This warning comes months too late, but I wish I'd seen something like it before wasting time and money: Return to Sin City, the DVD of the concert tribute to Gram Parsons, is terrible. To clarify: the DVD itself is terrible. The performances over two nights at two California locations in July 2004 seem to be good, and any time someone commemorates the life and work of Parsons, it's a treat. But somewhere along the line someone should have realized that the recordings were not up to standard and held back this DVD's release. The sound, from front to back, is shameful. There is no middle to any of this, just highs and lows. The result is bootleg-quality audio that sounds as if a single microphone was hung over the audience to capture the performances. You hear the high end of the guitars and the thump of the bass drum and little else. The result, sadly, is that while the viewer is tempted by seeing Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, Jim James, Jim Lauderdale and many others singing the songs of Gram Parsons (many while decked out in fitting Nudie suits), you can't even hear enough to tell whether the performances are any good. Because the same backing band is used for most of the performances, the only stylistic variation is with the vocals, and that's the one thing most difficult to hear. What a profound disappointment.