Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Atlantic / Wea
• VHS Release Date: November 10, 1992
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302627230
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #420,443 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Portrait of an Age, March 14, 2000

By 

Michael (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Punk [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This exciting collection of live performances (all from England circa 1977) is the best punk video compilation I've seen. It has clips of such legends as the Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, Jam, Joy Division, Siouxie and the Banshees, Penetration, Iggy Pop, Undertones, and the Stranglers. All are packaged with great taste, eschewing the usual filler (banal interviews, audience footage...) to deliver a solid hour of music.

Some of the sets are timeless classics: Iggy Pop, while performing rather sedate material, steals the show with his feline charisma and special brand of tragic energy. The Clash are an easy second, raging and convulsing through "What's My Name" as though the walls are collapsing around them. Here they show ten times as much energy as anywhere in their film "Rudeboy". Penetration slams through "Don't Dictate" despite brutal audience violence, Joy Division chills the blood with an intense "Shadowplay," and the Jam power their way through "In the City" and "Taking Your Love" like human jackhammers. Their stomping, ratcheting blur has to be seen to be believed.

There are of course some flaws: the Sex Pistols are badly represented by an awkward and overly familiar clip, and I'm not sure why a plastic and irritating band like the Boomtown Rats was included. I also could have done with much more Clash and less Buzzcocks (good, but four songs! ), no "Metal" by Siouxie, and at least one non-white performer like Poly Styrene. To compound things, the film-stock is very bad and grainy, with flat sound. This collection is so loaded with history and brilliance, did they have to produce it so cheaply?

But such reservations pale beside a document of such talent, energy, and vision. Buy it while you can, or maybe even two or three, as you're sure to wear it out fast!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Punk screams!!!!!!!!!, May 26, 2001

By 

"liebe_sterben" (Roma Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Punk [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It is difficult to find live videos from the first british punk gigs. It is also difficult to find live performances of bands such as Joy Division, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Penetration, Stranglers, and so on. Here you can "smell" the performances, but also the atmosphere from that period. You have the rigth perspective to understand what meant orders such as violence, disorder and childishness and why they cannot be repeated in a different era. And you can do that simply by listening to the distorted voices of the singers or paying attention to the desperate and weird feedback of the audience. Really a great collection, don't miss it!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why isn't this called The Best of So It Goes?, March 13, 2005

By 

epsteinsmutha "epsteinsmutha" (At the bottom of Juan Epstein's excuse note) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Punk [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Twelve years ago, Granada TV licensed the performances from its Manchester broadcasted programme hosted by Anthony H. Wilson who would later go on to found Factory Records (immortalized in the Michael Winterbottom film 24 Hour Party People starring Steve Coogan. Snippets of these performances appear in the film.) for inclusion on this videotape. This is the finest, most well-produced footage of British punk in the 1970s among those who trekked North to the Lesser Free Trade Hall and Granada studios. There are some performances from the Hope N Anchor. One can only hope that Granada does what producers of The Old Grey Whistle Test did and release this on DVD. It is the only place one can see/hear Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Make Up to Break Up" and the rest of the videotape is also pretty decent.

Signed,
epsteinsmutha