The only-possibly-from-America five piece REO Speedwagon must have known what they were doing when they named themselves after a truck, for they’re obviously built like one. They’ve been around for more than 30 years now, and have survived various hiatuses with only minimal line-up changes.

Known on our shores mainly for a couple of early to mid-Eighties hits in the anything but edgy power ballads Keep on Lovin’ You and Can’t Fight This Feeling, they actually have an arsenal of 17 studio albums under their belts. These two hits and a selection of 11 other songs are wheeled out here at the Riverport Amphitheatre in St Louis, part of a joint tour (dubbed ‘Arch Allies’ – groan) that was undertaken with fellow AOR American rockers, and former nemeses, Styx back in 2000.

Along with the slicked back sheen of their trademark ballads, REO do rock out a little at times – politely, of course - however in all this comes across as rather a restrained performance, even if everybody on stage does seem to be having a ball. There’s plenty of ‘rawk’ speak between songs and – oh no – audience members with lighters aloft. Still, the band probably thought this was way cool, after all, they did name one of their albums You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish...

Track listing:

AGH! NTSC! If the prospect of over an hour of flaccid wuss-rock isn’t depressing enough, nobody could even be bothered converting it all from NTSC, a format which some distributors don’t seem to realise is NOT native to this country, and is unplayable by the vast majority of everyday people – the same everyday people who buy DVDs. Still, if you have the equipment - and the stones - to brave it, this presentation does give good colour and is quite sharp throughout, although the latter leads to its downside – as it’s quite the festival of shimmer and aliasing.

Two audio choices are given, neither of which are particularly worthy of more then a half-chewed, exclamation mark-free “woo� written in little letters in a tiny font. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is fairly restrained, with little in the way of subwoofwoof usage and the surrounds pretty much restricted to a touch of ambience and nought else. As for the Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that’s included, it’s flatter than road kill (which quite possibly was created by a truck such as an REO Speedwagon...)

Any actual fans of the band that may exist could be excited by the inclusion of a few extras. First up is the vaguely intriguing sounding REO Home Game. Ha, don’t be fooled into excitement though – it’s simply 50 sometimes completely ridiculous trivia questions served up on static screens that would most likely even have the band’s mothers scratching their heads in complete befuddlement. Around 20 minutes of interviews with original members Kevin Cronin and Neal Doughty follows, covering everything from their inception through to this DVD release and how really, really grateful they are to still have fans. The bonuses are rounded out with a brief discography and biography, plus a couple of those ever-useful web links.

It’s just over an hour of REO Speedwagon on a decidedly average DVD presentation. I’ve said my piece...