video

Rip It Up, Issue 165, 1 April 1991, Page 29

video

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS | The Road To God Knows Where - (BMG Video) ~ Inthis black and white on-the-road doco, the camera is a fly on the wall, filming Nick and co on their American tour. Most of the footage is behind the scenes, at the airport, backstage before and after gigs (no groupies, but we do get Lydia Lunch holding forth on her latest project), just zeroing in on dialogue (such as it is, altho’ if you have trouble fathoming the accents the whole film is subtitled), documenting the riffs and tiffs along the way. The concert footage is abbreviated, the emphasis in this video being on the viewer getting to follow the band off stage at the end of a show and onto the four bus as it fravels through Nowheresville USA. The camera

records whole interestingly mundane sequences like the band haggling with venue owners over the size of the P.A, or the manager ordering their backstage refreshment rider from a diner in the mid-west, or Nick getting bored rigid by long-winded interview questions from an LA Weekly reporter.

This video runs ot one hour fifty-three minutes, which is great value for money, especially as five Nick

Cave video clips are included at the end: ‘ln The Ghetto’, ‘Tupelo’, ‘The Singer’, The Mercy Seat’ and ‘Deannd’. AEROSMITH The Making of Pump (CMV Video) This video uniquely shows all the teamwork, pressures and patience that go into making a successful album and why Aerosmith have got what it takes. A cameraman was present for the entire recording of Pump and he captured some fascinating footage as songs develop from bare bone riffs into such rock n'roll masterpieces as

Young Lust, ‘Love In An Elevator’ and ‘Janie’s Got A Gun'.

Steven, Joe, Brad, Tom and Joey have a lot of hilarious fun in between but there’s also heated discussions and disagreements plus some loose jamming and interviews with each member. Two previously unreleased Pump video clips are also included to further document their achievements and take the running fime up to almost two hours.

Essential viewing for all Aerosmith fans or anyone interested in the painstaking process of songwriting and recording. GEOFF DUNN SNUBTV : : (Virgin Video) A selection of fourteen video clips from the British TV music programme SNUB TV with the emphasis on British artists like The Fall, Happy Mondays, Loop, Ride, Blue Aeroplanes, A Certain Ratio — tho’ also included is Tackhead plus the Cramps doing ‘All Woman Are Bad' at their London show. Each video is introduced by the artists in a two second interview slot so this compilation is really just music only — magazine-style news items not included. Still, all the videos are good, the only dud being James doing a song called ‘Government Walls', every bit as dull as he was in his interview, which was, naturally, the longest of the bunch. THE PUNK ROCK MOVIE (Polygram Video) : This is live, on the spot footage from

London, 1977, seventy seven minutes of famous punk personnages doing their thing, opening and closing with the Sex Pistols on stage at the Roxy, where much of the action focuses. A social document of mumbled backstage conversation, snatches of diologue, footage of the Clash on their tour bus, plus the Slits, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Slaughter & the Dogs, Johnny Thunder, Billy Idol, Wayne County, Subway Sect, X-Ray Spex. The hand held camera style of photography, poor lighting, poor quality colour and no voice-over linking segments or explaining or theorising means this doco comes across as “grittily authentic” and an important archive but a bit lacking in the information and enterfainment depariments. Especially after a decade of music packaged with MTV polish and cult film director stylishness. - ? DONNA YUZWALK