Live at Rockpalast 1999 documents a command performance at the Loreley open-air amphitheater by Malcolm “Mac” Rebennack Jr., aka Dr. John. Rockpalast is a live-music TV show broadcast since 1974 by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), the archival source for this CD-DVD package, and coincidentally a remarkable cultural institution on its own terms.

Taped at the height of Dr. John’s international popularity, backing the singer-pianist-guitarist are New Orleans stalwarts Bobby Broom (guitar), David Barard (bass), and Herman Ernest (drums), a tight quartet that projects authority and engages the crowd from start to close.

A striking UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site set, the Loreley is a slate pinnacle on a mythic horseshoe bend of the Rhine River, memorializing an enduring German literary legend both tragic and romantic. The setting is thus well-suited for Mac’s mystical spirit and lyrical style. By this stage of his career, he characterized his live show as a Mardi Gras revue with a mix of New Orleans standards and some of his most recognizable compositions.

Hence, he opens with the NOLA classic “Iko, Iko,” a half-sung, half-chanted celebration of community participation in the renowned Mardi Gras second-line street procession. Then comes the in-your-face boast “Qualified,” wherein the singer warns, “I got the power to control / I can see clean through you, blind mole / I want to tell you now, I'm qualified / You know that I'm qualified.”

Any Dr. John fan will recognize “I Walk on Guilded Splinters,” a moody, percussively insistent, foreboding expression of the Night Tripper’s immersion in “funknology” (his term), gris-gris herbology, and hoodoo incantation, punctuated with jungle growls and cries, a loopy, spooky slide whistle, and an extended psych-guitar solo: “Walk thru the fire / Fly thru the smoke / See my enemy / At the end of dey rope.”

Every piece in this well- honed set deserves considertion. Although Dr John lived for many years in Los Angeles and New York, his enduring hometown connection shows in the fond inclusion of his own “Sweet Home New Orleans” and “Goin’ Back to New Orleans,” and he nods to a key influence with a funky rendering of Duke Ellington’s “I'm Gonna Go Fishin’.” Among other gems are Mac’s Top–10 hit “Right Place, Wrong Time,” and the instantly recognizable closer, Earl King’s “Big Chief,” another Mardi Gras burner.

Regarding his live performance approach, per the notes, “I always play a little bit of everything. I think that’s what music’s about: a little bit of somethin’ old, somethin’ in the middle, somethin’ new, and somethin’ as yet uncreated.”

Dr John's’s longtime fans will welcome this archival gem, which also is a solid introduction for any late comers to the party. Surmounting the barriers of language and culture, the power of At the Rockpalast is also evident in the enthusiastic audience response. As he declares, “If you’re gonna get off on somethin’ you don’t need to know nothin’ about it. Music is a universal language.”