♫ Having just bought the
most hilarious music documentary yet (‘on the rock trail with...pink floyd’,
available now at Poundland and—five minutes later—all good charity shops), here
is the latest in our top-five guides, sponsored, once again, by the credit
crunch. Most websites list the best DVDs starring their favourite groups—here
we list the worst, the ones that you really don’t want to fork out money for,
most of them made without the groups actual consent… :
5) ‘Grateful Dawg’ - Jerry Garcia and David
Grisman. That old expression ‘ you had to be there’ could have been invented
for the Grateful Dead and some of their concerts lose something when seen on
video instead of just audio (or live on stage). But perhaps the worst, or at
any rate the strangest, is this feature-length documentary, following a largely
grumpy Jerry Garcia preparing for a new acoustic album and tour with his old
friend Mr Grisman. The pair have a great deal of history together—they wrote
’Friend of The Devil’ from the Dead’s American Beauty album for starters, but
by the early 1990s Garcia is recovering from a diabetic coma that saw him
having to learn how to play the guitar all over again and away from the Dead he
seems tired and bored, unsure quite what he’s doing making yet another album
only the deadicated few will get to hear. The likeable Grisman, meanwhile,
seems unsure whether to push his old friend along or sit back and wait for the
magic to happen—which sadly it usually doesn’t. The problem, unlike most DVDs
of this type, isn’t the direction—the film-maker, Grisman’s daughter, actually
does a great job at cobbling this stuff together to (nearly) tell a story. But
alas her team have filmed the wrong period of activity —nothing here happens
for an hour and a half, except that the pair of musicians sing a few obscure
nursery rhymes badly for the camera and record a moody music video in
black-and-white that never actually got released at the time. For two talents
of this magnitude, these clips are meagre returns for your money.
4)’George Harrison: Up Close And Personal’,
etc. Well, it was only £1 from poundland, but basically all I learnt from this
DVD was that there was more to the Beatle than met the eye (not that we ever
find out what that was) and that he was fairly quiet (disputable that—hence the
sheer number of anecdotes about him and the amount of press clips from the
Beatle days there have been on other videos and DVDs down the years—not that
the compilers of this get to show any of this, banned as they were from using
pretty much any interesting footage). As for being ’close up and personal’, the
only thing we see that’s really personal is the director’s prejudices for some
old Beatle rumours heard hundreds of times over and (more often than not) now
accepted to be wrong. Even the much
maligned mass-produced ‘Yellow Submarine’ lunchboxes and playing cards made out
of knickers had more Beatles integrity than this. Strangely, the John Lennon
DVD in the same series is actually quite good in oits own right (its amazing by
comparison to this one!) and a bargain at the same price!
3)10cc: Live In Japan/The Classic Hits Tour/The
Alive Tour. It’s been out three times this DVD and it still hasn’t got any
better. The last title is especially wrong:10cc have never sounded more bored
or zombiefied than on this concert. According to most accounts that have come
out since, founding members Graham Gouldmann and Eric Stewart really weren’t
getting on all that well in the early 90s and only re-united as 10cc because
their record label Mercury had, bizarrely, decided to resurrect their contract
and force them back into work (the last 10cc albums had—very unfairly I
think—sold so poorly that both parties had been happy to let things rest in
1983). This tour, to promote the record
’Meanwhile’ (1992), finds both supremely talented men bored out of their minds
and all but glancing at their wrist-watches to work out when they can go home
and curse the day theye ever became musicians. The only other semi-original
member present is archive favourite Rick Fenn (who was with the band 1978-80
and also worked with Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason on a joint album), looking, if
anything, even more bored than his partners—even his fiery guitar-work sounds strangely
subdued here. A very obvious track selection broken up by three poorly played
Beatle originals or Beatle-recorded covers, doesn’t help, but the one unusual
track here which used to sound amazing live— ‘Feel The Benefit’ - is the set’s
lowest moment, mangled by the band quite horribly. I’m tempted to say that the
band were purely going through the motions in order to get the money, but
actually that’s wrong—I saw this line-up, minus Eric Stewart, at the
much-missed Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in Birmingham just a year after this gig
and they were great. Another case of right band, wrong tour?
2) On the rock trail with...The Rolling Stones.
What do you do when you want to make some easy money, own a video camera and
access to the same two pictures of the Stones that everyone else whose even
vaguely interested in music does? You make a DVD of course! Saving money on the
important stuff (research; presenters who don’t look as if they’re reading an
autocue they bought that morning; any post-production whatsoever), this DVD
went on sale for £1 and actually looks like it cost less than that to make.
1)On the rock trail with...Pink Floyd. Blooming
heck, this one’s even worse! It takes four minutes before the band even gets a
mention, given the pretentious opening (camera pans across the narrator’s house
before eventually—150 seconds in—finding him in the bath, surrounded by rubber
ducks, talking about his jeans!) There is a mistake in every other sentence of
the text (and the ones in-between might be accurate but have badly gotten hold
of the wrong end of the stick!) and, despite what it says on the back cover,
the narrator’s only qualifications to talk about Pink Floyd seem to be that he
once saw them at a 1975 festival while waiting for somebody else to turn up and
that he owns a copy of dark side of the moon (as do a third of the world’s
population!) Actually, if you see this DVD on sale and have a spare pound
ready, I urge you to buy it—if you have even a slight knowledge about this
band, this will be the funniest thing you’ll have watched in years!
A NOW COMPLETE List Of Top Five/Top Ten/TOP TWENTY Entries 2008-2019
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This week we’re going to have a look at the 10 AAA singles that spent the most weeks at number on the American chart ‘Billboard’ – and it makes for...
Following on from last issue’s study of the American Billboard charts, here’s a look at which AAA albums spent the most weeks on the chart. The...
There are many dying arts in our modern world: incorruptible politicians, faith that things are going to get better and the ability to make decent...
This week we’ve decided to dedicate our top ten to those unsung heroes of music, the session musicians, whose playing often brings AAA artists (and...
Naturally we hold our AAA bands in high esteem in these articles: after all, without their good taste, intelligence and humanity we’d have nothing to...
What do you do when you’ve left a multi-million selling band and yet you still feel the pull of the road and the tours and the playing to audiences...
‘The ATOS Song’ (You’re Not Fit To Live)’ (Mini-Review) Dear readers, we don’t often feature reviews of singles over albums or musicians who aren’t...
In honour of this week’s review of an album released to cash in on a movie soundtrack (only one of these songs actually appears in ‘Easy Rider’...and...
Hic! Everyone raise a glass to the rock stars of the past and to this week’s feature...songs about alcolholic beverages! Yes that’s right, everything...
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Everyone has a spiritual home, even if they don’t actually live there. Mine is in a windy, rainy city where the weather is always awful but the...
Having a family does funny things to some musicians, as we’ve already seen in this week’s review (surely the only AAA album actually written around...
Some artists just have no idea what their best work really is. One thing that amazes me as a collector is how consistently excellent many of the...
221) Dr Who and the AAA (Five Musical Links) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/dr-who-and-five-musical-links-to-alans.html
222) Five Random Recent Purchases http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/five-random-recent-purchases-news-views.html
223) AAA Grammy Nominees http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/aaa-grammy-nominees-top-twelve-news.html
224) Ten AAA songs that are better heard unedited and in full http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/ten-aaa-songs-that-are-better-unedited.html
225) The shortest gaps between AAA albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-shortest-gaps-between-aaa-albums.html
226) The longest gaps between AAA albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-longest-gaps-between-aaa-albums.html
227) Top ten AAA drummers http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2014/03/top-ten-aaa-drummers-news-views-and.html
228) Top Ten AAA Singles (In Terms of 'A' and 'B' Sides) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/top-ten-aaa-singles-and-b-sides-news.html
229) The Stories Behind Six AAA Logos http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/the-stories-behind-six-aaa-logos.html
230) AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!! The Best Ten AAA Screams http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-best-aaa-screams-top-ten-news-views.html
231) An AAA Pack Of Horses http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aaa-songs-about-horses-top-ten-news.html
232) AAA Granamas - Sorry, Anagrams! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aaa-anagrams-news-views-and-music-issue.html
233) AAA Surnames and Their Meanings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/aaa-surnames-and-their-meanings-news.html
234) 20 Erroneous AAA Album Titles http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/twenty-erroneous-aaa-album-titles-news.html
235) The Best AAA Orchestral Arrangements http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/fifteen-great-aaa-string-parts-news.html
236) Top 30 Hilariously Misheard Album Titles/Lyrics http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/top-thirty-hilariously-misheard-aaa.html
237) Ten controversial AAA sackings - and whether they were right http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/ten-controversial-aaa-sackings-news.html
238) A Critique On Critiquing - In Response To Brian Wilson http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/a-critique-on-critiquing-in-response-to.html
239) The Ten MusicianS Who've Played On The Most AAA Albums http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-ten-musicians-whove-played-on-most.html
240) Thoughts on #CameronMustGo http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/thoughts-on-cameronmustgo.html
241) Random Recent Purchases (Kinks/Grateful Dead/Nils Lofgren/Rolling Stones/Hollies) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/six-random-recent-purchases-kinksg.html
242) AAA Christmas Number Ones http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/aaa-christmas-number-ones.html
243) AAA Review Of The Year 2014 (Top Releases/Re-issues/Documentaries/DVDs/Books/Songs/ Articles plus worst releases of the year) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/aaa-review-of-year-2014.html
244) Me/CFS Awareness Week 2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/mecfs-awareness-week-at-alans-album.html
245) Why The Tory 2015 Victory Seems A Little...Suspicious http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/why-tory-victory-seems-deeply.html
246) A Plea For Peace and Tolerance After The Attacks on Paris - and Syria http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/a-plea-for-peace-and-toleration.html
247) AAA Review Of The Year 2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-aaa-review-of-year-2015.html
248) The Fifty Most Read AAA Articles (as of December 31st 2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-fifty-most-read-aaa-posts-2008-2015.html
249) The Revised AAA Crossword! http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016_07_10_archive.html
251) Half-A-Dozen Berries Plus One (An AAA Tribute To Chuck Berry) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/an-aaa-covers-tribute-to-chuck-berry.html
254) Guest Post: ‘Supertramp – Some Things Never Change’ by Kenny Brown https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/guest-review-supertramp-some-things.html
255) AAA Review Of The Year 2018 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-aaa-review-of-year-2018.html
256) AAA Review Of The Year 2019 plus Review Of The Decade 2010-2019 https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-alans-album-archives-review-of-year.html
257) Tiermaker https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2019/06/alans-album-archives-on-tiermaker.html
258) #Coronastock https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2020/04/coronastock.html
259) #Coronadocstock https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2020/05/coronadocstock.html
