Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: Live at the El Mocambo (1983)

What a waste of my time!!!

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This release shows Stevie just as things were beginning to happen after years on the road of struggling to get his music heard. In Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, Texas, he was already a "must see", now the world would get to experience one of our Texas Treasures! The high points are Texas Flood, Lenny, and Voodoo Chile. This movie will be a great inspiration to any young (or old) guitar player. Stevie makes it look SO easy. That is his gift! According to Chris Layton: "The band really didn't know that they were going to be filmed that night, they just plugged in and 'floored it'". The incredible thing is that whether it was to 10,000 or just 2 people back in the club days, Stevie gave the same smoking show. He literally plugged into his heart and poured it out on the stage. This is one of MY favorite shows captured. If you like this, you should check out Rockpalast, Live In Italy, Japan, Austin City Limits, Daytona, and the several others available. There is still a lot of really great footage available that hopefully will be released one day. Just like one of Stevie's heroes, Jimi Hendrix, kids today are still talking about him 20 years after his tragic passing.

You'll get exhausted watching Stevie Ray Vaughan crank out this incredible performance long before Stevie does. Sweat pouring off his sparse frame, he delivers heartpounding riff after riff on every song in this movie, leaving you wondering how he possibly had anything left for the next one.My personal favorite is the 9-minute version of "Texas Flood," which includes some of the tightest, fastest playing ever captured on film. And it's captured well by multiple cameras worked by people who knew what they were doing. What a welcome relief from the drugged-out, out of focus zoom work that has marred so many classic performance movies -- the 1973 docu "Jimi Hendrix" is a prime example, though still worth watching for sure.But back to Stevie. He was a little guy, all skin and bones, and hands. Like Hendrix he seemed to be gifted with hands belonging to some other, much larger person. His hands were so big that he used extra-wide guitar necks most of the time. He once described his style thus: "I use heavy strings, tune low and floor it. Floor it." See the results for yourself in this terrific film. Buy the DVD so you can jump right to your favorite tracks.

Wow! I saw this a few years ago, and it still pops into my mind a couple of times a week. Now I have the DVD! Describing how amazing Stevie Ray Vaughan is could take pages and pages. This is simply one of the BEST concert performances on film. It's raw and honest without the production polish of other so called concert broadcasts these days. Raw and honest is what is at the heart of the Blues, and it jumps out at you while watching this gem. Look for it and feel the power of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble working the Blues. The El Mocambo was a small club in Toronto. BB King played there, and so did the Rolling Stones. It's closed now, a piece of musical history is gone.

The best live performances are those were not intended to be taped, such as this one. Stevie Ray's in your face, heavy, powerful blues chops are intense and this sweat pouring performance must be seen and heard by blues fans. The selections are amongst Vaughan's best material and it seems that the band is almost completely oblivious to the cameras as they do what they do best -- make great music. This is a rare gem that will not disappoint, and seeing this for the first time is what made me run out to find Stevie Ray Vaughan's material.