Customer Reviews

Janis: The Way She Was [Region 2]

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

 

 

Amazing live performances captured on film are the reason to see to see this.

The interviews with Janis don't reveal much, and there's no real sense of her history. Even the stage stuff is shot pretty straightforwardly, but, man-o-man could she sing!

One wonderful thing is that a lot of the numbers are uncut, allowed to go their full length, which, with Janis in concert, could easily be 8 minutes or more. The power, the emotion, the energy, the sexiness, the sweet sense of fun she brought to the stage could only be hinted at on her albums. For those reasons it's more than worth sitting through the slightly homogenized off-stage material.

It awful to think that this is essentially unavailable. Time for a decent US DVD re-release!

And she was like no other. I've always liked Janis Joplin, but to see her live in concert just takes it to a whole new level. Like seeing Hendrix live, there's a magic about the visual experience that has to be seen to be beleived. And when you see it, you know you are witnessing magic.

Nice thing about this DVD is that besides a very generous helping of live performances from different times in her career, there are lots of interview segments as well (one segment even has a camera crew follow her back to Fortworth, Texas for her 10 year high school reunion). An incredible singer, as raw and full of soul and humanity as ever there was in a stage performer, I was often surprised by how much humour comes out in her presence. This is at the full-blown height of the hippy era and Janis just seems to demonstrate how really far-out and willing to tread new ground people were at the time. As far as I'm concerned, what she did has not been done since.

In a nutshell, this is music history lessons 101, and I can't beleive it's not out in zone 1. Janis Joplin, and it's not available on DVD in America (It is available on VHS "JANICE: THE WAY SHE WAS" 1974)!

The sound on this DVD is not always fantastic, and there is some real variation in sound quality between concert performances (some in black and white, some in color). Much of it is more than sufficient to give you the idea - watching her is at least as interesting as listening to her. The 15 or so songs on film here can only be described as rare at this point (at least for Americans). I'm glad I lived to see this. Like stepping into the Twilight Zone, it's hard to beleive you're really watching her.

While I did enjoy the material and most of her great songs were covered, I would have like to see a bit more concert coverage.