Review – Butch Walker Live at Budokan DVD

I just received and watched Butch Walker’s live DVD Live at Budokan and in a word it is awesome. There are two live sets on the disc. The first set is the concert at Budokan in Tokyo, Japan from March 2005.

Live At Budokan – Tokyo, Japan – March 2005

Intro
Radio Tokyo
Uncomfortably Numb
#1 Summer Jam
Last Flight Out
Mixtape
Best Thing You Never Had
Lights Out

Running about 45 minutes, this show is from Butch’s tour with Avril Lavigne. The sound from the show is great and captures the crowd noise very well (which of course makes you feel like you are there). Butch does a bit of conversing with the crowd in Japanese (subtitled of course for us English speakers). In between each song there are small clips of Butch and his band hanging out in Tokyo (including a very funny scene of them all singing in a karaoke bar). Definitely a great set to watch.

The second set is from a concert Butch put on at the Variety Theater in Atlanta, GA from June 7, 2003. Part of this show was recorded and sent out as a bonus live CD entitled This is Me…Justified and Stripped to those that pre-ordered his Letters album from the Sony Music Store.

This Is Me… Justified And Stripped
Intro
Sober
Promise
Race Cars and Goth Rock
Diary of a San Fernando Sexx Star (Slow version)
Mixtape
Don’t Move
Best Thing You Never Had
Cigarette Lighter Love Song
Suburbia
Grant Park
Over Your Head
Every Monday
Freak of the Week
Let Me Go
Take Tomorrow (One Day at a Time)

Butch puts on a fantastic show in this set. The stage is set up like a living room (which he says is so he can feel more like being at home where he writes the songs). He starts off just playing acoustic guitar and is later joined by JT Hall on Bass and Kenny Cresswell on drums. As happens often during Butch Walker shows, Butch takes a turn on the piano and cranks out Cigarette Lighter Love Song and a bit of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.

Next comes a fantastic surprise as Butch brings up his former bandmates from the Marvelous 3, Jayce Fincher and Mitch “Slug” McLee, to perform Every Monday and their big hit from the mid nineties Freak of the Week.

Then comes the encores which are the Marvelous 3 song Let Me Go with Butch solo on piano and then Take Tomorrow (One Day at a Time) which he plays unplugged, purely acoustic and from out in the middle of the crowd (which is how he best likes to perform it). All in all, an amazing show that really demonstrates how talented a musician, songwriter, and performer the great Butch Walker is. I highly recommend picking it up. Makes a great stocking stuffer to any music fan that appreciates good rock and roll.