The Worst Music DVD Ever: "Pink Floyd - A Critical Review (1967-1974)

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arrrrrgh absolutely horrible to sit through all these critical nobodies (the members of Mostly Autumn?!? wtf?) just to get brief glimpses of early promos with Barrett and live performances of stuff from Obscured By Clouds and Meddle. At totally inappropriate moments the narrator will come in with gems like "While an interesting pop record, Piper at the Gates of Dawn is largely a failure, and not indicative of the greatness the band was capable of" or show quotes from bandmembers ("I think its absolute rubbish now") while playing excerpts from Ummagumma. Basically you get a bunch of totally ROCKIST assholes denigrating everything up to "Meddle" and then rhapsodically babbling when they get to "Dark Side of the Moon". BLECH - fuck you Ragnarok films!!!

(yes this was worse than the Belle & Sebastian "Fans Only")

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 17:14 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002NRRVU/qid=1107537316/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-0922206-8086320?v=glance&s=dvd

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 17:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I haven't seen that, but I watched "The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story" last weekend. It was OK-ish.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00067W1K4/104-2607740-6740716?v=glance

― darin (darin), Friday, 4 February 2005 17:32 (twenty-one years ago)

see, I thought I was in for a lot of archival footage and interviews w/actual members/associates but instead you get a bunch of lunkheads with bad teeth complaining about Syd's "weird" songwriting and how "pretentious" Ummagumma is. Three members of Mostly Autumn get so much screen time it's unbelievable - I've never heard of the band and why should I give a fuck what they think?!? I was just pissed to see a film that was so dismissive of the very material it was supposed to be covering... like, after they summarized each record, a "star rating" would appear on the screen (everything until "Meddle" gets TWO FUCKING STARS) BAH

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 17:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, you may enjoy the Syd Barrett Story a bit more - bad teeth aside. There are a few enjoyable anecdotes involving Madcap Laughs, Barrett, and early Pink Floyd shows. Unfortunately, it's fairly short (running time around an hour).

― darin (darin), Friday, 4 February 2005 18:03 (twenty-one years ago)

there were glimpses of what looked like some really cool early performances ("Pow R Toc H", "Interstellar Overdrive" some improvised piece) but they never showed anything in its entirety, and everything was obscured by pointless text credits running over the whole thing. I've seen "Tonight Let's All Make Love in London" - more of that please....

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 18:05 (twenty-one years ago)

you used to be able to dowload a bbc doc on the early floyd and sid at an italien syd barrett site. it seems most of that footage was then used in the vhi thing.

that site has most of the easily obtained material from the early years.

id have to dig up the url, though

― b b, Friday, 4 February 2005 18:09 (twenty-one years ago)

that shoud be syd at an Italian ...

spelling is suffering today

― b b, Friday, 4 February 2005 18:10 (twenty-one years ago)

thx for the tips - I also gotta see that Live at Pompeii thing. looks much more interesting than the Wall.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 18:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Ive never heard the members of Pink Floyd dismiss Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I saw some of them actually talking about how much they enjoyed it on some clip show on Vh1 once.

― David Allen (David Allen), Friday, 4 February 2005 18:18 (twenty-one years ago)

No, no - the CRITICS hate Piper (because, you know, good pop songwriting ain't shit). The BAND was hating on Ummagumma.

― David R. (popshots75`), Friday, 4 February 2005 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

the guys who made this DVD definitely had an agenda, and I don't agree with it at all. The only positive thing I remember any of the bandmembers saying about Piper was an anecdote from Waters about how much he enjoyed Syd's lyrics for "Bike" - but yeah, it wasn't the band slagging off Piper so much as everyone else on the DVD.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Sounds awful. Especially considering Piper is the only Floyd album I can stand!

― David Allen (David Allen), Friday, 4 February 2005 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm not even a Syd purist - a lot of the stuff immediately after his departure I like quite a bit - but in a way, the "critics" on the DVD (not a single one of whom I recognized or was associated with any publication I've ever heard of) took a bizarrely "populist" tack in that they were obviously reserving all their praise for the stuff from Floyd's commercial heyday in the mid-70s. There wasn't anything remotely "critical" about it. I mean there are people on this DVD who say, with a straight face, that Atom Heart Mother was the first time orchestras and choruses were used by a rock band.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 18:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Live at Pompeii is good, particularly Echoes and Careful with that Axe Eugene. Nice setting too, goes well with the tunes.

― KeithW (kmw), Friday, 4 February 2005 19:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha -- Netflix has the Rainbow and Thin Lizzy titles from this series. Here in Brooklyn we locals have a practice of watching these things late at night, then screaming in frustration when the 29-second concert clip is interrupted by the vague recollections of some geezer with green lenses in his glasses.

― Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Friday, 4 February 2005 19:36 (twenty-one years ago)

There's a hilarious video clip of Pink Floyd playing "Astronomy Domine" on some tv show in the U.K. and afterwards the host interviews Roger and Syd. He's totally insulting to them, saying that their music is a reversion to childhood and asking why it has to be so loud.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Friday, 4 February 2005 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

haha - I think its stuff like that that led to Syd's departure just as much as the drug-taking. That reminds me of something else on this DVD that made me want to smash my television - they actually had some "psychologist" on briefly, elaborating the "dangers" of LSD, "especially when used in conjunction with cannabis". If only they had immediately followed that up with a shot of notorious drunk Waters falling down the stairs...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 4 February 2005 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

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