I Love Music on DVD

Saint Et's 'Smash The System' is coming out on DVD soon. All the vids each with a commentary from Sarah, Pete & Bob. Woo-hoo! That's all I want thanks.

Zanny - Can I hijack/expand this thread (slightly) to repeat a question I posed on another thread:

In addition to DVDs of 'hits', a number of "classic" LPs have been reissued in this format for some reason (Grateful Dead, Phil Collins, etc). I suspect many of these are rip-offs, attempts to dupe you into buying your collection all over again, with minimal extras provided. But - and here's my question - are there any examples out there of good "DVD albums"? Please name them and say what makes them good value for money or otherwise worth owning.

How DARE you!

Seriously though, has anyone produced a decent DVD album yet? The SFA and Orbital ones were underwhelming.

My favourite music DVD so far is probably the Suede's "Lost in TV". The fact that it is a comprehensive 'best of' which only came out on DVD (as opposed to a CD version) probably helps. The new ABBA one is also ace.

I know I'll probably get laughed at but I heard the Beastie Boys DVD Anthology is without peer.

But they left off "Fight For You Right"! That's one piece of Beastie revisionism that I just can't accept.

Portishead left just "Glory Box" off their career-spanning DVD too. What's all that about then?

I taped that off VH1 Classic earlier in the week so I'm not that upset. I am wondering, though: near the end of the video we see some dude in a blue tracksuit and Kangol hat participating in the huge pie fight. Is that LL Cool J?

The Suede one looks like a winner, I've got it on order. The Smashing Pumpkins retrospective is grand -- the commentary is often hilarious, many of the videos are just marvellous to look at ("Tonight Tonight," "1979," "Stand Inside Your Love," "Ava Adore") and there are some fun bonuses scattered around, including alternate footage and outtakes for all the videos. My housemate has the Blur one -- nothing extra beyond the videos, but it's a nice presentation all around. The Super Furry Animals Rings Around the World DVD equivalent = great fun! The Cult collection = great for watching Ian and Billy as ever evolving fashion victims. The Residents one is enjoyable enough, the Depeche collection a little too bare bones but hey.

The Cure on DVD have not been served well -- there's the recent greatest hits one with the acoustic session, yes, but it doesn't have every video, so foo. A comprehensive Joy Division/New Order one would be nice, as would a Siouxsie and a Soft Cell/Marc Almond overview; an Adam Ant collection is an absolute necessity. I'm interested in the Hype Williams compilation that just came out as well...

More yak on DVD music here. More about the DVD audio than videos, though. As for the Beasties DVD, it's GRATE...on-the- fly flipping between audio and video tracks so that you can get "remixes" as you go. Definitely the best DVD implementation I've seen. I'm assuming the lack of "Fight For Your Right" is related to licensing issues, since it was on a diff. label and all.

Ah, the Banshees. Now that WOULD be a good DVD:

- Promos for all the tracks on "Once & Twice Upon a Time" - Bonus live selections from "Nocturne" (with an uncomfortable looking Fat Bob - Surly TV interviews circa 1979 and 1983-6 - Complete discogrpahy with record sleeves - Featurette on why they could never hold onto their guitarists - Monatage of publicity photos featuring Siouxsie's oddly attractive hairy armpits

I still think that the promo video for "Peek-A-Boo" is my favourite ever. The way in which the Banshees lurk about in the shadows looking creepy, and then dance around playing radiators with buckets on their heads makes them pretty much the coolest backing back of all time IMHO.

I see that, if that Beastie Boys link is anything to by, the same Region 1/not-Region 1 problems are going to arise with music on DVD as currently occur with movies. Boo.

...in which case I may well have to follow Ned's (no doubt sage) advice on the Young Ones thread and get this.

Although, according to Play.com, the Beasties DVD is Region 0 (i.e. open to everyone).

If anyone could confirm this, I'll be £17.99 (including delivery) poorer.

I too want a comprehensive New Order promo videos disc with maybe a few live things from PFD, Taras Shevchenko, etc thrown in. It could be built around NewOrderStory but I want the promos in full

And I really want a DVD of the videos that Daft Punk did with Leiji Matsumoto from Discovery

Also, there really should have been a DVD release with the Jesus and Mary Chain singles comp. They were just about the coolest looking guys on the planet circa Just Like Honey.

and while we're at it, Sony ought to throw together a Creation videography. (MBV, House of Love, Primals, etc even Hairstyle of the Devil!)

Pet Shop Boys promos

and then, and then... I'm perpetually in shock at the trash that's being offered on Music/Video DVDs

Best of Blur!!!!
Mostly cause I never got to see them on MM in the first place. And also cause it has that cute milk carton.
Otherwise you can't go wrong with Stop Making Sense on DVD.

The SFA DVD is great for the extra tracks and remixes, but half the films look like those Flash animations b3ta is so keen on. Live concerts work well, especially Underworld's "Everything, Everything", apparently Rick Smith went a bit mad editing that for 6 months. I wish Orbital would release a live DVD rather than a surround sound version of their worst album, ideally including the V96 versions of Chime and Impact on the Satan single, one of the best live performances I've seen (I'm too square to go to Glastonbury).

Greatest hit collections leave me a bit cold, I've played the Massive Attack DVD once and that's a band I really like who consistently make good videos, though it's just about worth it for the big hats they wore in the early days. Having said that I look forward to the Smash The System audio commentary, Saint Etienne are always good value in interviews, and a Chemical Brothers collection might work, the Star Guitar DVD single is good.

I don't have surround sound (where do you put all the speakers?), does it add anything to music or is it just a distracting novelty?

seems to be no problem getting region-free dvd players. look around on the web.

. . . I'm curious as to how many DVD-singles there are around (& if they're any good, obv) - I've seen a few turn up in Dunedin (Kylie, mainly) & know that Björk & Pulp have had one or two - are they much more common in the US/UK?

See, the whole DVD single thing is, to me, a complete brain fart: "HEY! We have a whole 17 gigabytes of storage space available to us on this new format, what should we do with it? I know! A single! Two or three songs plus maybe a video!" I mean, to hell with releasing a single DVD with an artist's entire back catalogue on it, and to hell with converting box sets to a nice easily-fileable compact package with all the liner notes ON THE DISC (for those who value succinctness in physical form). I mean, Jesus, what they're putting onto these DVD singles could easily fit into the bounds of the old CD format capacity limitation. It just reminds me of the old CD single format when they tried to bring out the CD-3, a much more efficient use of plastic and metal, and people just pissed all over it. Now, almost every CD-ROM drive and carousel component system has the little notch for handling CD-3, but the discs themselves are, for the most part, collectors items. Weird people.

3" CDs are coming back slowly but surely though. Those notches are going to start proving very handy.