I spent last weekend catching up on a bunch of music-related video stuff that I’d been meaning to get around to for one reason or another. Your results may vary.
I don’t really know how I avoided seeing 1991: The Year Punk Broke until now, as I recall liking the music Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr., the Ramones, et al made around that time and all. I’d think someone in my peer group would have insisted at one time or another. After viewing, however, I understand why word-of-mouth never recommended this for consumption: the movie is basically the worst piece of crap possible. It’s redeemed not even slightly by its inclusion of decent performance footage of the bands playing, due to shitty sound. Also, every time Thurston Moore talks on camera any decent person would want to punch him and not stop until he stops talking, he’s so goddamn annoying. This is a waste of even a fan’s time. I made it through to the end though, yay me.
Conversely, The Devil and Daniel Johnston was thoroughly enjoyable and recommended viewing for pretty much anyone. It’s a great story of which I only knew about half, as it turns out, and previous familiarity with the work of Daniel isn’t necessary — frankly the less familiar with him you are, the more surprising the film would probably be. Well-done on every level, not just as a music-related artifact: I’d recommend this wholeheartedly to anyone who enjoyed American Splendor, for example.
Thurston Moore also appears onscreen in Pavement’s Slow Century, a fairly standard here’s-the-story-and-some-performance-footage recap of the band’s history. Pavement wasn’t the kind of band that lent itself to wacky tour antics or legendary rumors, so there isn’t much here in the way of big shocker moments — I imagine this would be pretty hard to get through if you didn’t already have an interest in the music of Pavement, so non-fans should probably skip this one. I pretty much enjoyed it throughout, though I can’t imagine I’ll be going back to rewatch it anytime soon.
The Sex Pistols’ There’ll Always Be An England is their first legitimate live performance video, which seems pretty surprising considering the amount of live Pistols performance footage I’ve seen over the years. Shot in London, basically There’ll Always Be An England and the bonus documentary The Knowledge both feature middle-aged men revisiting the sights, sounds, and locations of their childhoods. Not bad, but not great — if you didn’t like the live reunion album Filthy Lucre you won’t like this either, and I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who’s not a Pistols aficionado. Way too many random shots of people in the crowd mouthing the words to the tunes, too, cut that shit out, director Julien Temple. I also watched a bootleg of the Pistols’ “last” show in San Fransisco, 1978, and the comparison was illuminating: young guys playing songs badly vs. older men plodding through the same songs nearly 30 years on. One thing is constant throughout though, and that’s that John Lydon/Johnny Rotten is always pretty entertaining no matter what else happens to be going on. Temple’s The Filth and The Fury remains the definitive Pistols video, though.
Pistols guitarist Steve Jones also pops up in Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a mostly loving tribute to the deceased Clash leader (also by Temple — though sporting a somewhat contradictory title to the Pistols release) that does us the service of not glossing over Strummer’s willingness to discard friends in order to conform with punk orthodoxy, his long post-Clash fallow period, or his ongoing anxiety over coming from less-than-impoverished roots. The contrived “campfire setting for all the interviews” gimmick is a little over-the-top corny and pretentious all at the same time, and whenever a famous face pops up onscreen (Johnny Depp, John Cusack, Martin Scorsese) you know they’re just going to yammer some intolerable bullshit with no bearing on reality whatsoever, but there’s a surprising amount of documentation of even the earliest days of the Clash here and it’s mostly told in Joe’s own words thanks to extensive use of interview recordings and his radio show broadcasts. Falls short of wide Devil and Daniel Johnston-type appeal, but nice for anyone who ever even kinda liked the Clash.
The Ultimate Revenge, featuring vintage early 80’s performances by Venom, Slayer, and Exodus, is basically just intertwined excerpts of Venom, Slayer, and Exodus playing at Studio 54 (the titular ‘revenge’ is on disco, to show you just how much this thing is a product of its time) along with some execrable interview footage. Slayer is pretty awesome, Exodus is pretty bad but with surprisingly good guitar leads, Venom is kinda corny but enjoyably so in that over-the-top classic metal way. Let’s face it though, there’s no need for caveats here — unless you’re already way into classic mid-80s metal you’re not even gonna think about trying to track this one down.
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