Music DVDs for Christmas: The best and the rest

By GRAHAM REID

The Rolling Stones: Four Flicks

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

Superb. The Stones have milked their 40th reunion but the concerts were so good - old songs hauled into the light, unusual choices, blues covers - you could forgive overkill. For the Licks tour they did stadium, arena and club shows and each (with different song choices and different treatments of their essential inclusions) gets a disc here. There is also a fourth disc with a great doco about them preparing for the tour (see Jagger work out, listen while he practises scales) and the camaraderie is apparent. The shows are expertly filmed and at the push of a button you can also see backstage footage, get a Stone's-eye view and access other options. Handsome package, essential for anyone with a passing interest in rock'n'roll.

Label: Warner

* * *

Bruce Springsteen And The E Street Band: Live in Barcelona

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Springsteen's only New Zealand concert earlier this year was always going to be memorable. Then on the night it bucketed down. Yep, memorable. Mercifully, it was fine in Barcelona for this beautifully filmed two-and-a-half-hour concert over two discs. The resurrection of the Boss as a stadium-filler with The Rising album saw him reform the band after 18 years and their joy is apparent in every close up (aside from drummer Max Weinberg, who remains poker-faced throughout). And there are plenty of screen-filling images of Springsteen's sweat-lined face. It comes with politely reverential 15-minute doco, and runs much as the Auckland show did. A dry memento of Auckland in way.

Label: Sony

* * *

Duran Duran: Greatest

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

The band that brought hedonism to videos here gets a timely double-disc compilation full of hidden tracks, alternative versions and uncensored versions of Girls on Film and Come Undone. There's heaps of extra stuff - 80s bands were always masters of excess - such as a photo-gallery, interview with Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes, and all the lyrics ... so now there's no excuse for not knowing what Hungry Like the Wolf was all about. Like a time capsule from a very strange, oddly dressed country called The Past.

Label: EMI

* * *

John Lennon: Lennon Legend

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Yoko's revenge? This collection arriving just as the McCartney-sanctioned revamp of the Beatles' album Let It Be is released could be read as a spoiler. There are 20 tracks from his solo years, some as live footage or video clips, some as new montages or animation of Lennon drawings. There are classic performances (Cold Turkey, Stand By Me in the studio unfortunately now intercut with home movie footage), some poignant footage, lots which reinforce the Lennon-Ono iconography, some self-conscious home movie things, an "art piece", and Working Class Hero as a biographical doco which sidesteps the messy stuff (like the invisible first wife). Thorough, enjoyable, and the well must now be dry, surely.

Label: Parlophone

* * *

Various: Good Shit Happens

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Given free to guests and media at The Lord of the Rings launch, this DVD/CD and book package is an impressive showcase of talents gravitating to Wellington's Loop label. The CD features 50Hz, One Million Dollars, Black Seeds and others. The fat, glossy book is a lively and often provocative collection of photos and art from the likes of Shane Cotton and Ronnie Van Hout. And the DVD of videos (Trinity Roots, Rhian Sheehan etc) comes with some excellent short films. They include the charming and astutely observed Two Cars One Night by Taika Waititi - which won best short performance, best script and best technical contribution in the short film category at the NZ Film awards this month - and the hilarious Kitty among them. Championship stuff. Let's hope those celebs and scribblers take the time to discover Kiwi life and art beyond The Rings.

Label: Loop

* * *

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon

(Herald rating: * * * )

From the Classic Albums tele-series. Whether you consider Floyd's Dark Side a milestone or a millstone in rock, you can't deny it was a phenomenon which took prog-rock into the mainstream. It was also in the vanguard of sequencing and sampling and the intelligent use of stereo-panning and other audio effects, and obliquely said something about alienation. With all the protagonists (including engineer Alan Parsons and mix-man Chris Thomas) contributing it reminds you what an extraordinary album it was, and still is. Comments on its marketing and the tenor of the times add necessary context, and there is a whole other programme (kinda nerdy and a little Spinal Tap however) in the extra interviews. Intelligent programme, and hard to believe that on its release the album was up against Elvis' Aloha from Hawaii and T-Rex glam-pop.

Label: Rajon

* * *

Various: Nature's Best

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Given the source material - the top 100 New Zealand songs as voted by members of Apra - this was always going to be a good cross-section of Kiwi music. From Herbs to Shihad, OMC to Zed, King Kapisi to Peking Man there's a swag of fine music and sometimes hilariously time-sensitive clips. Copyright probably prevented some being included (oddly Crowded House's Weather With You is here but their No 2 polling Don't Dream It's Over isn't) but it does seem a shame that the song which gave the DVD and album series its name is missing. The Fourmyula probably didn't make a video of Nature, but maybe a montage or animated clip might have been possible. That's disappointing, but at three and three-quarter hours it's a driftnet haul of local music. So that's the Christmas present for friends abroad taken care of, right?

Label: Sony

* * *

Michael Jackson: Number Ones

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Think what you like about this sad, dysfunctional and emotionally stunted man-child but you have to concede he made great pop, and sometimes spectacular videos. This 15-track selection (under a title inviting toilet humour), which goes from Don't Stop Till You Get Enough (79) to the 10-minute, musically unmemorable, laboured and pointless mini-movie for You Rock My World (2001) mostly confirms it. Of course there's the messianic nonsense (Earth Song of 95 when he started to look seriously strange) but with Rock With You, Billie Jean, Beat It and Thriller back-to-back it's powerfully impressive. Some of the videos have dated (Man in the Mirror) and are rather sad - handsome black boy grows into odd white alien woman - but the music can be addictively funky (The Way You Make Me Feel is timeless). And not everyone can get Martin Scorsese, Jon Landis and Joe Pytka to direct their clips. Released as another accusation of child molestation descends (yes, you do scan for clues) means this has added poignancy to Jackson's tragic life. "I'm a bit different," he says in Thriller. Yep.

Label: Sony

* * *

Moana And The Tribe: Live and Proud

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Moana's excellent third album Toru seems to have gone past many. Hopefully this excellent DVD of videos, a live concert in Germany, European tour doco, and profile of Moana and her Maori roots (aimed for an international audience but equally interesting for hometown folks) will bring attention to it. No star on display here, in family footage Moana is endearingly humble, and in concert you can see the attraction of what must appear very exotic to Europeans.

Label: King Music

* * *

Robbie Williams: What We Did Last Summer

(Herald rating: * * * )

Yes, he's a nod'n'wink cad, cheeky wideboy and all the rest. But at his recent Western Springs concert he also seemed to have attention deficit and the show fluctuated wildly between stadium-shaking choruses, rambling chat and All Round Family Entertainer nonsense. It was a mess, albeit slightly lovable. If he'd liked us less - all those tedious asides about "New Zealand" - this is the show we might have got: big, bombastic but more focused. Filmed at Knebworth in August it's exactly the same show as here (there's even a teary-eyed couple who've been married for 10 years singled out for She's the One) and some fans might be disappointed that their man could be so cynical and emotionally manipulative of his audience. There's a brief doco and some other clips as bonuses.

Label: EMI

* * *

Also available:

Pearl Jam, Live at the Garden (Sony): This Madison Square Garden gig over two discs favours their last album, Riot Act, which is no bad thing. They also plough energetically through the back-catalogue (Last Exit, Evenflow and more) and invite up guests Ben Harper, the Buzzcock's Steve Diggle and former Hunters and Collectors frontman Mark Seymour for his Throw Your Arms Around Me. One where you wish you'd been there, and feel like you are.

AC/DC, Live at Donington (FMR): Not a lot of surprises as they play their hits at this 91 show over two hours. Oldie but a goodie.

Kylie, Greatest Hits 87-98 (FMR): Another collection from the vaults, from The Loco-motion to a Nick Cave victim is quite some trip. Some seldom seen and unreleased clips included.

Queen, Greatest Video Hits Volume 2 (EMI): With the Darkness making stadium pomp and falsettos hip again this deserves a reconsideration. Most of the hits are on the first collection but here are I Want it All, Radio Ga Ga, I Want to Break Free, and Under Pressure (among others) and a second three-hour disc with unreleased video versions, interviews, some live footage and bits about the making of some of the clips. A stacked deck.

REM, In View, The Best of REM (Warners): Sixteen well-known clips, half a dozen lesser-knowns and live performances of Imitation of Life, Losing My Religion and Man on the Moon. Interviews, too. Seems a bit of a shortchange, but REM have been down this track before with Pop Screen, Road Movie, Tour Film and so on.

The Human League, The Very Best of (Virgin): Unlike their contemporaries Duran Duran, a League revival seems a little far off. Meantime, here are 19 clips, four more from Top of the Pops performances from 91, and two others from a Jools Holland show in 95. Hmmm.