Such sounds
to behold

>> A flying sleigh full of musical DVDs

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Sorry, true believers, the Elvis Presley DVD Elvis Lives: The 25th Anniversary Concert (ComingHome/EMI) boasts no grainy Bigfoot footage of a balding, bearded and breathing King of Rock ’n’ Roll at some godforsaken Burger King. Rather, at this event at the Pyramid Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee “reunites” him, or at least projected archival material from his last concerts, with his original TCB band and back-up singers.

Speaking of Tennessee, country-rock aficionados will dig the concert film Volunteer Jam (Eagle Rock), a 1975 Charlie Daniels Band gig in that fine state, supplemented by Southern rockers the Marshall Tucker Band and, from the Allman Brothers, Dickey Betts and Chuck Levall.

From 10 years earlier than that comes the Beatles film Help! (Apple/EMI), director Richard Lester’s 1965 opus of mod screwballery. The sweet new DVD edition totes a second disc full of memories and memorabilia. Note also the Paul McCartney three-DVD set The McCartney Years (Rhino/Warner), which goes through Paul’s post-Beatles career with a fine-toothed comb, dredging up videos, interviews, concerts and more.

Worth noting as well is the Austin City Limits DVD series (New West/Fontana), which looks beyond the TV show’s C&W mandate and touches on talents like David Byrne and the Polyphonic Spree.

It’s a bounteous year for fans of Led Zeppelin. A recent arrival on the racks is Mothership (Atlantic/Warner), a two-CD, 24-track best-of selected by Page, Plant and Jones themselves, with liner notes by David Fricke. Do seek out the deluxe edition, with an hour and a half of concert footage on DVD, and feel free to double it up under the Christmas tree with The Soundtrack From the Film The Song Remains the Same (Atlantic/Warner). The CD’s contents are remastered, obviously, but also include a half-dozen previously unreleased tracks from the 1973 Madison Square Garden show, and liner notes by Cameron Crowe.

Santana’s Hymns For Peace: Live at Montreux 2004 (Eagle Rock) is two DVDs of tunes not from the band’s catalogue, but rather covers of peace anthems, from Bob Marley to “The Banana Boat Song” (what?!). The lord of Latino rock is joined by the likes of Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Angélique Kidjo, Steve Winwood and Ravi Coltrane (whose dad’s “A Love Supreme” is the penultimate jam here). For a proper Santana retrospective, toss in a copy of the CD Ultimate Santana (Arista/Sony BMG).

Kidjo is one of a bumper crop of names that pop up on Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis (Warner). The two DVDs and one CD gather up clips of Beastie Boys and Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi and Genesis, the Police and Duran Duran, Rihanna, Wolfmother and a mother-load more (including, as a closer, Madonna jamming out with Gogol Bordello!) at the various Live Earth shows worldwide that occurred this past July. For an effort against global warming, this one is hot, hot, hot!

Attention, metalheads: Heaven & Hell, which is essentially Dio-era Black Sabbath (the H&H moniker was adopted so as not to be confused with the still-kicking original line-up) offer the DVD Live Radio City Music Hall 2007 (Rhino/Warner). Also of note is AC/DC’s Plug Me In (Columbia/Sony BMG), two DVDs crammed full of concert footage from 1975 through 2003, divided between the early days with the late Bon Scott at the mic and the more recent Brian Johnson stuff.

Disciples of Judas Priest, meanwhile, might dig War of Words: The Film (Metal God/Fusion III), a doc with extras about Rob Halford’s post-Priest band Fight.

For a more recent variant on dirty, raw, dark and heavy, get hammered by Nine Inch Nails, whose 2006 tour gets parsed on the DVD Live: Beside You In Time (Interscope/Universal). It’s an anamorphic widescreen, surround-sound spread of 24 songs plus some videos and such tossed in. It would make a great double-header with NIN’s new CD Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (Interscope/Universal)—14 tunes off the last album, remixed by folks like Bill Laswell, Saul Williams, Ladytron and the Faint.

For those young enough to see even Reznor as a fogey, might we suggest Billy Talent’s Deluxe Live (Warner), 33 tunes live on two discs, half in Brixton and the other in Düsseldorf, Germany (those ones repeated on a CD).

The bookers at the Osheaga fest will grasp the title of Amy Winehouse’s DVD, I Told You I Was Trouble (Island/Universal). A compensatory prize for fans of the dishy damsel/disaster area, who canned her Montreal appearance last September, the DVD catches her live in London, rolling through numbers like “Fuck Me Pumps” and naturally “Rehab,” and throws in a doc for good measure.

For the hip hop head, a fun call might be the new, five-DVD Kung Faux box set (Tommy Boy/Koch). Kung Faux, originally an online hit, is a sort of accelerated MST3K for the Wu-Tang set—edited versions of low-rent kung fu flicks redubbed with the voices of folks like Guru, Elephant Man, Queen Latifah, Biz Markie and Afrika Bambaataa. Hilarious shit, 500 minutes’ worth, with tons of extra videos and shit (plus a karaoke function—insert your own quips!).

Jazz hounds will want a copy of Norman Granz’s 1950 film Improvisation (Eagle Rock), out on DVD with a heap of extra trimmings. It captures Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald and others in action and strives to uncover the heart of their craft.

Rufus Wainwright proves himself a true friend of Dorothy with his new DVD, Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy! (Geffen/ Universal), a song-for-song recreation of Judy Garland’s 1961 show at Carnegie Hall. The DVD’s live in London, but the CD version has him in the original venue.

Pet Shop Boys trot out their DVD Cubism in Concert (Rhino/Warner), with 25 songs ranging from the letter of introduction “West End Girls” through the recent Bush/Blair beatdown “I’m With Stupid,” taped live in Mexico City in 2006—a doc and commentary track are tacked on. Also caught live in Mexico City, albeit a decade earlier, are U2, whose DVD Popmart (Island/Universal) sees them at their most luridly spectacular, after reinventing themselves as some sorta snarky circus-freak boy band. Damn, if that ain’t a show, though.

Same can be said for the Flaming Lips’ Oklahoma homecoming last year, which lives up to the title of the DVD U.F.O.s at the Zoo (Warner). It’s an acid-soaked overload of lights, props and of course animal costumes, set to the Lips’ warped and wonderful repertoire. But you want some genuinely brain-bending shit? For almost three decades, San Francisco’s cut-’n’-paste copyright commandos Negativland have spearheaded a fair-use insurgency and churned out hilariously subversive records in the process. Now, on their new DVD Our Favorite Things (Other Cinema), their audio barrages earn equally weird and wicked visual treatment—check “The Mashin’ of the Christ”!

On a Canadian content note, Vancouver garage-pop icon Nardwuar the Human Serviette has unveiled Welcome to My Castle (Mint/Outside), his second double DVD of guerrilla-goofball interviews with various rock stars and politicians. It’s fun when they play along, even better when they don’t!

If you’d like to keep your coin chez nous, buy local and snap up a copy of Champion et ses G-Strings’ DVD/CD Live (Two Hoboes/Select), which ably replicates the riffs and rhythms, energy and good vibes of Montreal’s DJ Champion and his guitar squadron in concert at Metropolis.