The archives aren't exactly bulging with good quality, live Johnny Cash footage, so this slim volume, with all its shortcomings, is to be welcomed.
Recorded at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in February 1993, it looks like a straight rehashing of an RTE programme of the time.
It captures Cash just before the first of the series of Rick Rubin produced albums that were to reinvigorate his career, commercially and critically, and not long before health problems forced him to curtail a heavy touring schedule.
What we have then is Cash pretty much on autopilot, still a towering, magnetic stage presence, still in strong voice, but pumping out the hits almost in country cabaret mode.
There is a full band, and part of the Carter Family (including wife June Carter Cash) in tow, and old mucker Kris Kristofferson joins him for versions of Long Black Veil and Big River, but the whole shooting match lasts barely 50 minutes, and quite a chunk of that is given over to songs featuring son John Carter Cash and the Carter Family.
The song selection is pretty much a greatest hits - I Walk The Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Get Rhythm, Ring Of Fire (sadly missing those vital mariachi horns), A Boy Named Sue, Ghost Riders In The Sky, Jackson - but the short running time and total absence of any extras (even a biography for the curious would have been welcome) makes it poor value.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/music-gigs/new-releases/article2187932.ece
