Customer Reviews

Casey Kasem's Rock n' Roll Goldmine - The British Invasion

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Seeing the Troggs doing 'Wild Thing' in a subway station was the high point here for me. Very cool. The kids standing around in the 'audience' seem to not know quite what to think, and that just adds to the clip's charm. Adding choice footage from the Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Animals, Gerry and the Pacemakers and others make this disc one easy for me to recommend. A mix of performances with an audience and without, both lip-sync and live on stage. Could've done without the Procol Harum and Hollies, but that's a small gripe. Thumbs up on this one!

I had seen some of these clips before, but still enjoyed the DVD. Only 40 minutes long though. The Pacemakers, Animals, and Kinks performances appeared to be performed live; others are obviously mimed. But it's always great to see Chas Chandler do that bass line in the Animals song.

this is one good dvd about the british invasion because it features rare never-before-seen film clips of very popular british groups of the 60's. i would recommend this for all those british invasion buffs because some of the film clips were performed live, others were lip-synched but still very nice to watch to reminisce days of the 60's. highly recommended.

As other reviewers have noted, some of these performances - and they are all full song - were lip-synched, others are live. But it is what there is, and how much video is there of the original Troggs, Procul Harum, Manfred Mann anyway? For the memories of a time when musicians spearheaded social change and represented something truly new and original, this is worth a few bucks! Original Kinks, Hollies, Yardbirds; hard to go too far wrong.

The video quality of this production is excellent; however, the original quality of the subject matter is primitive. Most of this stuff is in black and white. Only the Hollies and the Yardbirds cuts are in color, and the Hollies' cut is very grainy, for lack of a better word. The Yardbirds here are the "Little Games" Version. Keith Relf lip syncs "Heart Full of Soul" with Jimmy Page finger-syncing Jeff Beck's guitar work. The end result is that it looks phony.

Biggest disappointment of this dvd: The Kinks live performance of "You really got me". The video is mostly head shots, and does not show the band at work. Ray Davies' head and face occupies most of the video. It would appear that the whole thing was probably shot with one or maybe two cameras.

Biggest Surprises: The Troggs music video, "Wild Thing". It's creative, and it holds up well. Gerry and the Pacemakers' "How Do You Do It" is also a live performance worth watching, because the camera work is pretty good and it shows that the lead singer was also an exceptionally talented rhythm guitarist.

Most of the other stuff, like songs by the Animals, Joe Cocker and Peter and Gordon are lip-synced. It was difficult to call Procol Harum or Traffic - could be either live or pre-recorded. In particular, the video of Procol Harum was probably shot in existing light and it's too dark to identify some members of the band other than Gary Booker.

My only other criticism is that there were too many needless still shots of historic people, place and things that took place during the the sixties. These still images didn't add anything to the overall product and a good target for the fast-forward button on my remote.