As the year draws to an end and the Christmas shopping rush really kicks into gear, the Mail & Guardian offers up three new music DVDs that could fill the stocking of a loved one this festive season.
Some Girls: Live In Texas ’78 — The Rolling Stones (EMI)
In 1978 The Rolling Stones had their backs up against the wall.
Keith Richards was in and out of court for drug possession and the band had a relatively new guitarist in Ronnie Wood.
Punk had landed and many critics no longer praised every move they made.
It is against this backdrop that the band’s album Some Girls should be understood.
The hard-riffing fast rock songs were a direct response to the onslaught of punk; the Rolling Stones were standing their ground, refusing to be deemed irrelevant.
2011 saw the reissuing of the Stones’ 14th studio album and now the DVD has hit the stores.
Titled Some Girls: Live in Texas ’78 the DVD features a rollicking set from the Stones, featuring many of the songs from the new album such as Beast of Burden, Miss You and Respectable, as well as classics like Jumpin Jack Flash and Brown Sugar.
Jagger dressed in plastic pants, an oversized jacket and a T-shirt that has a swastika and the word “destroy” spray-painted on to it, is jester one minute, rock god the next.
Behind him Richards and Woods are the guitar attack, dressed like true 70s rockers with open shirts and sashes tied around their waste.
The show is kick ass on the whole, despite a few pedestrian moments like the country ballad Far Away Eyes and the plain ordinary When The Whip Comes Down.
But with spirited performances of Chuck Berry’s Let It Rock and Sweet Little 16 and Robert Johnson’s Love in Vain, this live show is a killer: a window onto the Rolling Stones, a year after punk broke.
Pearl Jam Twenty — Cameron Crowe (Sony)
Edited, and I use that term loosely, down from 1Â 200 hours of footage of Pearl Jam, Crowe’s new documentary tells the story of Seattle’s second most famous grunge rockers.
Naturally the story starts with the story of Mother Love Bone.
From the break-up of those original grunge rockers, following singer Andrew Wood’s death, Pearl Jam was birthed.
Growing up as a teenager through grunge, I was familiar with much of the back story, however the early sections of this film were still enlightening.
But once the band gets into the album-by-album recount of their career, things start to drag.
To be honest I stopped listening to Pearl Jam after 1996’s No Code and maybe that is why I found the later footage boring. It has to be said the lack of flow is as much the fault of the editing as the narrative.
Pearl Jam fans are probably going to love this and there is some great live footage — but, to be honest, seeing Eddie Vedder swinging from speaker stacks and lighting rigging before launching himself into the crowd, reminded me how much more vital rock ‘n roll feels when you are young — and how much more dangerous.
Thankfully both Eddie Vedder and I are old enough now to know that the footage included in this film is insane and he’s lucky to still be alive.
You get sight of that mature, weathered Vedder throughout the film — and it’s interesting, but not captivating. This film is definitely not essential.
Johnny Yesno Redux — Cabaret Voltaire (Just Music)
In 1979 Peter Care’s short film Johnny Yesno was completed with a soundtrack from Sheffield electronic music outfit Cabaret Voltaire.
In 1981 the band released their soundtrack as a standalone release and then in 1983 they released the film on VHS.
Now in 2011 we get the whole package and then some.
So what do you get? Well two audio discs of Richard H Kirk’s new mixes of the soundtrack, plus a DVD containing the original VHS release and a second DVD with a redux of the film and 140 minutes of bonus footage.
So why should you care? Cabaret Voltaire were one of the most important experimental electronic bands to come out of the post-punk movement in the UK and the film is worth watching just to see how the band’s music works within the context of the film.
The film itself owes a lot to the work of Kenneth Anger and the Kuchar Brothers and while it is not essential viewing, if you’ve ever cared for Cabaret Voltaire, the music is fascinating and well worth spending some time with.