Customer Reviews

Faith No More - Live at Brixton Academy You Fat B**tards

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I think that five stars speaks for itself - these are excellent videos that belong on the shelf of any respectable Faith No More fan, or Mike Patton fan, or music fan in general. I would agree with other reviewers that "You Fat Bastards" suffers from being recorded before A) the band had written a lot of their best material, and B) Mike Patton had honed his voice to his far bolder, more listenable, less-nasal style. The show's nostalgia factor to an old-school fan like myself, however, redeems it. Plus it has to be said that an awful lot of the songs performed are catchy, inventive, and still very enjoyable even after all this time. "Who Cares A Lot?" - itself being a 1998 reissue of the "Angel Dust"-era compilation "Video Croissant" with some "King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime" and "Album Of The Year" videos tacked on - really makes this double feature worth buying. The singles for which videos were made might not fully represent just how wide-ranging Faith No More's style could be, most of them being primarily rock songs, but tracks like the crooner ballad "Easy", the mellow jazz track "Evidence", the ambient trip-hoppy "Stripsearch" and the old school rock-rap number "We Care A Lot" certainly hint at how effortlessly they were able to span genres (to fully appreciate this, their entire discography needs to be heard). The other songs featured are also unique in their own way, each one giving a different spin on how `rock' can be interpreted as a genre. "Everything's Ruined" (the cheapest, daftest and probably funniest clip on the set) saunters between funky, moody, piano-heavy verses and rich, guitar-driven choruses. "Midlife Crisis" offers up intimidating growls over washy synth, punctuated by perfectly orchestrated melodies and possibly the most ridiculously catchy chorus of any song released that decade. "Digging The Grave" lays the foundations for what would later become nu-metal, which many far less capable bands would gain far more undeserved kudos for. As far as record-company compiled anthologies go, it's pretty damn good.
The videos themselves are mostly very entertaining and amusing, the band rarely opting for the `artsy' angle, except in the cases of "Ashes To Ashes", "Midlife Crisis", "A Small Victory" and "Stripsearch", but these are competently directed and are able to look slick without venturing into pretentious territory. "Last Cup Of Sorrow" stands up to the most repeat viewing, it being a reinterpretation of the Hitchcock classic "Vertigo" which starts off being faithful almost to the shot, deviating from the original more and more as it goes on until we end up with Mike Patton and Bill Gould in drag while Jennifer Jason-Leigh presides as a dominatrix - good wholesome fun.
The picture quality is what, to me, stands out the most, perhaps as my previous VHS editions were so well-loved that they are all but worn out. There are some noticeable glitches that were on the VHS versions that have not been amended - the impression one gets is it is a by-the-numbers, no frills transfer - but these don't amount to much: The occasional flicker during the closing "This Guy's In Love With You" and some white noise at the top of the frame in "Last Cup Of Sorrow" which will most likely not be visible on most standard televisions. Also, while most videos were filmed at 4:3, the aforementioned "Last Cup Of Sorrow" and "A Small Victory" (easily the two most impressive videos of the anthology, though that's just coincidence) were filmed at 16:9, while the full-screen display remains the same, which causes minor inconvenience to those with widescreen TVs who would need to manually change their display's aspect ratio.
Interestingly, there have been a number of alterations to the sound that are noticeable if you owned (and watched as many times as I had) the VHS versions of both features. Presumably to enhance the quality of the audio, pretty much all of the music videos on 'Who Cares A Lot?' seem to have had the music redubbed to get CD quality sound. While this is a good idea, a number of music videos originally had specific remixes/radio edits made for them (the most obvious ones being "Anne's Song", "Falling To Pieces" and "Easy"). It appears that these remixes were not tracked down on CD by whoever did the sound transfer - or it was simply decided that they would stick with the album versions of the songs, which most fans would be more familiar with anyway. Regardless, it barely hampers one's enjoyment of the music, although, perhaps to accommodate tricky edits, the "Falling To Pieces" soundtrack oddly alternates between the album version and the remix on occasion. The only obvious difference in the "You Fat Bastards" soundtrack is that the opening orchestral score has been replaced with looped audience cheering, otherwise the music remains pretty much unaltered.
As other reviewers have pointed out, this release would have been a perfect excuse to finally make the `missing' videos "Ricochet" and "Another Body Murdered" available to the public, as well as some much-desired TV appearances, promos, live performances and so on. Not to mention that several videos had alternate versions, such as "Evidence", "From Out Of Nowhere", "Falling To Pieces" and "I Started A Joke", while both "Midlife Crisis" and "Last Cup Of Sorrow" had amusingly `censored' incarnations that would play before the watershed. It is a genuine shame that none of this is included. Still, even without a single extra it is nice to have these videos finally on DVD, with fantastic (overall) picture quality and sound.

The prodcut description says it all to any FNM fan.

The infamous Live @ Brixton Academy concert, recorded at thei rcreative and commercial peak right off the The Real Thing era, plus the complete video anthology.

Both releases had been previously available on VHS only, and hard to get for years. Now, on one DVD, for your viewing pleasure.

A great oportunity to catch rare videos from the band's beginnings, and obscure gems like Easy, We Care a Lot and A Small Victory.

Of course, the most popular gems like Epic, From Out of Nowhere and Midlife Crisis are here.

I always thought it was so silly that they issued the collection of videos on VHS and not DVD, this in like 2003. Well, not only did they issue the videos on DVD, they also added the Brixton performance. Finally, a record company releasing something that gives you bang for your buck! Great band, great videos!! Three cheers, and even though I think a video is missing ("Richochet"), it's still not enough to take away a 5-star salute.

Finally out on dvd this is a must have for each and every FNM fan. Live at Brixton Academy recorded spring of 1990 finds FNM taking over the world lead by madman Mike Patton. The setlist is awesome, the performance is to die for( Mike is wacky as hell) and the sound is great. You couldn't ask for more......how about all their videos. Disc 2 is chock full of videos and little snipets of interviews and backstage footage. Originally you could get half of these on the vhs tape called 'Video Croissant' released back in the day.
You get that plus videos up through their last release 'Album Of The Year'. Most I have never even seen before and they are just flat out incredible. 3 hours of Faith No More......very pleasing.

These guys are probably the most underappreciated band of the last 20 years. The live portion is from way back in '90, when Patton still hadn't "found himself" within the band, but it's still a really amusing show, and the "War Pigs" finale is amazing. The real treat is all the music videos, from the big hits to the ones pretty much no one but us hardcore freaks ever saw. It's too bad how the music channels, and pop music in general, had made creative bands who grew and morphed as much as FNM seemingly disappear from the mainstream, because songs (and videos) like "Evidence" and "Stripsearch" should have been HUGE!! Their legacy will never die, too bad so few of us appreciate how incredible they were. Even by today's standards (what little there are), they were always way, WAY ahead of their time. None of today's rock bands would ever have the balls to make a video like "Easy." Artists, in every sense of the word.

This DVD is exactly what I've been looking for - the live show from Brixton UK and the music videos - all together and all on DVD! It's about time....now let's work on getting Mr. Bungle on DVD!!!

Faith No More was one of the most influential bands that only gets half the credit it should for all of the talent it shared with us. I have had Live at brixton academy for a while on cd, and video croissant, but never updated to these videos until now. Again, I'm amazed by faith no more in mid stride, building to their "EPIC" proportins on the Brixton Academy video. Of course it would be nice to have a dvd of later live performances from thier Album of the Year tours, but to see Jim, Roddy, Billy, Mike & Mike together was the essence of Faith No More.
The Who Cares A Lot picks up after the video crossoint and adds the newer videos from king for a day and album of the year. it does miss Richocett and Another Body Murdered and A Perfect Crime, but there are always some limits on getting the material together. This still does justice to the FNM name. Get this collection, it's a hoot.

It's about time these items were finally released. Faith No More was one of the most original multi-genre bands, and certainly underappreciated in the U.S. Their videos were very groundbreaking and are still amazing to watch 15 years later. The video for A Small Victory has to be one of the most gorgeous films ever. MANY of these videos are going to be new to most viewers, I was a HUGE FNM fan, and can recall never seeing at least 8 of these videos on MTV. And the live performance captures exactly how wild and powerful this band was as a tight unit.

Both discs are in 5.1 audio.
Disc two is a Hits compilation, but not complete. It looks they took Video Croissant with the inter-video pieces intact and just added on the remaining later FNM videos (similar to Ramones' More Tales of the Ramones DVD). Great live version of This Guy's In Love at the end, but the video for Ricochet is missing. It would've been great to have the alternate version of From Out of Nowhere (remember, this video was "enhanced" after Epic hit big), as well as the other two live MTV performances that Caffeine came from ("Midlife Crisis", "A Small Victory"), and the live Rock in Rio performance of The Crab Song (which MTV played a LOT when they were hard up for Patton-era material).

Nothing more for bonus features. A group commentary would've been great, but at least these releases are finally on DVD. A later era live show on DVD would be great to have as well. Ebay often has people selling a 4-hour making of Angel Dust 2-DVD documentary, hopefully this will see an official release someday.

i bought this so that i could finally throw out my VCR. who cares a lot? was probablly the only VHS i still own and watch regularly. it is presented here on DVD and looks quite nice. this also contains a very dated show from brixton academy. it's unfortunate that this couldn't have contained a later faith no more performance, seeing as patton got better by leaps and bounds. aside from how mediocre his voice is on this live performance (and don't kid yourself into thinking that it is), this is completely worth getting for the videos.

I had this concert in VHS back about 18 years ago, so I'm glad I can watch it again with better sound and image quality. It's amazing how these guys still sound powerful! Mike Patton rocks!!!