Customer Reviews

Murder City Devils - Rock & Roll Won't Wait

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The Murder City Devils were one heck of a great band. Seeing as how they have long since broken up, this DVD, Rock & Roll Won't Wait, is about as close as anyone will get to seeing what they were like.

The MCD's looked like a motorcycle gang in the middle of a week long bender. They swaggered and spit and seemed really dangerous. They were one of the greatest things to behold on stage. It was a pure cosmic mix of Keith Richards's outlaw magnetism and Neil Diamond's endering everyman. I miss them very much.

In full fairness, I was at several of the shows featured on this DVD (namely the Bumbershoot show with the Marine's in those yellow shirts). In a just world, every teenage boy from Bakersfield to Omaha would have a poster of organist Leslie Hardy up on their bedroom walls.

But alas, the Murder City Devil gang collapsed. They helped jump start the whole "garage rock/Detroit revival" thing before The Strokes and Jet even set foot on a stage. They helped to save rock from the Lump Beezkits and that awful San Diego scene which dominated the airwaves at the turn of the century. The Devils just didn't survive long enough to get any of their deserved credit.

This DVD is much more like a VH1 "Behind the Music" special than anything else. The band is amazingly nice and polite. Much attention is given to their roadie "Gabe", a wonderfully nice guy who steals the entire film.

A friend of mine from Reno says that "Rock & Roll Won't Wait" doesn't work because the Devil's are just "too nice". I dont know. I enjoyed it, the only problem is that once you see it you realize what could have been.

These guys (and a gal), the six members of Murder City Devils, put more heart and soul into their alcohol fueled rock music then most bands could ever dream of, and what happened? Two years straight on the road, a handful of albums and then they broke up, which is all our fault, because somehow, they didn't quite reach the breaking point of being a successful band. They had the potential and definitely the talent, but for whatever reason couldn't get there, which is sad. The radio can play the same two Social Distortion songs over and over for the past ten years, but not one Murder City Devils single? (...)

Anyways, this is a pretty decent band DVD, about an hours worth of material, from just `hanging around' footage to live clips and interviews, it's definitely worthy to be part of a fans library.

I really dug these guys when they were around, and its interesting to see what they are like as people, too. The thing thats been cool with punk rock from day one is how your favorite bands are also your peers. I'd still dig them for their music alone, but its a little relieving to see that theyre not douches, too. That being said, I gotta remind you that I am a big fan of their music and I can see how if youre not, you probably would not enjoy this as much as myself.