CONCERT BOBINO 1981

To my knowledge and until recently, this was the only live video recording widely available from our Kobaian friends. While this dates from 81 and the fact that Magma had not really added new studio album since the relatively poorer Attahk album in 78, clearly on stage, they were still hitting full stride even if on Thaud Zaia (Stella Vander) and her hubby are the only remaining members from the early incarnation of the group.

One of the few snide remarks made in a sneering manner towards the group was the way they were all dressed-up in black and you will see that this is hardly true with most of them in either red or white although some had strange spacesuits made out of bizarre football pads. The group was strong of ten members with two drummers, two KB players (one also singing), two singers and two wind players, with only the bassist and the guitarist not having an alter ego! As for the tracks played that night most of them are from the latter part of the 70's (not my favourite era, but they play them so enthusiastically that it does not matter one bit) and the concert gets a little lost in the second part with a soul-ish funk track (complete with brass section and back-up singers) so crazy that even Funkadelic's George Clinton would be impressed and then a weird tribute to Otis Redding sung by Vander himself. The concert gets back on track with a superb extract from Zess (where Vander gives a superb vocal effort with triple angel wings on his back) but ends on a down note with You tather uncharacteristic for them.

The image quality of the DVD is not what I would call great as it appears that it got transferred from a VHS tape (I can only judge this by the relatively poor quality but something tells me that this was shot on 16mm film before abd the tape screws up for a few seconds around the ¾ mark), but even if not perfect, this DVD worth it if you are a Magma unconditional fan, but the fact that the concert does lose focus will make it less essential to casual fans.

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