Brick
And Mortar And Love
(2013/MVD Visual DVD)/The
Doors: R-Evolution (Music
Video Compilation/Eagle Blu-ray)/Finland:
Helsinki & The Art Of Akseli Gallen-Kallela/Gardens
& Parks Of Europe
(1996/Naxos DVDs)
Picture:
C+/B-/C+/C Sound: C+/B/C+/C+ Extras: D/B/C-/C- Main
Programs: B-/B-/C/C+
This
is an unusual mix of special interest music releases worth knowing
about...
Scott
Shuffitt's Brick
And Mortar And Love
(2013) is a short 70 minutes, but it makes some big points about the
relevance, value and importance of having a physical store to go to
and enjoy seeing the movies, TV shows, music albums, CD, DVDs,
Blu-rays and tie-ins thereof because the best of these stores become
important parts of the community and meeting places for fans to meet
and discuss the arts and entertainment. Here, we visit Louisville,
Kentucky to see X-tacy Records, a big, huge store with all of the
above and more.
However,
like many great stores, often generic downloads, lowered standards
among consumers and boring product have hurt such stores and we see
the store struggle to stay afloat in the face of that and
ultra-boring chains where they never have as much good product, zero
atmosphere and hire no one who knows anything about what they sell.
We follow developments with the owner, employees, customers and more.
This
one could have been longer and much more needed to be said, but this
is still capturing the problem once-thriving mom-and-op stores face
in microcosm. It is an argument to support such stores and to find
innovative ways to help them survive. When so many such chains have
even folded, it is about personal service, but even that is often not
enough and too many customer get cheap and support the very things
that hurt and close such establishments, This is timely and worth
your time.
There
are sadly no extras.
The
Doors: R-Evolution
might seem like yet another release on the band to cash in on their
enduring popularity, but it
is actually a high quality set of the kind we have not seen on
Blu-ray nearly enough: the Music Video Compilation. In a smart move
inspired by the Soundies and Scopitones that offered music acts
playing songs in stereo that would play on 16mm juke boxes, the
president of the newly former Elektra Records, Jac Holzman, though
such films could help sell acts on his label. He was serious about
promoting his label in ways no one had before and The Doors would be
the first act and beneficiary of this treatment.
The
Beatles had inspired music acts to film similar music filmclips, but
they were adding a short film of Strawberry
Fields Forever
to their established feature film hits A Hard
Days Night
and Help!
This gave us new innovative ways to think of accompanying filmed
images with music, especially the then-rising Rock Genre. Holzman
made the correct call.
What
follows are the main videoclips, in order of how the songs appear
(sometimes in more than one version), followed by the date, image
format used to record the band and with any TV series they were on
where applicable:
Break
On Through (To The Other Side) Promo
Clip (16mm, color); January, 1967 + Shebang
with Casey Kasem, March 6, 1967 (NTSC analog color video)
The
Crystal Ship
- July 22, 1967 + Light
My Fire,
both American
Bandstand
with Dick Clark, July 22, 1967 (black and white 16mm film) &
Malibu
U,
August 25, 1967 (16mm film, color)
People
Are Strange
- Murray The K (New York Clip; NTSC analog color video), September
22, 1967
Moonlight
Drive
- The
Jonathan Winters Show,
(NTSC analog color video), December 27, 1967
The
Unknown Soldier
Promo Clip (16mm, color) with narrative, February, 1968
Hello,
I Love You
- Musix
fur Junge Leute: 4-3-2-1 Hot and Sweet,
Promo Clip (16mm, color), September 13, 1968
Touch
Me -
The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,
(NTSC analog color video), December 15, 1968
Wild
Child
Promo Clip (16mm, black & white), July, 1969
Roadhouse
Blues
Promo Clip (16mm, color) February, 1970
Crawling
King Snake
- GTK
(Get to Know)
Australian TV Series, (16mm, black & white), December, 1970
The
Changeling
Promo Clip (16mm, color), April, 1971
Retro
Music Videos: Gloria
- October, 1983, People
Are Strange
(for 1980s VHS releases, et al), Strange
Days - 1984,
L.A.
Woman - 1985
& Ghost
Song
- 1995
Save
the retro clips being stuck in their older styles and edited the same
way, plus obviously missing the band, the clips hold up well and when
they do not, they are great time capsules of the band. Add the
original audio and it is as significant a release on the band as we
have seen to date. I hope this inspires more such sets on Blu-ray
for all acts old and new, but so many pre-MTV/Music Video acts have
plenty of filmed materials as do many in the 1980s. This is the way
to do such a set, including having true multi-channel sound from the
master tapes of the studio albums. That makes this one of the most
important music releases of 2014.
Extras
include a nicely illustrated booklet on high quality paper with tech
information and an essay on the collection, while the Blu-ray adds a
picture-in-picture commentary option where we see interview clips
talking about each clip and song by the surviving members of the band
(Ray Manzarek taped his before his passing) that is not non-stop but
effective, the Breaking
Through The Lens
documentary, an Isle of Wright 1970 performance of Break
On Through (To The Other Side),
outtakes from a 1967 Malibu
U
shoot and an amusing (intentionally and unintentionally) 1966 Ford
Motor Company training film called Love
Thy Customer
that the band did a full instrumental score for. A real hoot!
Finally
we have two DVD releases in Naxos' Musical
Journey
series: Finland:
Helsinki & The Art Of Akseli Gallen-Kallela
and Gardens
& Parks Of Europe
(both 1996) covering their respective subjects only in music and
images. The former has many more images of artworks than I would
have liked, while the latter could not be long enough with its scenic
images, though the former is sadly lacking in its own outdoor shots.
Jean
Sibelius is used for most of Finland's
nearly 54 minutes run, while Chopin, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Bizet
and Tchaikovsky accompany the nearly 63 minutes of Garden.
I can se the interest in these special interest titles and they
deserve to be reissued (we gather VHS might have been their debut
format) and those who might find the combination pleasant viewing
will mostly not be disappointed. I was only so impressed, but they
are not bad.
Paper
pullouts are the only extras.
The
1080i 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer (framing the
1.33 X 1 clips in the center of the HDTV wide frame) on Doors
can obviously show the age of the materials used, but the filmed
material (16mm, usually color) shows the best improvements in ways
that allow us to see the actual band in vivid ways we have never seen
before. The upscaled NTSC video also looks pretty good. The DVDs
are a little softer at least with the
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Brick
and 1.33 X 1 image on Finland
having their share of good shots, but also more than a few tough
ones. That leaves the 1.33 X 1 image on Gardens
having even more softness and aliasing errors throughout.
As
for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Doors
can range from the original mono of some of the live recordings on TV
true multi-channel representations of the hit songs from
their original sound masters as introduced on 5.1 mixes of the albums
in the now-defunct DVD-Audio format (with its MLP, Meridian Lossless
Packing) that is well mixed and presented here too. Eagle and
company have done a terrific job here.
As
for the DVDs, Brick
has a lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 mix that is stereo often enough, while the two
classical DVDs have PCM
2.0 Stereo mixes
that are not bad, not great, simple, on par with each other and get
the job done.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
