Customer Reviews

Punk [VHS]

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

 

 

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!

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!

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

Absolutely no doubt - this is the best video anthology of the early punk rock. What you've got here is 20 songs by the most prominent performers from 1976 to 1978 recorded live in Manchester and London (the Pistols, the Jam, Joy Division, the Clash, Siuxie, the Buzzcocks, Iggy Pop, the Stranglers, the Penetrators and more). All footage is given here without annoying interviews, interrupting snippets and historic perspective baloney. If one wants to own a punk video collection this is the most reasonable start.
This was released on VHS in 1992 and to this date sadly there's no DVD version.

This video captures what it was to be free, thinking and creative. Many of the cuts are in small "garage-type" clubs that those of us involved in that great period know well and are transferred back to the period when music and punk was real. Hey, The Clash are Great and that's all but I also enjoyed that rare Buzzcocks footage - even the missed note in "What do I Get." Now that's what it's about!

I've been feeling nostalgic for my youth when I ate up every record and magazine about this exciting movement over in England, this video really brought me back. The Sex Pistols performance on British TV (Top of the Pops?) is classic, but the live footage from the Jam and the Stranglers steals the show. The Buzzcocks are particularly limp here and a bunch of filler had me hitting the FF. Worth it for above mentioned performances.