Customer Reviews

Billy Joel - The Essential Video Collection

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This was released by the same distributor in Australia but ... it has a different cover, and some different songs to the American DVD release. We get 25 songs in total, compared to 24 on the American DVD.

The songs on the Australian DVD that are missing on the American DVD are:

- New York State Of Mind
- The River Of Dreams
- We Didn't Start The Fire
- I Go To Extremes
- Leningrad
- The Downeaster 'Alexa'
- All About Soul

The songs on the American DVD that are missing on the Australian DVD are:

- Sometimes a Fantasy
- The Night Is Still Young
- Pressure
- Keeping the Faith
- Big Shot
- Los Angelenos

It depends on which Billy Joel songs you like, but for me I would rather have the American tracks because they capture an era when Billy was at his very best. Some American reviewers wish their DVD version had "River of Dreams", so the answer is to import it from Australia.

I'm tempted to buy the American DVD as well but seems like a bit of overlapping just to get 6 videos not available on the Australian DVD. The real solution is for DVD producers to release one definitive DVD version including ALL tracks!

And I agree with many consumers, we want music clip videos on music DVD's not concert videos (leave concert videos for full concert DVD's). I refer to videos like "Piano Man" which has been replaced with concert footage. Urgh!

The content of this Billy Joel collection is more than you can ask for in a decent music DVD. It has most of his hits like Uptown Girl, Piano Man, Its still rock and roll to me etc. The visuals might look jaded but that has to be the case as these songs are old and videos were shot during the 70s and 80s. This DVD is a must for Billy Joel fans.
Now, I must explain the "but" in review title.. those of you looking for his later videos like We didn't start the fire, River of dreams might be dissappointed. What really made me drop one star off the rating was the missing "Shes always a woman to me" song. That happens to be one of my favorite and I was a trifle irked to find it missing.

In short, a good buy for a B.J fan as its got almost all his good songs.. mark the "almost".

Having received a copy of Billy's "Greatest Hits Volume III - The Video" as a gift two years ago for Christmas 2000, I asked "Santa" for a copy of Billy's "The Essential Video Collection" as a gift for Christmas 2002--and I'm exceedingly glad that "Santa" gave me what I'd asked for! I've been pleased with "The Essential Video Collection" from the first time I watched it (Christmas-mid-morning).
The DVD is a great collection of original music videos, live concert performances and live studio performances from a legend of rock-n-roll, the "Piano Man".
Although I've never been a die-hard fan of Billy (I'm a true fan of his piano-partner, Elton, instead), at the time I got into the DVD format (April of 2000) there were more Billy discs than Elton discs available (but, thankfully, that's changed within the past two years); nevertheless, I do appreciate Billy's catalog of rock music.
Prior to experiencing "The Essential Video Collection", I had seen only a few of the orignal music videos on the compilation ('Pressure','Allentown','Tell Her About It','Uptown Girl'), none of the live concert footage and none of the live studio footage--so the DVD is a real treat!
The sound quality is up to par with DVD, yet the video quality varies from song selection to song selection, especially the studio footage from the mid-to-late '70s/early '80s and the original music videos from the early-to-mid '80s, while the live concert footage is passable.
Overall, this disc is a great Billy video release
Still, there is one little gripe I have about the disc compilation: three of the original music videos ('Keeping The Faith','A Matter Of Trust' and 'Baby Grand' w/Ray Charles) are repeated from 1997's "Greatest Hits Volume III - The Video" Since the same manufacturer (Sony/Columbia Music Video) produced and released the two titles, it's displeasingly surprising to me how such a content overlap could have occurred; I mean, come on, the supply of material from which Sony/Columbia had to compile this DVD couldn't have been so low that three other *different* original music videos and/or live concert/live studio performances of three other *different* songs couldn't have selected in place of the content overlap. Oh well, I suppose I will be thankful for the majority of the material that this DVD contains.
In terms of DVD features, I like the interactive discography and interactive biographical timeline; also I like the audio choice: PCM stereo (which I use) and DD suround sound. I don't really need fancy-shmancy things like subtitles, on-screen lyrics and different camera angles--pretty much a waste of disc space, if you ask me.
All in all, "The Essential Video Collection" is a solid representation of Billy Joel's indelible mark on the world of rock music--a mark that he could have further perpetuated had he not turned 'classical' with "Fantasies & Delusions" (2001).
In conclusion, "The Essential Video Collection" disc is a should-have, even for casual Billy fans, such as myself.

Few DVD music video collections feature a 5.1 Dolby Digital sound mix, and the ones that do are usually just standard stereo with a little echo thrown on to the rear speaker channels. So I was shocked to find that nearly all of the tracks on "The Billy Joel Collection" were remixed in true 5.1 sound.

According to the DVD case, the man responsible is Thom Cadley. I have no idea who he is -- he's not a relative or a friend or a friend of a friend -- but I feel moved to give him kudos for a job well done. Some purists might not like hearing certain instruments and background vocals isolated on the rear speakers (and in one instance I was annoyed by an isolated tom overdub that should've been mixed in with the rest of the drum track), but if they don't like it, they can always choose the PCM stereo mix.

I'm not a tremendous Billy Joel fan, but I like many of his big hits and even the songs that annoy me bring back memories of the time when they were omnipresent on the airwaves. So I was a bit chagrined to find that they failed to include the video for "We Didn't Start the Fire." I wonder if Joel himself has grown to dislike this song.

Billy Joel is one of the best performers of all time and this DVD presents a variety of his music videos for that reason. Unlike the past two DVD's "Yankee Stadium" and "Greatest Hits III" there are no lyrics to these videos. One thing I was dissapointed in was that for Piano Man, they decided to add the Yankee Stadium version to the DVD(which I already bought), not adding instead the original Black & White music video he made singing in a bar. I was really dissapointed there, but you can't go wrong with this DVD for all of his great songs. Lastly, considering the age of the videos some of them are not top quality but instead they give I guess a feeling of the time in when he made them.

I'm also a huge fan of Billy Joel (have all of his albums since I was a kid). I often tell friends, I have never been to New York, but listening to Billy takes me there! He's a bit of story teller with the talent to write catchy tunes.
I gave this DVD 4 stars because while I like all the Videos in the DVD, it's by no means a complete collection. There are songs missing from the Storm Front and River of Dreams Albums, and some of his older stuff too. It was a surprise to see such songs as "Los Angelenos" and "James" on this collection. I like his 80's videos because they go very well with his music. Perhaps a two CD collection could have captured everything nevertheless, it's still a must have for Billy Joel fans.

Love those old clips that were previously unavailable.

Great set, and for the money, can't be beat.

The good is that you get most of the classics. You get teh MTV videos. You get "She's Right On Time" and "Goodnight Saigon", which were left off of the Video Album released in the mid 80s.It sounds awesome, to say the least.

Now, the complaints:
"Piano Man" should have just had the video instead of the Yankee Stadium footage.

I could have sworn Billy did a TV special in the mid-70s called "Tonight". This would have made a nice addition to the DVD. The promos to "Songs in the Attic" had to have some more footage so they could have at least put "Captain Jack" on there.
Other songs that should have had videos exclusive to the DVD (possibly interspersing the college lecture tours with the performances, similar to the CD box set of GH I-III): "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant", "Travellin Prayer","NY State of Mind", "Prelude/Angry Young Man", "Just the way You Are", "Only the Good Die Young", "Movin Out", "Vienna", "She's Always A Woman", "Root Beer Rag" (Which had a promo short cartoon ), "Summer Highland Falls", and "Miami 2017" (this would have been fine using the Yankee Stadium footage).

The Nylon Curtain tour was also released on home video as "Live From Long Island", and should be rereleased for DVD, as should the Russian concert. "Greatest Hits III" should have been repackaged and sold with this DVD to make it a more definitive collection.

For a Billy Joel fan, this really is an essential video collection. It contains all of the videos found in both "Billy Joel: The Video Album, Volume I" and "The Video Album, Volume II." The only difference I detected was the inclusion of the live recording of "Piano Man" from the Yankee stadium concert, instead of the video filmed in a piano bar used in Volume I. My favorite concept video is "Tell Her About It," in which Billy is the lead singer of BJ And The Affordables performing on the Ed Sullivan show. Will Jordan does a great Ed Sullivan impersonation. Rodney Dangerfield makes a comedic cameo appearance at the beginning and end of the video. This collection also includes 4 previously unavailable videos, my favorite being the humorous "She's Right On Time." In addition, there's a complete discography with a nice feature. When you click on an album, in addition to listing all of the song titles, it plays a brief snippet of one of the songs. This collection does stop short of including the later videos found in "Greatest Hits, Volume III: The Video." That's not so much a complaint as it is a testament to how many hits Billy Joel has had.

I bought the VHS version of this (I didn't have a DVD player at the time but now I do) but whichever version you own I think we all agree that it is a great collection of Billy Joel videos. I especially was pleased to be able to see videos that I had never seen before or had only seen brief clips from like "James", "My Life", "Big Shot", "Honesty", "All for Leyna", "You May Be Right", "Sometimes A Fantasy", "Everybody Loves You Now", "Los Angelenos", and "Goodnight Saigon".

Given all that, here are a few minor complaints:

1) Why couldn't they have put the "Video Album Vol. 1" video of "Piano Man" on this instead of a mediocre live version that we can already get on VHS or DVD? I mean, it's not like they're going to ever re-release the "Video Album" volumes on DVD.

2) Couldn't they have changed the sequence of the videos in some way (my preference would have been chronological) instead of just splicing together the two "Video Album" volumes and then tacking on the extra videos at the end.

3) I guess I can understand why they didn't include most of the videos found on the "Greatest Hits Vol. 3" video since that was released not too long ago but if you're gonna call it "The Essential Video Collection" then shouldn't it include ALL of his essential videos.

4) Would have been nice if they could have dug up a live clip or two of performing any of his hits from "The Stranger".

Overall this an excellent video collection and I would have rated it 5 stars but the complaints I listed above were enough for me to deduct 1 star.