The adventurous Warp offer prize videos from the likes of Chris Cunningham ("Windowlicker", "Come To Daddy") alongside promos by, among others, fellow Sheffield alumni Jarvis Cocker. Lesser known but equally arresting, Jimi Tenor's "Total Devastation" and John Callaghan's "I'm Not Comfortable Inside My Mind" help make this an intriguing alternative history of one of the UK's most far-sighted labels.
Uncut recounted the tale of Fleetwood Mac's improbable reunion at length in May last year (Take 72). Now come two DVD releases commemorating the resumption of rock'n'roll's longest-running soap opera. Live In Boston is a straightforward concert film shot in September 2003 on their first tour in five years. The band clearly miss Christine McVie, the only member of the classic mid-'70s line-up not to participate, and on one level, they offer up stadium rock of the blandest kind.
The old warhorse's socio-political eco-musical in miniature
Recorded last December at the end of the 2003 world tour, it's spooky watching Gary Brooker singing "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" so many years after it scored 1967's summer of love. Yet his voice hasn't altered one iota. A third of the 21 tracks come from their 2003 album, The Well's On Fire. But it's old favourites like "Homburg", "Shine On Brightly" and "A Salty Dog" that command all the attention.
The late Tom Dowd's influence on music is legendary. As an engineer, he invented the eight-track recorder. As Atlantic Records' in-house producer, he worked with Dizzy Gillespie and Ornette Coleman before helping Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, The Allman Brothers and Ray Charles. His life is traced here through interviews with Dowd himself, Charles, Franklin, Ahmet Ertegun and Eric Clapton, and through fine archive footage and recordings, Inspiring.
Compilation of live concert footage, TV clips and Marky Ramone's on-the-road video footage from 1979-2002 misses the Ramones' prime. Marky's films are mundane trivia with little character insight. MTV news clips tell the story of Dee Dee's drug addiction and departure only in passing, but alongside their tearful Rock'n'Roll Hall Of Fame induction, the impressive live footage shows why they outlasted their peers.
Stats show that Middle America's "mass moral outrage" at Janet's Superbowl boob-bearing came from a noisy couple of hundred. Her career may survive, then, though no thanks to this year's scrappy LP Damita Jo. This gathers all the videos from the last four, the best of which is "That's The Way Love Goes", where she maximises her feline moves, timid voice, and gorgeous loping grooves. But she's definitely in decline.
Though Ween spent over a decade growing into one of America's biggest cult bands, renowned for a live show of bad taste and dizzying chaos, this is a curiously tame, professional fair. Brothers Dean and Gene blow through a lengthy 26-song set with flawless musicianship, but with the passion of a band who know they are knocking on and that the juvenile japes are wearing thin. One for Ween devotees.
Recorded in March, this is the same stylish stage show that Sparks brought to London earlier this year. Built around the Li'l Beethoven set, you also get a big helping of bonus tracks from that beguiling back catalogue, including the scarily prescient "The Calm Before The Storm". The motorik medley of "The Number One Song In Heaven" and "Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth" takes some beating.
Now that Oasis have been written into British rock history alongside The Beatles, The Sex Pistols and all those other elder statesmen they so publicly admired and absorbed, 1984's Definitely Maybe survives as a revered, although sometimes distant, memory. These days when Oasis play Glastonbury, there are waves of excitement but no huge hullabaloo about their perfunctory parade of greatest hits, and their albums have ceased to generate the expectation, the queues around the block in Oxford Street, that was once the norm.
