Reviewed by Matthew Cordle

Chip's website describes him as a "family recording artist" and he is also described there as a "contemporary Christian folk artist" and a "pied piper." His songs are all about family life and issues, fun and serious, from the perspective of both children and parents, and he puts on Family Concerts as all age events as well as parenting workshops. This package, a live CD and DVD, was made at one of his family concerts and contains fun songs such as "Chicken Pox Blues" and "The Toothpaste Song" as well as the more serious "Children Are A Gift". The DVD also contains a tour of Lakeside and a chance to meet his band, the Munks, among other things. The packaging states that this is "more fun than a kid should be allowed to have," so I gave it to some 10 and eight years old friends of ours to watch and give their opinion. They are avid Jim Bailey fans, so I was quite surprised when they found it boring. The audience on the disc in the 3000 seat auditorium seems to be enjoying it and participating, but my 10 year old friend thought it was "a bit pants - just a guy playing guitar really." This is probably because the audience on the DVD obviously know Chip Richter's songs as my friends know Jim Bailey's songs, and I do feel this won't really appeal much to children who don't know him. In terms of the performance, the band are not always as tight as they could be. Technically, the DVD picture quality is not fantastic. There's a bit of a VHS feel to it - it looks to me more a result of the video format used for filming rather than the MPEG-2 encoding quality. Chip obviously has a ministry that is valued and this disc has its place, but I would say it is only with avid fans.

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