A Review of The Phantom Tollbooth

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DVD: The Making of Mr. Buechner's Dream
Artist: Daniel Amos
Label: Stunt
Time: 4 Titles / 87 minutes

The title of the DVD is The Making of Mr. Buechner's Dream. Note the word 'Making' in the title. This would imply that the DVD would give some details about the making of the excellent 33 song double CD by Daniel Amos. (see review of the CD)

There is plenty of grainy home-video camera footage giving the viewer a fairly intimate glimpse into the antics of the recording sessions, practices, interviews of the guys describing their feelings about the recording, etc., but very little of that footage details “the making." A better title would have been: Scenes of the Band at the Time Mr. Buechner's Dream was Being Made. OK, that would be a silly title, but it would be more descriptive of what the DVD actually contains.

TMOMBD consists of four main titles:

The main feature consisting of practice footage, band interviews, lots of random bits of footage from the Green Room sessions (with a small glimpse of Gene Eugene)
26 minutes of concert footage of material from MBD
A trailer promo for the DVD
A copy of the web-only release of “Nowhere is Someplace”

In the first title, the main feature consists mostly of what seems to be home video camera shots in a very random and disjointed fashion. Humorous moments abound, mostly due to the antics of Tim Chandler. There is one segment that is approximately 15 seconds long which shows Terry Taylor composing with his acoustic and recording into a cheapo mono cassette recorder like you had when you were a kid back in the early 1980's, if you were born then, of course. Chapters 2-6 deal with some practice sessions at Ed's house. Chapter 7 is a very short interview with Greg talking about Gene Eugene. It's an appropriate lead-in to the next several chapters, which are handy-cam shots of the band tracking at the Green Room (Gene's Domain). There’s some interesting stuff, particularly chapter 13, which shows Greg working out a guitar tracking in some detail, showing how he accomplishes some of the shimmery, Byrds-like chime and stinging lead parts that are so signature to DA's more folksy sounding songs--all tracked in the control room, complete with typical strat single-coil buzz. A few more chapters show some of the progression of the songwriting process, but chapters 17-26 show less detail of the recording process and revert back to the more random jaggedy shots from the handy-cam. The sound quality throughout most of the main feature is terrible, which is unfortunate for such a glorious album.

The second title is 26 minutes of concert footage from the Creation 2001 festival. This feature has a terrible mix; Greg's electric guitar is considerably out of tune with Terry's acoustic guitar, the bass is non-existent on most of the footage, the only drum that is audible is the kick drum, etc. Unfortunately, it's quite an unhappy sound.

The third feature is the 1 minute 47 seconds promotional trailer for the album.

The last feature is the audio of the web-only release of “Nowhere is Someplace” with various photos from the concert tour shown during the audio playback. This is one of the only places on the entire DVD where one gets a flavor for the sonic delights that are part of Mr. Buechner's Dream.

Because of the poor sound quality, the haphazard way in which the video is pieced together, and the out-of tune/poor mix concert footage, it's most likely that only devoted DA fans will want to pick up this DVD.

Scott Lake October 8, 2005