Customer Reviews

The Henry Rollins Show: Season One

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

 

 

Rollins' show is a thoroughly engrossing mix of no-audience one-on-one interviews where the interviewer actually listens to his guests and holds a genuine discussion with them, along with sharp, no-holds-barred commentary pieces from Henry himself.

And then, there are great musical performances from artists you would rarely see on the usual late night talk shows, and it's the musical part where I give this DVD a huge star-off deduction. Pretty much every musical act does two numbers, but Rollins informs the viewers that the second number can only be viewed on the website. Sorry, I like to enjoy musical performances on my big-screen TV and multi-speaker audio system, not sitting in my office watching them on my computer, and it's mind-boggling--especially in light of Rollins being a musician himself--that this obvious extra of putting both songs on the DVD so fans could at least buy them and enjoy each artist's pair of songs together wasn't done. Instead, we get the straight show as it aired.

Great show; frustrating missed opportunity. How about it next season, guys? Either put both songs together in the show, put the second number after the credits or gather them all in a bonus features section, but please! And maybe even include the missed songs from this first season as extras as well so we can finally enjoy them in DVD quality...

I think that pretty much sums up the tone of HR's Season 1 of this talk show. He's got a wide variety of artists and popular figures who all have a stake in what we see in the public fora. In addition to some occasionally lightweight, but usually interesting interview questions, he displays a good, old-fashioned iconoclasm for the features of today's public landscape. One standard piece of the interplay is the amount of respect the interviewees have for this van-living 500%er and what he has made a living of saying to his rapt audiences.

His musical guests are outstanding and library-expanding. Everyone from the New York Dolls to Thom Yorke shows up and does a decent (at worst ) set. His Soapbox feature allows multiple POVs the chance to air their tenets out and you get to hear all sides.

Most enjoyably, you get to hear from a person that respects only what is honest with itself. He cheers on those phenomena that reflect true pursuit of a point of view while reviling and savagely berating the gamesmanship of BSery.

Overall, this show has been refreshing, inspiring and simply enjoyable since viewing one.

Maybe it's because I subscribe to a Rupert Murdoch owned pay tv enterprise but as far as material like that which you see on Rollins show goes I am definitely NOT spoilt for choice, if however I wanted to hear people rant about the dangers of iran, china, terror at my doorstep etc then I have plenty to keep me going, so that's the first reason I like this show. Secondly Rollins promised that on this show he would be talking about important subject matter which he does and when interviewing celebrities promises that he will not discuss their love life, private affairs and other banalities which seem to be the order of the day, and again he delivers on that promise, and what's more the interviewees seem to be quite enthusiastic about this, leading to some enjoyable discourse, so if the idea of that makes you yawn because you've seen it all before then fair enough, but for me this material is not prevelant on my TV and so as someone who has watched Bush and co with a sense of foreboding I am grateful to Rollins for reminding me the other side of the coin hasn't been extinguished.

My only complaint about The Henry Rollins Show is that each episode isn't an hour long. Outstanding, check it out.

This show is one of the better talk shows I've ever seen, mostly because of the guests Rollins gets to come on- Bill Maher, Ozzy Osbourne, Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, for example- and the fact that they're actually talking about real issues and aren't censored (this is also a bonus for the musical acts), instead of telling an anecdote or two. The musical guests are also great- Jurassic 5, Damian Marley, and Ben Folds are among my favorites from Season 1.

Overall, Rollins makes a great show- interestings guests, great music, and his bits are consistently very funny.

What a shame HR TV wasn't around for very long. A great format & excellent interviews (well most of them anyway). Saw some new bands & just soaked up that Rollins goodness. Having been a fan for over 20 years, I gobbled up this DVD content & wish the second season was easier to find. Anyhoo, highly recommended for HR fans & purveyors of quality anywhere. Rollins has a unique style which works really well for most interviewees, even the train wrecks (Kev Smith & Eddie Izzard) are humorous. With such a prolific generator of content & supporter of quality literature, music & film, we should all aspire to the contrbution HR has made to our culture. Love you Hank :-)

Very impressed by the people interviewed and the bands performing on his show!!!!!!

Like the rest of em....Disappointed that they only included one song in the show and no band interviews which are all over youtube...So why not put them in this set???? Someone dropped the ball...

Don't get me wrong... i love the flag...i have all of Hanks dvd's...flag albums...Get In The Van... I just find these things ironic now... Am i the only one???

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My title really says it all. Rollins has strong opinions but apparently he didn't use any reason and logic to come to them.

I agree with many of the ultimate conclusions that Rollins has so I'm not complaining because I don't like his point of view. It's just that you aren't going to learn anything by watching the show other than maybe how to raise your voice and look angry.

He opens with a rant about how his show is going against the grain and then proceeds to stick as closely as possible to the talk show template. Interviews are made up of typical talk show non-questions, the goal being just to get the guest to blather vaguely about something so you have something to air. I hoped and even expected to learn something about the guests. In most cases I didn't. The interviews with both Oliver Stone and Patton Oswalt consist of Rollins and his guest giving each other paranoid anti-bush reacharounds without saying anything substancial, and there are substancial things that could have been said about the topic. His railing against SUVs and other typical left-wing targets sounds like a broken record most of the time, with impassioned vocal delivery, inflammatory adjectives and vilifying nouns standing in for insight and logic. It should also be noted that the majority (possibly all) of the musical acts on this show are either on a major label or on a so-called indie label with a so-called "distribution deal" with a major. Way to support the underground scene Henry. I don't mean to be so negative, I mean I did watch the whole thing, even resisted hitting the fast-forward button during P.T. Anderson's sleep-inducing interview, and the skits or whatever that are just Rollins talking to the camera are mostly totally funny, but this show could have been a lot cooler and has lowered my opinion of Rollins.

I've watched much of Henry's "spoken word" (which is really standup comedy, Henry is just being pretentious in calling it "spoken word"), I've watched this TV show, read many of his interviews (Henry has done a ton of interviews, never saying no to a microphone), and read a bit about him, and I'm not overly impressed. I don't understand why everyone thinks he's some sort of artistic genius. He's not terrible, but he is not a man of great depths and profundity. This TV show is promoted as hip and edgy and "out there", but in reality it's a rather standard and placcid show. The only difference between this show and a late night talk show is that Rollins swears once in a while, and comes across at you at a high decibel level. That makes him "edgy" in the eyes of many. But if you turn down the volume and actually listen to what he's saying, he never really goes into any too deep, preferring to be on the surface of something and saying obvious things that most of us with brains figured out a long time ago (like "Bush sucks" and "Anne Coulter is a b---"). Rollins rants on celebrities (even though he's one himself, ableit a minor one), Laura Bush, George W. Bush, Anne Coulter, and Carrot Top (yes, Carrot Top. I'm not a fan of Carrot Top, but picking on him is so easy and kind of cruel, considering Carrot is a major joke anyway). While I agree with Rollins on some of his political points, he states his opinions in a very obvious way, and his angry old man stuff gets old very fast. I actually end up laughing at his "teeing off" segments. It's like a comic wanting people to take him seriously, and people still laugh at him. Rollins seems to be stuck in a time warp, doing his angry punk thing from the 80's. He's never grown out of it, and considering he's approaching middle age, this is not a good thing. When people like Rollins pontificate on their soapboxes, you feel like you're being preached to, and while you may agree with what the preacher is saying, it's just preaching to the choir, and it has no real lasting effect. This show has some very good guests (the Werner Herzog interview is great, because Werner is a true artist, something that Rollins strives to be, but can't, even though he tries), but it's nothing really special.

If I had a choice between watching Leno and Rollins, I would naturally take Rollins, but I don't think Rollins is that phenomenal. He's not the worst talk show host (or standup/spoken word guy) in the world, but he's not a pinnacle either.