A "DVD Night"

9-23-08 DVD Night

I recently had a ‘DVD night’ at home. This is pretty unusual these days – I almost never watch any kind of TV at home. I watched most of the Midnight Oil “Black Fella, White Fella” DVD, as found in the new Legacy edition of their “Dust and Diesel” CD set. I tried to watch an Urszula Dudziak DVD, but the Panasonic would not play an AC:2 PAL DVD. I watched most of the Classic Rock Productions Curved Air set – I really like how they intercut birds with band on “Propositions”. I watched the Monochrome Set “Bedrock” concert – I am a big TMS fan. I have seen Mr. Bid play live in L.A. I have also seen a Japanese TMS laser disc that is fantastic. I finished up with watching most of the odd “Region 0” Level 42 DVD from Germany. Really quite surprised to see stuff from ’81 on this DVD (“Love Games”) – looks like a Top of the Pops performance. I decided to try Level 42 after realizing that Wally Badarou produced lots of their stuff.

From the early 80’s until the late 90’s, I was a music video “obsessive”. I owned a PAL TV & VHS deck – and a video standards converter. I had a deck that would play French videos (“SECAM”, sequential color memory). My music video list got up to around 22,000 titles – some of them long-forms (i.e. whole concerts) – and in ’98 or so, I lost almost all interest in collecting music videos. Ahem…I still have dozens of cartons of music videos out in my garage. It’s just nuts.

I’ve made a few volumes of music videos on DVD-R, from my old tapes. But it’s a lot of work, always searching for the ‘best copy’ of something – trying to stick to themes etc. And, you know, if there is a legit music DVD of something available, I’d much rather somebody else go to all the time and trouble to ‘do it properly’. I’ll even pay, I swear!

I only have a few dozen factory-made music DVD’s – but I’ve got some great stuff – John Cale, Simple Minds, The Screamers, The Who, Blur, Joe Cocker, The Plastics, Y.M.O., Momus, Roxy Music, The Birthday Party, Motorhead, Frank Zappa…you get the idea. I really like “Dual Discs” – one side CD, the other DVD – I wish there were more of them about – I have Townshend / Lane “Rough Mix:” and an Emerson Lake & Palmer one (the video on that is a performance I don’t think I’d ever seen before, Live ‘70). Oh, and I’ve got dozens of feature films that I like on the DVD format.

We watch a bit of time-shifted TV at my girlfriend’s place on the weekends. Where she lives, there is no terrestrial TV reception. I even tried to take my digital tuner up there, just to see what would come in – no go, niente, nada. So, it’s back to watching “Rage” on DVD – “Rage” is the world’s #1 music video TV show – it originates in Australia.

So, do you like DVD’s? Do you ever sit around and have a music video “DVD Night”? What sort of stuff do you watch? Legit DVD’s or burns from friends? Do you get your DVD’s in a store or from the internet? Or do you download everything you watch?

Still raining, still dreaming…still listening to music…