fantastic and in stereo. The DVD listing is incorrect. “Proud Mary” and “I Smell Trouble” have been switched. There’s a great booklet that is well worth reading because it has extensive history of the band, this performance and the making of DVD.

The CD has three songs that didn’t make the video and one of them is completely understandable because “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” is unbelievably sexy and dirty even by today’s standards. Maybe that should read “especially by today’s standards.”

A worthy addition to any music library.