This silver DVD release brings us a show from the end of the North American leg of the Steel Wheels tour and the last before the trio of Atlantic City shows of PPV fame. The band is well oiled at this point in the tour and this is a very tight performance. I love the audios from the SW tour shows, as I think the playing is excellent, but curiously I find the video performances to be a little stiff as if the boys are still trying to get used to playing together on stage after the 6+ year layoff.

The high end Japanese label Empress Valley, which specializes in Led Zeppelin titles, was the first to release this show on two single discs. I don’t have a copy of the EV title but I have read this version is a direct copy of that release. This version is a double sided single disc.

Title: The Rolling Stones Montreal Olympic Stadium December 14, 1989

The packaging is a very nice single digipack holder.

Label: Unknown
Format: 1- Proshot Double sided Silver Pressed Disc NTSC Video Format (USA)
Audio:Dolby Digital
Length: side 1= 73:30 minutes, side 2= 79:44 minutes
Content: Complete show Montreal Olympic Stadium December 14, 1989

Video= 9.0 (A-)
Audio= 9.0-9.5

Video: The video has a very nice interactive menu which allows individual song selection via a series of small film strip looking boxes which show short clips of each song. This release is sourced from VHS as there is the constant tracking mark at the bottom of the screen which were not too distracting. There is also a video timing bar in the lower left hand part of the screen during the entire video. It is distracting at first but I found I did not notice it after a short time of watching the video. The picture is a solid A- rating with the faces clear and a fair amount of detail. You start to loses a little detail as the camera pulls back, and the picture has a constant graininess, not distracting, but noticeable. While the definition is reasonably crisp the picture has a noticeable and constant pixilization especially when the colored stage lights comes on. You also notice this during rapid movement with a dark background as there are motion artifacts present. It is a curious contrast since the video seems to come from a very good low generation source and the transfer rate is between 5.5-6.5 for the whole video so I don’t think it is a result of compression during the transfer from video to DVD. It is hard to explain but it is almost like watching the video through a screen door. Maybe this was sourced from a VHS tape copied at slower speeds?? The colors are clean but seem a little muted. They remain crisp with no color blooming. If not for the pixilization/ screen door effect I would have given this video a solid 9.5 (A) rating as it is very clear and crisp in general. Maybe someone on the list with more video knowledge can comment on the cause of this effect?

Audio: The audio for this release is two channel stereo. The vocals and Chuck’s piano dominate with the guitars back in the mix and muted with Charlie’s drums very clear and tight but with minimal bass. It is a very clear crisp audio soundtrack which could use a little more balance but still a good listen

Conclusion:

The Empress Valley label specializes in releasing uncirculated shows and I believe this was the case with this video when it first came out. If you collect Stones videos I recommend this for addition to your collection but I would not classify this as the best SW video to own as I prefer the 90 Barcelona show for energy and the 89 Atlantic City PPV show for video quality and for the special guests appearances if you are into that sort of thing.