The Damned Live Live Live in London 2002: Tiki Nightmare DVD Review (MVD Visual)

A new live release from The Damned is always a welcome thing as, while the band has already released many live albums, The Damned’s constantly rotating lineup (the only constant has been singer Dave Vanian) along with their willingness to regularly reinterpret their songs means that every one of these live albums sounds different. The Damned Live Live Live in London 2002: Tiki Nightmare captures the band at Shepherds Bush Empire on July 12, 2002. This show is the final night of The Damned’s UK tour, where the band was touring behind their 2001 album Grave Disorder.

Not having seen The Damned since their 1991 reunion tour where (at least at the Atlanta show) they seemed very drunk and shambled through their set in just about an hour, I was pleasantly surprised at how tight this lineup sounds. The Grave Disorder lineup of the band was Dave Vanian (Vocals), Captain Sensible (Guitar), Patricia Morrison (Bass), Monty Oxy Moron ( Keyboards) and Andy “Pinch” Pinching (Drums). The nineteen track set list spans the Damned’s back catalogue and includes five numbers from Grave Disorder (“Amen”, “Democracy”, “Song.Com”, “Would You Be So Hot” and “She”), the expected punk chestnuts (“Smash It Up”, “New Rose”, “Neat Neat Neat”), little heard numbers like “Under the Floor Again” and two numbers from the band’s 80’s albums (“Eloise”, “Street of Dreams”) which were recorded while the Captain was out of the band. The Captain even slides in a quick version of “Happy Talk” when the band goes offstage before the encore and he is joined by a pair of “tiki dancers” and Dave does a brief vocal cameo.

Both the playing of the band and their stage presence show how the band has matured over the years. Captain Sensible’s guitar work is top-notch, leading the band through an extended version of “Amen” and using a beer can as a slide on “Ignite”. Dave Vanian and bassist/wife Patricia Morrison are the epitome of cool. Vanian glides and dances his way across the stage - all in black, with slicked back hair, wrap-around sunglasses and gloves - looking like a punk version of Elvis (when he was cool – not fat Elvis) and Morrison looks like a goth pin-up girl. While Captain Sensible clowns around on-stage, the role of ‘comic relief’ seems to have been handed off to keyboardist Monty, who was part of Sensible’s Punk Floyd solo band. “Pinch” is a capable drummer but more of his personality comes out in the bonus feature interview than behind the skins (…and I continue to hope for Rat’s return to the band).

The show is filmed with multiple on-stage cameras so the viewer really has a “you were there” experience as you see the ‘big budget’ shots of the whole band and, from there, the cameras will cut away to close-ups of one of the band members and/or the audience.





There are about 40 minutes of bonus features which are predominately interviews with the individual members of the Damned. Captain Sensible’s interview runs the longest and he sounds remarkably coherent (this isn’t to say that the Captain isn’t off-kilter but I was expecting a raving loony) when talking about The Damned’s place in music, his solo career and more. The other two interesting interviews are Dave Vanian, who is never shown on the screen but rather he talks behind what appears to be found footage of World War I / World War II military bands, and “Pinch”, who sounds like a bit of a nutter. The bonus features wrap up with some very brief (too brief in my opinion) home-movie footage from The Damned’s 2002 Warped Tour appearances.



Set List:
Street of Dreams
Amen
Democracy
Plan 9 Channel 7
Song.Com
Wait for the Blackout
I Just Can’t Be Happy Today
Would You Be So Hot
Disco Man
Under the Floor Again
Ignite
She
Neat Neat Neat
Happy Talk
New Rose
Eloise
Smash It Up
Feel Alright
Love Song

Links:
Official Damned

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Last Shop Standing: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the Independent Record Shop - DVD Review (Blue Hippo Media)

Having spent a good chunk of my youth in East Village indie record stores, the DVD The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Independent Record Shop struck a familiar chord and brought back a nostalgia for the gloriously wasted afternoons of the past - drinking and record shopping on St. Mark's Place. Paul Weller, who is interviewed in the film, poignantly sums up the experience of anyone who ‘grew up’ in a record store by saying that the indie shops became “became meeting places, almost like a community center really”.

This documentary is based on author and former label representative Graham Jones’ 2009 book Last Shop Standing: Whatever Happened to Record Shops? and the DVD contains the 60 minute main feature along with 70+ minutes of outtakes. This rise and fall story is a ‘feet on the street’ narrative told through the eyes of well-known UK musicians (which include Billy Bragg, Paul Weller and Johnny Marr) and numerous indie record shop owners.

The main feature starts with “Act 1: The Rise”, which describes the rise of the UK indie records due to a demand for US imports (Elvis Presley, Bill Haley) and this demand continued through the first British invasion bands and the rebirth of the indie music scene that came with the punk era. This act though ends on a hesitant note with a mention on how machines in indie record shops were used to compile chart positions so label reps were ‘gaming’ the charts by giving records away.

“Act 2: The Fall” is a very familiar story to anyone who remembers the pre-90’s vinyl era as the record labels killed vinyl to push the CD format…and the death of vinyl was followed by the iTunes/download era of music. To re-phrase a quote from Richard Hawley (Pulp) – there is a time and place for all of these different formats of music and all could have co-existed together but the industry threw the baby out with the bathwater.

During this act, Jones cites the statistic that, in the 80’s, there were more than 2,200 UK indie record shops and by 20009, there were only 269 shops left. Johnny Marr puts forward an interesting hypothesis that the indie shops didn’t close due to the consumers’ shift away from vinyl but rather it was the industry’s forced death of vinyl that killed the record shops.

“Act 3: The Rebirth” walks the viewer through how the indie record stores have innovated to survive. Indie stores are now selling tickets and food (the shop Pie and Vinyl is highlighted) along with regularly having in-store performances and being an active part of their local music scene. The introduction of Record Store Day is given a lot of positive press for bringing people back into the indie shops and artists like Nick Cave are cited for releasing indie-store only pressings. Johnny Marr attributes some of this rebirth to how vinyl records now mean something to kids in a way it didn’t 8 – 9 years ago.

The bonus features are predominately the unedited interviews with the musicians and shop owners whose memories form the basis for this film. Unlike other outtakes reels that I’ve seen which generally have a lot of filler or (boring) director commentary, the interviews with Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, Billy Bragg, Richard Hawley and Sid Griffin (who doesn’t appear in the main film) are well worth watching.



Links:
Last Shop Standing

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The Replacements - 'Color Me Obsessed' DVD Review (MVD Visual)

Almost 22 years ago, The Replacements imploded at a July 4, 1991 show in Grant Park, Chicago. The band (which was down to Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson) left the stage and had the roadies close the set with their run-through of "Kiss Me On the Bus". The band never played or recorded again until Westerberg and Stinson reunited last year to record the forthcoming 'Replacements reunion' benefit disc, "Songs for Slim". The Replacements' music was direly important to me in the 80's but it seems a shame that the spirit of The Replacements had to die for Paul Westerberg's solo career to live.

I first heard The Replacements in the mid-80's when a friend gave me a soundboard bootleg of the band playing The Pop Shop in Cleveland in 1984 and I really didn't know what to think of the band's drunkenly slurred version of the Marine Corps Hymn segueing into Kiss' "Black Diamond". Once I heard Let It Be, it all 'clicked' and I was a die-hard fan by the time Tim rolled around. Pleased To Meet Me (the first post-Bob Stinson album) had some good songs (and the demos recorded with Stinson before his departure showed what this album could have been) but Don't Tell A Soul was a disappointing reach for the mainstream. The firing of drummer Chris Mars and the completely forgettable All Shook Down was a regrettable note on which the band ended their career.

So...to get to the point of this review, "Color Me Obsessed" is a 2xDVD set that tells the story of The Replacements through the eyes of the fans. These fans are an eclectic mix of musicians (which include Greg Norton, Grant Hart, Craig Finn, etc.), music critics and journalists, actors and 'normal' concert goers. This is where "Color Me Obsessed" differs from other bio pics as there is no footage of The Replacements or any of its members (live or interview) used - the viewer needs to rely on the 'I was there' narrative of the various fans to build a mental picture of the time and place being described.



The challenge with this sort of picture is that if you weren't around during the original run of The Replacements, you have nothing to anchor to and this film becomes a bunch of talking heads going on and on about how 'this band could have changed your life'. The fan footage is interesting, brilliant in parts but ultimately drags on a bit long. Listening to Grant Hart (who I still believe can do no wrong), Terry Katzman and Mark Trehus (both longtime label/record store owners), Jack Rabid and Robert Christgau (longtime music writers/critics) added color to the band's history. Watching Dave Foley talk about how Kids in the Hall wanted to be 'The Replacements of Comedy' or Geroge Wendt ponder whether "Here Comes a Regular" was written about his Cheers character Norm was somewhat suspect. Watching fans reminisce about how they drove to a Don't Tell a Soul era concert and made out with Tommy doesn't add a lot of value. One of the "fan" interviewees was so stalker/creepy, I didn't know whether to laugh or cringe.

The bottom line is that if you weren't already a Replacements fan prior to watching "Color Me Obsessed", this film isn't going to covert you. You might actually have a hard time making it through the "the band could have been your life" stories without any music from the band to back up these claims as the same thing has been said about the Velvet Underground, Mission of Burma, Minor Threat and many other bands where the legend of the band peaked long after the breakup.

As a long time fan (I guess I can still call myself that), I learned a few things from watching the film. Specifically, I wasn't aware that there was such a power struggle between Paul Westerberg and Bob Stinson. Insider commentary talked about how there was inherent tension from the beginning as Paul joined Bob's band and later - Bob didn't want any part of the the mainstream commercial direction that Paul wanted to take the band. Most of the people interviewed for the film seemed to agree that Bob's departure was the beginning of the end.

Overall - this narrative history of The Replacements was interesting but this isn't a film I would watch more than once every couple of years. In my mind, the video below shows the magic of the original Replacements better than any talking heads.



Getting back on point - the bonus DVD contains uncut interviews with Grant Hart, Robert Christgau, and Jim DeRogatis with Greg Kot, which run an hour each. There are also nineteen deleted scenes (same sort of stuff that is on Disc One) along with interviews with director Gorman Bechard and producer Hansi Oppenheimer.

Links:
Color Me Obsessed

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Circle Jerks - 'My Career As A Jerk' DVD Review (MVD Video)

I’m innately suspicious of music documentaries as too many of them follow the VH-1 “Behind the Music” story arc of ‘the band’s rise to fame and the turmoil beneath the surface that drove the band apart’. The Circle Jerks though are in good hands with director David Markey. While everyone knows Markey’s film “The Year Punk Broke”, he has been a part of the SoCal hardcore scene for a long time and directed “Desperate Teenage Lovedolls” and “Lovedolls Superstar” (co-written by Red Kross’ McDonald brothers).

“My Career as a Jerk” follows the history of the Circle Jerks – from their inception following Keith’s departure from Black Flag through the band’s current hiatus and combines current-day interview footage with Markey’s archival live footage which documents probably every lineup in the band’s career. In addition to the well-known lineup of Keith Morris (vocals), Greg Hetson (guitar), Lucky Lehrer / Keith Clark (Drums) and Roger Rogerson / Zander Schloss (bass), there is also priceless footage of lineups that never committed any recordings to vinyl [outside of the re-recording of “When the Shit Hits the Fan” for the Repo Man soundtrack] which included Flea (Bass), Chris Poland (Guitar - x-Megadeth), Chuck Biscuits (Drums - x-everyone) and Earl Liberty (Bass – x-Saccharine Trust).



The story starts with the band forming out the of the punk/SST scene that was based out of an old church in Hermosa Beach. The band’s rise to the top of the SoCal hardcore pack is told through period live footage and interviews with Keith Morris, Lucky and Greg Hetson. Nothing is held back - Keith tells stories about his early alcohol and drugs problems and Roger’s debilitating drug problems and Greg talks about the battleground conditions that the bands of that time were forced to play under. Lucky is the most nostalgic of the trio and talks about seeing slam dancing for the first time, putting his home phone number on the Group Sex album which resulted in ‘bizarre’ calls from around the world and his attempt to balance law school and the band (which ultimately got him ejected from the band). Earl Liberty, who dropped out of the music business after his tenure with the Jerks, also talks about his time with the band and there are some in-depth interviews with later-period bassist, Zander Schloss – who met the band during the filming of “Repo Man”.

There is some great footage of the Liberty/Biscuits lineup of the band on this disc, which includes a performance on Rock Palace with Morris in full “Michael Jackson” regalia. This lineup fell apart after Biscuits and Hetson got into a physical altercation over Biscuits refusal to play a free after-party at Madame Wong’s and Hetson ultimately kicked Biscuits so hard in the b*lls that it lifted him off the ground.



When the band regrouped in the 90s, they never seemed to capture the intensity of their early days. Whether it was the quasi-revolving door in the rhythm section, inter-band tensions (tensions over Hetson’s splitting his time between the Jerks and Bad Religion is a reoccurring theme) or a poor experience on Mercury Records, the band never seemed to find solid footing. One anecdote that was both amusing and sobering is that the band mentions that original bassist Roger Rogerson called the various band members out of the blue in the mid-90s to try to get the original band back together to capitalize on the major label feeding frenzy. The sobering note is that Roger never turned up to the band meeting that he called as it turned out that he had O.D.’d.



The film ends on a bittersweet note with Hetson and Morris talking about the band’s current hiatus. As I haven’t been keeping up with the circumstances around this ‘breakup’, it was news to me that this was all due to the band finally getting back to their long rumored seventh album. Producer Dimitri Coats thought Hetson’s songs were sub-par which resulted in Coats being fired and Morris following him to OFF!. Morris though describes the door to the Circle Jerks reunion as closed but not locked so the story of the Circle Jerks may still have another chapter.

Links:
Circle Jerks

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Alice Donut - "Freaks in Love: A Quarter Century in Underground Rock" DVD Review (MVD Visual)

Aquarius Records, who have a huge number of CD reviews posted on their site wrote “With the release of Freaks In Love, from weirdo New York noise rockers Alice Donut, we realized we had never reviewed a single Alice Donut record. Ever.” I sort of feel the same way as Freaks in Love is my first exposure to both Alice Donut and their music.

Freaks in Love is an in-depth documentary that looks at the 25-year career of New York City punk rock band Alice Donut. The documentary runs just over 90 minutes and the bonus features include nine live songs that that range from a 1987 performance at CBGB to footage from the band’s 2009 reunion show at Southpaw. Alice Donut recorded their early discs for Alternative Tentacles and Jello Biafra described the band’s music as “the missing link between R.E.M. and the Butthole Surfers”.

I’m not sure I agree with Jello’s description as there is nothing that sounds like R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” included on the movie soundtrack. In fact, Alice Donut’s free-form psychedelic punk and Tom Antona’s garbled vocals (along with lyrics about the “perversities, odd details, and petty humiliations of life”) sounds closer in spirit to mid-period Butthole Surfers (who seemed to drop their psychotic edge after Teresa Nervosa left the band). Alice Donut’s song “"The Son Of A Disgruntled Ex-Postal Worker Reflects On His Life While Getting Stoned In The Parking Lot Of A Winn Dixie Listening To Metallica"” says a lot about where the band’s headset is.



The film starts with interviews with current and former members about the band’s beginnings on the Lower East Side which is mixed with some live footage of the band’s first show at CBGB. The band’s story is a familiar DIY story where the members spent most of their life in the van building mini-markets in various cities around the globe. The band wears their “freak flag” proudly with the introduction of cross-dressing friend Chet Mazur, who both opened for Donut with spoken word performances and was the ‘cover model’ for Mule. While keeping their indie-cred, Donut built a strong following through progressively higher-profile tours with bands that included Blind Melon and the Meat Puppets. It seems that the pinnacle of the band’s popularity was when they played the main stage at Reading Festival (and Donut went on after Primus, who seemed hugely popular at the time).

Unlike the bands on VH1’s “Behind the Music”, there is a minimum of inner-band drama as the members all seem to get along and actually like being around each other. Ted and Dave left the band due to “pent up frustrations” but there seemed to be no bad blood between the members. Donut called it a day in 1996 to which Jello commented that the band “broke up before they sucked”. The band members all went off and took real jobs but slowly came back together in ’01 and Ted and Dave rejoined a few years later.



Given the pull of ‘real life’ (Tom and Sissi are married and have kids), Alice Donut is quasi-inactive but the band released their tenth disc, Ten Glorious Animals, in September 2009 and played a very limited set of tour dates in support of the disc.

Freaks in Love was directed by musicians/film makers David Koslowski (x-Liquor Bike http://www2.citypaper.com/eat/review.asp?rid=13899) and Skizz Cyzyk (x-Berserk) who give a ‘front-row’ view of what it was like for an indie band in the pre-Nirvana era to ‘get in the van’. In an interview with MUSICFILMWEB (MFW), Skizz was asked:

MFW: Why Alice Donut? As in, why as a movie subject?

Skizz Cyzyk: Considering I was already in the middle of another music doc (Icepick to the Moon, about Reverend Fred Lane) and another doc about antiwar protesters (Hit & Stay), the last thing I expected to do was jump into another project. But my co-director, David Koslowski, had moved to North Carolina, where he became friends with Tom [Antona] and Sissi [Schulmeister, Alice Donut’s bassist]. They mentioned wanting a doc made to coincide with the band’s 25th anniversary. David decided he wanted to make it, and he asked me to make it with him. Their story could be the story of a lot of bands, and that is a story that hasn’t been told much. Everyone knows about the bands who made it huge, but not everyone knows about the bands who worked really hard yet stayed beneath the surface. For that reason Alice Donut seemed like a good band to make a documentary about.

Links:
Alice Donut

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"SpokAnarchy! Where Were You in '82" DVD Review (Carnage and Rouge)

SpokAnarchy! is a fascinating documentary of the Reagan-era punk scene in Spokane, WA and the film uses vintage and current live performance and interview footage to tell the story of disaffected youth in a small, rurally isolated town. The story is one part “Our Band Could Be Your Life” and the locals’ resistance to the burgeoning punk scene seems straight out of the Dead Kennedys “Night of the Living Rednecks”. While many of the bands showcased in this movie aren’t household names, the fight to carve a new identity outside of the mainstream and the resultant DIY spirit within the Spokane community that kept the scene going should ring a familiar chord with anyone who was part of the pre-MTV scene in any city.

The story follows a familiar story arch – the scene starts small with the older art culture merging with the punks, the DIY culture takes hold and a number of bands come out of this scene that could have made it big if they had come up in a major market. Unfortunately, there is a climax to this arc as heroin arrives and leaves a trail of destruction in its wake and movie starts to wind down with the once unified scene collapsing under the weight of drugs, death and people moving away. The movie ends though ends on a positive and redemptive note with a 2009 “punk rock reunion” which show most of the “punk rock, new-wave and artistic weirdos” followed throughout the movie are still alive and (mostly) well and a number of them are still making music.

The movie tells the story of the rise and fall of the Spokane punk scene by combining period music videos, live performance clips and photos with current-day voice-overs narratives and interviews with the people who grew up in Spokane during this time and gives a ‘day-in-the-life’ view of teenagers ‘challenging the social and cultural norms of small-town America’. Viewers of the films are taken through the highs of warehouse parties and art spaces where music, drugs and sex flowed freely to the lows of fighting with the town council over their selective enforcement of arcane fire code laws and constantly having to worry about being beaten up for being different. Director Dave Halsell said: “The ‘scene’ gave me an early education and helped me see through the hypocrisy of mainstream living".



Band featured include new-wavers (think The Cars) Sweet Madness, art-rockers M’NA M’NA and the long-running socio-political hardcore band Vampire Lezbos. These bands probably aren’t known outside of Spokane but all of them would make a great addition to a KBD compilation. Motorcycle Boy front man Francois Haraldson played in a number of Spokane bands before moving to Los Angeles and he said in an interview: “When I was in Seattle nothing was happening. You couldve been the most brilliant person and nothing wouldve ever happened, and thats why people migrated down to Los Angeles. Not that it got much better for us down here but Seattle was dead. It was so dead.”



Dave Halsell wrapped things up nicely by saying: “We really hope the film inspires others to do it yourself, think for yourself and do your own thing…If it can be done in Spokane, it can be done anywhere.”

Links:
SpokAnarchy!

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GG Allin & the Murder Junkies - "Blood, Shit, and Fears" DVD Review (MVD)

I was living in DC when G.G. Allin started getting national notoriety and remember watching him on Geraldo. At the time, I really didn’t know what to think - I had seen The Dwarves a number of times blast through their 15 minute “sex, drugs and violence” sets and had watched the NYHC scene on Phil Donahue in the mid-80’s and could relate to both but G.G. seemed completely “out there”. This impression was further reinforced after watching “Hated” a few years back – G.G. seemed more like one of the lunatics that used to hang out in Tompkins Square Park than a Machiavellian punk rock terrorist.

G.G. Allin’s latest archival DVD, Blood, Shit, and Fears (MVD Visual), has made me rethink my original impressions. The disc features five shows with the Murder Junkies – three from November 1991 and two from 1993. With all three of the 1991 shows, I can finally see how G.G.’s reputation was built. These shows are electric and G.G. is coherent, focused and dangerous. The only thing that I can compare this to is the DOA: A Right of Passage footage of the Sex Pistols on their first US tour, storming through the Bible Belt South.

The first show was filmed at the Antenna Club in Memphis, TN – you have to wonder what the club owner was thinking by setting up tables and chairs as G.G. made short work of that. He sets the tone for the show by getting the blood flowing early by banging on his forehead with both a beer bottle and his microphone and follows this by playing most of the set from the floor of the club. It is amusing to watch the audience reactions as a bleeding, sh*t covered, naked G.G. gets close to them. (One person pushed G.G. from behind and then ran). It might have been amusing to see the audience reactions when G.G. sh*ts on-stage and shoves the microphone up his *ss but the point of this disc isn’t to ‘gross out’ the viewer, but to capture G.G. Allin at his rawest and most visceral.

The three 1991 shows each run about 15-20 minutes each (all are complete sets) and the other two sets (Fupped Duck, New Orleans and Orpheus Theater, Knoxville) run similar to the Antenna Club show. Each of the shows was filmed with a reasonably still single camera and the audio is as clear as I would expect G.G. Allin to sound in a punk rock dive.



The mood shifts significantly on the two 1993 shows – G.G. appears less coherent and more violent. The clubs seem larger than the ones played on the 1991 tour and audience seems to be expecting a ‘freak show’…which seemed to further enrage G.G. G.G. plays both shows in his bikini underwear so there is none of the “on the edge” mayhem of the 1991 but rather out-and-out violence and hostility on both sides of the stage. G.G. seems particularly annoyed at the Metro show by the repeated calls of “The Mentors” and “El Duce” and demands for him to sh*t onstage to which he responds that he doesn’t owe anyone sh*t and they can meet him backstage if they want debauchery. This isn’t the tightly honed band from 1991 but rather a band that had lost their way and is now playing to a crowd of meatheads and frat-jocks who want to see G.G. before he dies. The video portion of this footage is a good bit shakier than the 1991 shows but I can imagine that the hostility of the crowd often caused the cameraman to dive for cover.

This material isn't for the faint of heart but Blood, Shit, and Fears does a pretty reasonable job of documenting G.G. Allin's final two tours and proving that the stories of the tours weren't just myths and exaggerations.

Links:
G.G. Allin

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Public Image Limited - "Live at Rockpalast 1983" DVD Review

I just finished a review of Michael Schenker Group’s Rockpalast show and what MSG has in common with PiL is that both bands are led by mercurial leaders who change lineups as often as they change shoes. This particular Public Image Limited show was filmed Halloween night in 1983 with the short-lived “cabaret band” lineup. To put some context around this, bassist Pete Jones had left the band in early 1983 and guitarist Keith Levine had left (or was fired, depending on whose story you believe) prior to the band’s Japanese tour. As such, drummer Martin Atkins and producer Bob Miller recruited local NYC musicians Lou Bernardi (bass), Joseph Guida (guitar), and Tom Zvoncheck (keyboard) for the Japanese tour. Zvoncheck left the band prior to the band’s subsequent European tour (to work with BOC’s Albert Bouchard) and he was replaced by Arthur Stead (Frehley’s Commet, Foreigner, etc.) for the European tour which included this Rockpalast show. The “cabaret” tag was given to the band as Atkins had them wear tuxedos on the Japanese tour.

From my perspective, this lineup of the band gets unfairly blamed for the band moving its sound in a more commercially accessible direction. Like many of the bands who recorded in the 80’s, keyboards are prominent in the mix and the band plays with a rock-oriented polish that is comparable to Gang of 4’s evolution once Dave Allen left the band. All-in-all, this 13 song (60 minute) show is very solid and the crowd responds in full pit/pogo mode on the percussive rock-oriented tracks.

PiL gets the crowd moving with an opening 1-2 punch of “Public Image” and “Annalisa” but numbers like Metal Box’s “Chant” seem to take the fight out of the crowd. Lyndon doesn’t allow these slower moments to linger though and, in this case, he fired the crowd back up with a slick run-through of “Anarchy in the UK”.



John Lydon isn’t quite as obnoxious at this show as when I saw the band on the 1982 tour but he does get off a few audience-baiting zingers. He starts the show doing his spastic cheerleader dances and tries singing from in front of the security barricade for “Annalisa”, which nearly got him pulled into the crowd. There is a minimal amount of mugging for the camera with the cockeyed stare that John used to use with Pistols and a few comments about being bored and wanting to go home. Aside for blowing a few “snot rockets” at the audience, John is reasonably well behaved.

The bonus segments on the disc are interesting but somewhat of a mixed bag. There are a few classic one-liners during Lydon’s interview with Rockpalast host Alan Bangs (“I’m an egomaniac – I love being adored”) but, for the most part, John looks bored and abruptly ends the interview with the comment “Is that it?” as he gets up. The two rehearsals tracks “Annalisa” and “Chant” are both interesting but the audio comes through the soundboard and it sounds as through the mix is being balanced during the recording (i.e., there are missing and/or too loud instruments in parts of the audio and Lydon’s vocals are inaudible during the first minute of “Annalisa”).

Set List:
Public Image Limited
Annalisa
Religion
Memories
Flowers of Romance
Solitaire
Chant
Anarchy in the U.K.

Encores:
(This is Not a) Love Song

Low Life
Under the House
Bad Life
Public Image II (Second run-through)

Just to make a couple of comments about the set list, “Under the House” is particularly impressive as I don’t think I’ve seen this song performed live before so it was fascinating to watch Bernardi and Guida take up positions on opposite sides of the stage and join Atkins on percussion while Lydon wails away. Some of the “oddities” about the set list are that the band opens and closes with spirited run-throughs of “Public Image”. They also leave the stage after “(This is Not a) Love Song” and house music comes over the PA (obviously someone in production thought the show was over) but Lydon quickly returns to the stage with the comment “Turn that tape off!”.

Links:
Public Image Ltd.

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Dinosaur Jr. - "Bug Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans" DVD Review (MVD Video)

Last summer, Dinosaur Jr. went out on a small run of East Coast dates where they played their 1988 album Bug in its entirety. Bug was the band’s second release for SST and was the last disc to include bassist Lou Barlow prior to the band’s 2007 reunion album. Looking back, Lou Barlow reflects that the album that many fans cite as their favorite (and the disc is listed as one of the “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” was actually anti-climatic for the band. Barlow said. “In our own minds…we had already peaked, we had already become as popular as we’d ever wanted to be. The fight was over. The first two records represented getting the band over on people and not getting banned from clubs, all those torturous tours, that time was over.” In keeping with the band’s indie-rock aesthetic, Bug was reissued as a limited-edition, hand-numbered cassette last summer through Joyful Noise Recordings.

"Bug Live at 9:30 Club: In the Hands of the Fans" captures the band playing live at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC on June 25, 2011. The band has come a long way in the 13 years since Bug’s original release as they were playing small and mid-sized clubs at the time (Dinosaur Jr. played The Ritz on this tour) but this time out, the band played Terminal 5 (3,000 capacity). This DVD is the second in the “In the Hands of the Fans” series and the video was shot by six contest winners under the direction of Dave Markey (who filmed Dinosaur Jr. back in 1991 for "The Year Punk Broke").

The concert portion of the disc runs just over an hour and the band plays Bug from start to finish along with “Sludgefest” and “Raisans” from You’re Living All Over Me. As to be expected, there is the bare minimum of dialogue with the audience aside for some brief ‘thank yous’ from Lou. The longest bit of dialogue is when Lou explains that he blew out his voice early in the tour and he brings a fan from Arkansas on stage to sing “Don’t”.



The bonus footage on this DVD more than doubles the overall running time of the disc. This footage includes a live performance of “In a Jar” and “The Wagon” (I believed the band opened with these tracks), an interview with Henry Rollins where he talks about the significance of the “old” 9:30 Club, backstage interview footage where the six contest winners ask the members of Dinosaur Jr. questions, and a live on-stage interview where Henry Rollins interviewed the band prior to their set. The additional live footage is brilliant but the interviews are a mixed bag and the sort of thing you will scan through or skip the second time around. The Rollins interview footage is interesting in that it is amusing to watch Hank’s obvious hero worship compared with J, who looks completely disinterested in the interview and mumbles an occasional answer. The interview footage with the contest winners is a bit more interesting as Lou gives some insightful answers about his influences and whether some of the songs on Sebadoh’s first disc were considered for inclusion of Bug. J, on the other hand, delivers some pricelessly droll responses to seemingly innocent questions.

Track List:
01. Freak Scene
02. No Bones
03. They Always Come
04. Yeah We Know
05. Let It Ride
06. Pond Song
07. Budge
08. The Post
09. Don’t
10. Sludgefeast
11. Raisans

While Lou Barlow said “I do think there are some songs on Bug where I remember we recorded them and it was like ‘No we’re never gonna do that [live], that’s too weird'", the end-to-end live performance of the album sounds great. Dinosaur Jr. can still work up a wall of melodic noise (check out the number of amps on the stage) that lessor bands can only dream of.

Links:
Dinosaur Jr.

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The Residents - "Talking Light: Bimbos" DVD Review (MVD Visual)

The Residents - Talking Light: Bimbos DVD is a live concert film from the final night of the band's 2011 "Talking Light" tour. This show was filmed in front of a sold-out crowd at Bimbo’s in San Francisco on April 16, 2011 and runs just under two hours. While the show was filmed in 3D (and there was a limited 3D-DVD edition of this show that was made available to project Kickstarter supporters), the ‘standard’ version is beautifully filmed and captures the live experience of a Residents concert better than I ever would have imagined. There is a lot going on at any given Residents show - between the vocals, the instruments (which are generally off to the side) and any lights/visuals but Talking Light: Bimbos captures and seamlessly blends all of these elements to give you the best seat in the house.



The set for the "Talking Light" tour is Randy’s living room, which is complete with a fireplace, B&W TV showing just fuzz and an old couch. Keyboardist Chuck takes the stage first and turns on the lights in the living room but singer Randy Rose is the focal point of the show and he performs wearing an old man mask, underwear and a bathrobe (and oversized tuxedo shoes). Randy takes on multiple vocal parts (including that of the old woman in “Talking Light”) and dances like a demented aerobics instructor while Chuck & Bob build up a noisy cacophony. Behind Randy are video panels that alternate between dark-toned colors and “space scenes” and videos of creepy characters telling twisted ghost stories; some of these stories ended up on the DVD Randy’s Ghost Stories.

For this tour, The Residents were down to a three-piece - Chuck and Bob are off to the side, wearing matching costumes, blackout goggles and deadlock wigs and stay seated throughout the show. In the opening portion of the show, Randy tells the audience that drummer Carlos went to Mexico to be with his mother but ended the show with the comment “F*ck Carlos, that guy was an assh*le”.

The band played an eclectic mix of songs from Lonely Teenager along with songs from their back catalogue and ended the evening with the encore of the cowboy folk song “Bury Me Not (on the Lone Prairie)” and “Die-Stay-Go” (from 1985’s The Big Bubble). Here is the complete track list:

1. Smelly Tongues (from Meet the Residents)
2. The Sleepwalker (from Lonely Teenager)
3. Talking Light (from Lonely Teenager)
4. Six More Miles (from Stars & Hank Forever)
5. They Are The Meat (from Wormwood)
6. Lizard Lady (from Duck Stab / Buster & Glen)
7. Perchance to Dream (from Chuck’s Ghost Music)
8. Semolina (from Duck Stab / Buster & Glen)
9. My Window (from Animal Lover)
10. Once I Went to Barstow (I don’t have Babyfingers but presume this is “Death in Barstow”)
11. The Unseen Sister (from Lonely Teenager)
12. The Old Woman (from Gingerbread Man)
13. Lilly (I don’t have Freak Show but presume this is “Lillie”)
14. Bury Me Not
15. Die-Stay-Go

Links:
The Residents

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The Residents - "Is Anybody Out There" DVD Review (MVD Video)

While I’ve reviewed a number of Residents’ discs over the past few years, the DVD Is Anybody Out There had slipped through the cracks. Prior to starting in on the band’s latest limited edition, Night Train to Nowhere, I wanted to close out the last of the Bunny Boy and Talking Light discs.

Is Anybody Out There follows the Bunny Boy story arc – a large portion of this footage was posted to the internet as a multi-part docudrama as a run-up to the Bunny Boy tour and these original videos have now been edited and sequenced with some live footage from the tour. For anyone who missed the original YouTube video series, Is Anybody Out There isn’t a full-length “music video” but rather a “feature film” that has a lot in common with Blair Witch Project. The Residents’ music adds to the increasingly uncomfortable story line (and was documented in the tour-only disc Postcards from Patmos) but the music is neither a prominent nor focal part of the DVD. The story line follows Roger (aka “Bunny”) on his descent into madness. Roger is living in the basement of his x-wife’s house, recovering from an accident he had in Greece that he doesn’t remember. The basement is particularly creepy as it looks like a torture chamber, with a variety of weapons on the wall and “John Wayne Gacy” style clown paintings of Roger and his brother Harvey.

The storyline follows Roger’s “self-made” videos that he is posting on the internet asking for help finding his missing brother Harvey. Harvey is described as being obsessed with the apocalypse and he went missing on the Greek isle of Patmos (home of the “Cave of the Apocalypse”). After filling in the back story of Harvey’s disappearance, Roger’s sanity progressively slips and he makes the later videos dressed in an adult bunny suit. After selling some possessions on eBay (this really happened – how’s that for a bridge between film and reality?), Roger raises money to pay The Great Carson (an internet psychic) who told Roger that Harvey is in Patmos, Arkansas getting ready to do battle with “The Beast”.

Note: There may be a “Part II’ to this disc as the DVD ends with Roger/”Bunny” boarding the bus to Patmos.

The Residents have enjoyed many attachments over the years, but none more unique than "Bunny." Their relationship flourished in the 70's when Bunny's eccentric ideas often pointed the group in unexpected directions, but Bunny eventually grew distant and his appearances at the El Ralpho Studios declined. Then, after a lapse of several years, a video tape arrived in the mail. Looking like the product of a discarded Korean surveillance camera, The Residents quickly recognized the unidentified video as the "work" of the long lost Bunny. At first amused, the group soon became disturbed by Bunny's obvious cry for help, attempting to gain support finding his missing "brother" Harvey. Hoping that a project focused on their lost friend might stimulate his reappearance, and subsequent psychiatric care, The Residents reenacted Bunny's plight in a series of internet videos, resulting in this DVD. Unfortunately after a CD, a world tour and the video series, Bunny remains among the missing.

Links:
The Residents

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The Jettisoundz Promo Years - "The Promos From 1983 Onwards" DVD Review (Screen Edge)

Anyone who didn’t grow up in the 80’s may not appreciate how important music videos were to discovering new bands. While MTV predominately catered to mainstream artists, there were programs like 120 Minutes and Headbangers Ball that featured bands that fell outside of FM-radio standards and USA Network showed a mixture of videos from punk and indie-artists and concert films like "Urgh! A Music War" and Johnny Thunders live on its Night Flight program. In addition to the various cable programs, enterprising “Mom & Pop” record shops in my area sold bootlegs of the British video programs like Old Grey Whistle Test and Top of the Pops which showcased bands that were predominately unknown to an American audience.

The Jettisoundz Promo Years DVD reminds me of these British video programs as it contains 50 videos (just over 3 hours running time) of live and studio videos from a wide assortment of predominately British post-punk bands (“Fifty of the top names from the independents”). There is an eclectic mix of bands on this compilation which includes artists from the space rock, death rock, garage, rockabilly, roots-rock, hardcore and punk genres. As to be expected, some of these artists were regretfully overlooked at the time and others will have you chuckling ruefully. It is a great document of the DIY “anything goes” era that took place in the mid-80’s as, later in the decade, most of the first wave punk bands broke up, the larger indie labels had either collapsed or gotten acquired by the majors and indie-rock morphed into a style of music rather than an aesthetic / way of life.

Some of the stand-out cuts are two live Hawkind tracks (“Night of the Hawk” and “Needlegun”), a couple tracks from Nik Turner’s Inner City Unit (I.C.U), two tracks from Psychic TV’s acid house phase along with a delightfully bizarre cover of “R. U. Xperienced” which is sung by Genesis’ daughter Caresse. Some of the other bands include Guana Batz (UK’s answer to the Stray Cats), Cherry Bombz (Andy and Nasty from Hanoi Rocks along with Terry Chimes from The Clash), goth/batcavers Alien Sex Fiend and football hooligans Macc Lads. Jumping back over to this side of the world, US bands include NYHC stalwarts Crumbsuckers, Mark Linkous’ pre-Sparklehorse band Dancing Hoods and garage rockers, the Raunch Hands.







Brilliant stuff for anyone who “shot up” on college radio in the 80’s.

Links:
Screen Edge

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Sex Pistols - "Live: The Broadcast Archives" DVD Review (IMV Blueline)

As dozens of poorly labeled or incorrectly labeled Sex Pistols' archival releases have hit the market over the last twenty years, it always takes a bit of detective work to figure out exactly what material is covered on any new archival release.

This new DVD from the Sex Pistols, “Live: The Broadcast Archives” (how’s that for a descriptive name?) is a great addition to the band’s catalogue as it captures a full concert from the band on their 1996 Filthy Lucre reunion tour. The show was filmed toward the end of the tour (as opposed to the Filthy Lucre Live CD which captures the band at the start of the tour) at Budokan Hall in Japan on 11/16/1996. This concert was originally released on VHS in Japan and this is a pro-shot, crystal-clear show that is MTV/TV-broadcast quality.

“To be honest, I thought we'd be playing to empty halls. I didn't care if no one even came. The aim was to resolve certain issues within the band, which we did. All the old animosities came out. By the end of a nine-month world tour, we knew we really did despise each other." - John Lydon (The Times UK)

For anyone who missed the band’s 1996 tour, this disc captures the experience perfectly. There is no comparison in how the band’s musicianship had improved since their 1978 show at Winterland (the band’s previous concert video). Appearance-wise, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook have aged well but Steve Jones looks like he got lost somewhere on the Sunset Strip and ended up in Tracii Gun’s wardrobe closet. As for Mr Lydon…he has a red and green Mohawk and comes on stage dressed in a Swiss mountain climber’s outfit. While he slips in the occasional zinger (i.e., he pulls a banana out of his trousers during one song and later hands it to the audience, has "A Load of Sex" written on his thigh in what appears to be magic marker and briefly plays with his nipples during the later part of the show), Johnny is actually fairly restrained with his audience baiting as compared to some of the PiL shows that I saw in the 80’s. All-in-all, the Sex Pistols have become a ‘serious’ musical outfit and Matlock and Cook are particularly outstanding.

As the Sex Pistols have just one studio album along with a handful of non-LP singles, the set list on the 1996 tour was 90%+ same each night. At Budokan, the band played:

01. “Bodies”
02. “Seventeen”
03. “New York”
04. “No Feelings”
05. “Did You No Wrong”
06. “God Save the Queen”
07. “Liar”
08. “Satellite”
09. “Steppin Stone”
10. “Submission”
11. “Holidays in the Sun”
12. “Pretty Vacant”
13. “EMI”
14. “Anarchy in the UK”
15. “Problems”



John Lydon closed the Pistols’ final show in 1978 with the now immortal phrase “Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?". In the case of this DVD, I rather enjoyed it.

Links:
Sex Pistols

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Thin Lizzy - "Live in Concert 1983" DVD Review (XXL Media)

Thin Lizzy - Live in Concert 1983 captures the band on one of the final legs of their Thunder & Lightning farewell tour and was filmed at Royal Dublin Society Showground on April 9th, 1983. While the farewell tour showed Thin Lizzy grinding to a halt and the tour was put together to pay off the band’s bills, this disc is still essential for any fan of the band.

This 55 minute show was originally broadcast on TV and was filmed with multiple cameras so there some nice shots of the full band and the individual members. This isn’t a big “glossy” pro-shot (by today’s standards) video though as the lighting isn’t always the best, which leaves some shots too dark. Overall, the video has the “feel” of something that was filmed for in-house broadcast rather than for TV. The sound on the disc though is perfect and sounds like it came straight from the mixing board. (Note: there is no crowd noise in the mix).

Performance-wise, Phil doesn’t seem very animated and looks like he is holding on for dear life - there is no trace of the breezy rouge from the “Live and Dangerous” or Sydney ’78 DVDs. The rest of the band sounds in reasonable form but, again, this isn’t the tightly honed performance of Lizzy’s earlier years. Brian Robertson looks to be in great form and John Sykes and Scott Gorham take frequent (but not overpowering) solos standing atop of pedestals on either side of Phil. (Darren Wharton’s contributions really aren’t heard in the mix).



The set list for this show seems close to other shows on the farewell tour though most of the other shows that I’ve heard include an additional song or two. What seems a little strange on this show is that “Dancing in the Moonlight” and “Whiskey in the Jar” aren’t played in their entirety but rather slotted into “Rosalie” and it is almost as though the band was racing against an “end of night” curfew.

RDS, Dublin 4/9/83 Set List:
1) Thunder & Lightning
2) Baby Please Don´t Go
3) Angel of Death
4) Are You Ready
5) Cold Sweat
6) The Sun Goes Down
7) Emerald
8) Still in Love with You
9) Rosalie / Dancing in the Moonlight / Whiskey in the Jar

Links:
Thin Lizzy

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Lou Reed - "Live Performances 1972 & 1974" DVD Review (XXL Media)

I was excited by this release as Lou Reed – Live Performances 1972 & 1974 is the first live recording from Lou’s Sally Can’t Dance tour to be commercially released. The first video segment shows Lou and his band recorded live at the Paris Olympia on 5/25/74. This segment, which was originally broadcast on French TV, captures the first six songs of Lou’s thirteen song set. The second segment contains four tracks that were recorded in Brussels in May 1974 and the final track is from Lou’s reunion with John Cale and Nico at Le Bataclan in 1972.

On Lou’s 1974 tour, the songs have been given a radical reworking to take on an urban, funky vibe. Most of the songs are longer than their respective studio versions which give the band room to jam and highlight prominent bass and keyboard. While Lou has always been the leader of the band, he had now moved to be the focal point as well. Lou is a peroxide blonde, dressed all in black, with large “Marty Rev” style sunglasses – he has completely handed off guitar playing off to Danny Weis and makes some pretty ‘interesting’ pre-disco dance moves while not singing. Lou mostly seems lost in his own world in front of the mic but does tell the crowd “Hey! Shut Up!” as the band is starting into “Ride Sally Ride”. This DVD is a great bridge between Lou’s experimental solo work and the polish of his later work as Lou was a veteran performer by the time of his next concert video – A Night with Lou Reed, which captures Lou live at the Bottom Line in 1983.

Track List - Paris 1974
- Intro/Sweet Jane
- I'm Waiting for the Man
- Lady Day
- Vicious
- Sally Can't Dance
- Ride Sally Ride



Track List - Brussels 1974
- Rock 'n Roll
- Heroin
- Walk on the Wild Side
- Goodnight Ladies



Reed/Cale - "Heroin", Le Bataclan, Paris '72 (Uploader disabled embedding)

There is some variation in quality between the three segments on the disc. The Paris footage is the best quality footage – it is filmed in color and is clear throughout. The source footage has deteriorated so this isn’t nowhere near comparable to “MTV style” live footage but it is very watchable (B/+) and the sound is solid. The Brussels footage is of noticeable lesser quality – while this segment was filmed in color, wide angles along with a good bit of generational loss make the video portion muddy. There are also some source video glitches in this segment. The redeeming factor is that audio is comparable to the Paris segment. The Le Bataclan footage was filmed in B&W and this footage is pretty good – the camera starts behind Reed and Cale but ends up with some nice close-ups of both men.

Links:
Lou Reed

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Johnny Thunders - "Who's Been Talking?" Live DVD Review (MVD Video)

With the release of the New York Dolls’ DVD Looking Fine on Television, I went back to check out some of the Dolls/Thunders releases that I’ve missed over the years. These first of the discs that I dropped on was Johnny Thunders Who's Been Talking which is a live DVD of one of Johnny’s last concerts. This show was filmed at Club Citta in Osaka, Japan on April 3, 1991 and this is the last known recorded show that Johnny played as he was found dead in New Orleans on April 23rd. The music on Who's Been Talking will be familiar to long-time fans as a portion of this show was released on the 2CD set Add Water and Stir and the full show was released on the two volume Japanese set Saddest Vacation – Last Live in Japan. What makes this release a treat is that it is the first full concert video of Johnny playing with the Oddballs as, outside of 10 minutes of bootleg footage from the Cat Club, I haven’t seen anything else out there.

This show is neither the barn-storming, ball-busting rawk of the Heartbreakers nor the troubadour-style acoustic sets that Thunders was playing around NYC prior to his death but contains elements of both. With the addition of Allison’s Gordy’s prominent backing vocals (she takes lead on the torch song “I Can’t Go On Without You”) and Jamie Heath’s saxophone, the show has more of a “Buster Poindexter” style flair than Johnny’s typical stage show. Johnny takes on a “showman” role for this concert but his illness has him obviously moving at a slower clip. He rarely plays guitar while singing but guitarist Stevie Klasson plays some nice leads with Johnny adding in some of his immediately-recognizable licks when he isn’t singing. The drug-fueled sloppiness may be gone but Johnny stays true to form by getting both the name of the city wrong (he gives a thank you to “Tokyo” at the end of the set) and improvising some dirty lyrics to “Hang on Sloopy”.

The setlist spans both the Dolls and Thunders back catalogues and Johnny plays some material (“Society Makes Me Sad” and “Disappointed in You” that was new at that time (and "Disappointed in You" was ultimately released on the 1993 Totonka bootleg Sticks & Stones which was later re-released by Cleopatra). It is an interesting and eclectic set list as Johnny skips “Chinese Rocks” and “You Can't Put Your Arm Around A Memory” from his ‘traditional’ set and includes covers of “Hang on Sloopy” and “You Can Walk My Dog” (which are in addition to the standard covers in the set list of “Pills”, “Louie Louie”, and “Stepping Stone”).

Here is the complete (and corrected) set list:

1. In Cold Blood
2. Hit The Road Jack > I’m Not Your Stepping Stone
3. Blame It On Mom
4. Disappointed In You
5. Sad Vacation
6. You Can Walk My Dog
7. Pipeline
8. I Can't Go On Without You
9. Louie Louie / Hang On Sloopy
10. Society Makes Me Sad
11. Too Much Junkie Business > Pills
12. Just Another Girl
13. So Alone
14. Personality Crisis

Encore: (w/ Kiyoshiro Imawano on harmonica and backing vocals)
15. Born To lose
16. I Wanna Be Loved

The disc runs for 66 minutes and also contains a bonus feature which is a short bio write-up by Betty Chienne. The audio quality is solid and on-par with any of Thunders’ previously released live shows but the video is a bit hazy. The video editing shows some ‘amateur’ camera jerks and rough edits but it is very watchable and there is a lot worse –looking Thunders footage out there. While video only shows a single camera angle, the show was filmed with multiple cameras so you get to see different visual perspectives of the whole band in action along with close-ups of the members.





Long-time Johnny Thunders fans will want to check out this disc if they haven’t already picked up a copy.

Links:
Johnny Thunders

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New York Dolls - "Lookin' Fine on Television" DVD Review (MVD Video)

"The legendary and infamous New York Dolls at their best! Amazing rare live clips and interviews filmed by Bob Gruen and Nadya Beck in the heady days of the band's ascension in the 70s. Footage from early shows in NYC all the way to the TV studios, clubs and swimming pools of Los Angeles. Black and white film was never so colorful! Includes ripping versions of "Personality Crisis," "Who Are the Mystery Girls?" "Babylon" and more. See the incredible early days of the band that influenced generations of punks and rockers." -- Press Release

I'm the wrong person to write a review of the latest archival DVD from the New York Dolls, Lookin' Fine on Television, as my expectations likely don't match that of a casual fan. To back up, I've bought pretty much every NY Dolls release that I could put my hands over the last twenty years so I have a (too) large collection of the band's commercial releases, quasi-legitamate releases and bootlegs. As such, my expectations are high for any new archival release and Lookin' Fine on Television is a "good" but not "great" addition to the band's catalogue.

This new DVD consists of live audio tracks (likely from the '73 era of the Dolls) over which Gruen and Beck over-layed cut together live footage of the band playing that song from a number of different shows. The footage used came from a variety of shows which include local shows at Kenny's Castaways and Max's Kansas City as well as footage from the band's late '73 West Coast tour. Some of the footage includes clips of the band with Peter Jordan on bass, with Arthur (with his arm still in a cast) looking on, very brief clips from the band's Red Patent Leather era and some great shots of the Dolls' Halloween show at the Waldorf Astoria. As complete performances of songs from some of these shows were released on All Dolled Up, I keep hoping that the full performances will be released so I was a bit disappointed that the cut-together shots on Lookin' Fine on Television end up feeling more like a MTV-style music video than a live performance.



On a positive note, there is some cool interview footage sequenced between the songs. The disc starts with an impromptu interview with the full band who are relaxing on a meadow overlooking the City (and there are some brief shots of future Dolls Peter Jordan and Tony Machine during the interview). There are various clips from a poolside interview with David Johasen which was filmed in Los Angeles and there is also news footage coverage of the Dolls' 1973 Halloween bash.

The disc ends with a bonus clip that is absolutely priceless - this is a 1976 clip of David Johansen interviewing journalist Lisa Robinson on the street outside of CBGB and the taping is 'crashed' midway by a very mod-looking Johnny Thunders.

Links:
New York Dolls

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Andy Warhol's Bad - DVD Review (Warhol's last theatrical release)

Andy Warhol's last theatrical release Bad (1977) was recently re-released on DVD by the label Cheezy Flicks. The movie is classic, black-humored film noir that is set in the urban war zone of late 70's New York and this film may have set the stage for later films like Natural Born Killers and Serial Mom.

The film centers around Queens housewife Hazel Aiken who runs an electrolysis service out of her house but makes extra money by providing ruthless women to do hit jobs. The role is played with an icy ruthlessness by Carroll Baker but it was offered first to Vivian Vance.

Bob Colacello: "We had already tried to get Vivian Vance to play the lead... It was a far cry from the I Love Lucy show, but we thought Vivian Vance would be perfect for the part... Vivian Vance thought differently. 'I'd love to do it, Andy, I really would,' she told us over dinner at La Caravelle. 'But you must understand that for all those people out there I'm still Ethel Mertz, Lucy's next-door neighbor and the nicest woman in America, and that's why I can still go into any dinner theater in the country and get paid $20,000 a week, because all my nice fans in their mink stoles want to see Ethel Mertz be nice. I hate being nice and I hate my fans and I hate their mink stoles. But I love making $20,000 a week anytime I want..."



The movie starts with Cyrinda Foxe trashing a diner and some of the other "jobs" that Mrs. Aiken's girls take on include amputation (dropping a car on the person's legs) and both dog and baby killing. The censors originally gave this movie an X rating and the film was banned in Germany which may have been due to a scene where a baby is throw out of a window. The remorseless violence is consistently mixed with black humored one-liners - as the baby/doll lays splattered on the pavement, a mother turns to her child and says "That's what I'll do to you, if you don't shut up".

Mrs. Aiken's character is equal part cold-blooded killer and "June Cleaver" housewife and she rationalizes what she does as taking personal responsibility and having a professional work ethic. On one hand, Aiken arranges these murder-for-hire killings from a phone in her kitchen and tries short-changing the blind news stand person. On the other hand, she admonishes the trash-talking sisters Marsha and Glenda "I don't like toilet talk in my kitchen. You girls are colorful. A lot of girls today are."

The supporting characters are what gives the movie its character. There is the belching, gas-passing psycho Estelle ("I've got a lot of gas in me. My doctor says I'm an air swallower") who wants her neighbor's dog killed "viciously" as she believes that the neighbor made fun of her weight. There is the mincing and perpetually shell-shocked daughter-in-law Mary Aiken, played by Susan Tyrrell, who is completely out of touch with the world but, at the same time, seems to be the only sane character in this film. There is also Detective Hughes, played Charles McGregor, whose outrageously bad portrayal of a cop on the take, is so bad that it is campy fun.



Things start to go bad for Mrs. Aiken when Marsha and Glenda fail to complete the job of killing Lawrence Tierney's (who is referred to as "O'Reily O'Crapface") dog and layabout nephew L.T. (played by Perry King), who wanted in on the action, finds that he can't go forward with the killing of an autistic child. The movie ends with Aiken losing her cool as her world starts unraveling and taking her frustrations out on the wrong person. To say anymore though would spoil the movie's ending...

Links:
Andy's Warhol's Bad - Facebook Page

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Iggy & the Stooges - "Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans" DVD Review (MVD)

At 63, the “world’s forgotten boy” hasn’t slowed down. On Tuesday, MVD Entertainment will release Iggy and the Stooges' "Raw Power Live: In The Hands Of The Fans" on DVD and Blu-Ray. The video captures Iggy & the Stooges performing their classic album Raw Power along with tracks from the first two Stooges’ albums and Kill City at the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival on Friday, September 3, 2010.

I saw The Stooges at Roseland Ballroom on their first reunion tour. When Iggy jumped into the crowd and seemed to be heading right for me, I quickly stepped to the side as Iggy had an aura of frenetic unpredictableness which the cameras do a nice job of capturing on this disc. The concept behind this first “In The Hands Of The Fans” disc is that six fans were selected to film the concert and, following the performance, the fans meet and interview the band. The various camera angles do a great job of capturing the intensity of The Stooges’ performance and it gives the user the sense of almost being part of the crowd.

The half-naked and heavily muscled Iggy is backed by (retired Sony VP – how that for a career change?) James Williamson, whose licks sounds tighter than they did back in 1973, gunslinger bassist Mike Watt and the ever-steady Rock Action. This show isn’t Iggy and a backing band as return of James Williamson adds a darker tone to the band’s music which the rhythm section then locks on to. With saxophonist Steve Mackay, the band adds some of the free-form freak-out of the early Stooges to songs like "1970 (I Feel Alright)" and "Night Theme". The band plays with the energy that defies their age and their performance is on fire.

Continuing in his role as ‘chief instigator’, Iggy called out for dancers, spazzers and freaks and brought members of the audience on stage to dance and pogo while the band played “Shake Appeal” and he was in the crowd at the end of the band’s set.



Raw Power Live Track List
Raw Power
Search and Destroy
Gimme Danger
Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
Shake Appeal
I Need Somebody
Penetration
Death Trip
1970 (I Feel Alright)
Night Theme
Beyond the Law
I Got A Right
I Wanna Be Your Dog
Open Up & Bleed
Fun House
No Fun

Some of the bonus features include the original YouTube videos that the six fans who filmed the concert submitted along the post-show Q&A that these fans had with the band.



In an interview earlier this year with The Guardian, Iggy had the following to say on the Raw Power tour: "All we're doing now is finishing off a job…[a]nd I'm pleased to report that James has now learned to use his intelligence in balance with his more impulsive, aggressive side."

Links:
Iggy Pop

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Foreigner - "Live on Stage" DVD Review (XXL Media)

Prior to watching Foreigner’s forthcoming live DVD “Live On Stage”, I had completely forgotten about Japan’s Super Rock Festival. After doing some on-line searches, my best guess is that the festival ran two years - 1984 and 1985. This live set is from Foreigner’s appearance on August 10, 1985 and the band was touring behind their fifth disc, Agent Provocateur, at the time. The festival lineup appears to have been pretty eclectic as Foreigner played alongside Dio, Rough Cut, Mama’s Boys and Sting.

Foreigner’s performance runs sixty minutes and, while the set is weighted more toward AOR material from Foreigner 4 and Agent Provocateur, the band doesn’t ignore its older material and touches on songs from all of their albums. This DVD also marks the release of the first full-length concert by the Lou Graham fronted lineup of Foreigner. While Classic Hits Live also featured Lou Graham, it compiled tracks from shows between 1978 – 1988 and seems more weighted to the guitar-rock of Foreigner’s early days.

Super Rock Festival 1985 Set List:
1. Long, Long Way From Home
2. Head Games
3. Waiting For A Girl Like You
4. Luanne
5. That Was Yesterday
6. I Want To Know What Love Is
7. Reaction To Action
8. Urgent
9. Dirty White Boy
10. Hot Blooded
11. Juke Box Hero





While the AOR sound and synthesizer-driven power ballads of the 80’s may sound a bit dated today, bands like Van Halen (with Sammy Hagar), Night Ranger and Foreigner dominated FM-radio at that time. The overall performance is solid as the band had completed their evolution into an arena rock band with Agent Provocateur and any of the rough-edges from the band’s early days were long smoothed over.



The band hit their commercial peak with Foreigner 4 but any fans of the band will want to check out Live On Stage. This tour was the “last hurrah” for this lineup of the band as they ran out of gas two years later on Inside Information (1987).

Looking now at the audio and video quality - this show was broadcast on Japanese TV so all the footage is pro-shot and multi-camera. This brings up my one complaint with this disc as it looks like a VHS tape was used as the source that was one or two generations from the master. The audio portion of the show though sounds perfect.

Lou Graham is currently fronting The Lou Graham Band, who released a Christian rock album in 2009. Mick Jones and the Kelly Hansen-fronted lineup of Foreigner are currently on tour with Journey and Night Ranger.

Foreigner 2011 Tour Dates:
September 21, 2011 - San Antonio, TX - AT&T Center
September 22, 2011 - Austin, TX - Frank Erwin Center
September 24, 2011 - Dallas, TX - Gexa Energy Pavilion (SOLD OUT)
September 25, 2011 - Houston, TX - Cynthia Mitchell Woods Pavilion
September 27, 2011 - Oklahoma City, OK - Zoo Amphitheater
September 28, 2011 - Kansas City, MO - Starlight Theatre
September 30, 2011 - Albuquerque, NM - Hard Rock Casino presents the Pavilion
October 01, 2011 - Englewood, CO - Comfort Dental Amphitheatre
October 04, 2011 - Santa Barbara, CA - Santa Barbara Bowl
October 05, 2011 - Concord, CA - Sleep Train Pavilion at Concord
October 07, 2011 - Chula Vista, CA - Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
October 08, 2011 - Las Vegas, NV - MGM Grand Garden Arena
October 11, 2011 - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl
October 12, 2011 - Fresno, CA - Save Mart Center
October 14, 2011 - Wheatland, CA - Sleep Train Amphitheatre
October 15, 2011 - Mountain View, CA - Shoreline Amphitheatre
October 19, 2011 - Portland, OR - Rose Garden
October 21, 2011 - Seattle, WA - Key Arena

Links:
Foreigner

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