Seeing is believing This year’s holiday windfall is on DVD BY BOSTON PHOENIX STAFF

The big news in audio in 2003 was . . . video. Sure, there have been discussions that would have the remaining major labels all agreeing on some form of encoding that would make MP-3 and other forms of digital downloads difficult if not impossible. But more and more, artists, their managers, and the labels themselves are realizing that something is needed in the interim to hold on to the consumer base they’ve been drawing on for the past 50 or 60 years. And the answer has turned out to be video, as in enhanced CDs with Web links to special sites and "bonus" DVDs filled with concert footage, music videos, and behind-the scenes footage, not to mention easy-to-compile collections of MTV videos for bands who’ve been around long enough to have a dozen or so already in the can.

The proof is in the holiday-season pudding. Usually Christmas brings an avalanche of high-profile, high-priced box sets. There are a few minor ones coming out this season, but the real flood of product has been in the DVD market, where everyone, from has-beens like Pat Benatar to the biggest rock-and-roll band in the world (i.e., the Rolling Stones), seems to have a new DVD on the market. Some, like the Stones set and a deluxe Once in a Lifetime Talking Heads four-CD set, amount to the video versions of audio box sets. Others, like Pearl Jam: Live at the Garden and Coldplay Live 2003, are self-explanatory. The cheap way out is to throw together a bunch of videos with some amusing behind-the-scenes footage, which is what smaller labels like the Bay Area indie Lookout! have done; Turn-On Tune-In Lookout brings together videos by the Donnas, Pansy Division, Bratmobile, and others. The big issue is whether to package these DVDs in regular DVD containers or to make them look like regular CDs. Most labels have chosen the former approach; U2’s first live DVD, U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle, Ireland, is the most conspicuous exception. The problem is that most music fans head straight for the CD section; if a band’s DVD is in the video aisles, those shoppers may never see it, but if it’s in the music area, shoppers who expect to find music DVDs in the video section may miss out. Before long, we’ll probably see two versions of each music DVD, one in a DVD box and one in a CD jewel box, just to ensure that everyone gets maximum exposure.

In the meantime, even regular CD releases by big artists. from LeAnn Rimes to Linkin Park, are being packaged with special "bonus" DVDs. It’s a desperate, tentative solution: before long, computer geeks are going find a way to make video files compact enough for Internet trading and the game will be up. For now, though, this holiday season has brought a bounty of video releases that appear to have taken the place of the old box set. Here’s a sampling; look for reviews of the Stones’ Four Flicks and Coldplay 2003 next week in my "Pop Rocks" column. And let’s hope that by this time next year the music business will have found some reasonable solution to the digital downloading problem so that we can move on to more interesting controversies, like . . . , oh, Michael Jackson.

– Matt Ashare, Music Editor

Blue Man Group, THE COMPLEX ROCK TOUR LIVE (Lava). The Blue Man Group’s first full-blown summer rock tour wasn’t quite the epochal event the franchise’s spinmasters claimed, but it was still a lot of fun — and a chance to see a slew of notable Boston rockers including Tracey Bonham, singer/keyboardist Peter Moore, and guitarist Dave Steel perform in an unusual context. This DVD, which captures a concert from that tour, is best when it puts you on stage with the spotlight-stealing Blue Men, whose aliens-on-acid shtick plays right into the excessive volume and spectacle of big-league rock. Numbers like "Sing Along" and "Your Attention Please" give the blue-ink-stained critters a chance to take deadpan delight in leading the audience through concert rituals. And the music often rocks with fierce, feedback-soaked abandon.

Some of the best numbers, like "Drumbone," blend the Blue guys’ patented portrayals of quirky, quizzical discovery with their penchant for beating on things — mostly plastic-like tubes of various shapes and sizes — to produce tones that split the difference between beat and melody. But there are full-blown rockers, too, like "The Current," which is also featured as a bonus video with Bush’s Gavin Rossdale singing lead. (The MTV-friendly Dave Matthews–led version of "Sing Along" is also here.) On the down side, there are too many distance shots of the action on the stage, and they compromise the intimacy and the up-close thrills that concert films are all about. And Bonham’s vocal performance saps the life from a cover of the Who’s "Baba O’Riley." But who would sound good against the template of Roger Daltrey’s original rocket-launcher delivery of those lyrics?

— Ted Drozdowski

The Chemical Brothers, Singles ’93-’03 (Astralwerks). Melding bedrock-firm beats to far-from-concrete imagery, the British-based psychedelic big-beat DJ/production duo of Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands injected humanized grit and giddiness into mechanized groove. Better known as the Chemical Brothers, Simons and Rowlands interspersed bleary miasma with moments of clarity, a motion-streaked clatter as instantly intoxicating as opiates crossing the blood-brain barrier. Since 1995, their work and its visual representation have personified the thin membrane separating the rational from the ritualistic.

A Region 0 disc playable on all continents, Singles ’93-’03 comprises nine videos and six live performances covering all but three tracks on the corresponding, separately available CD ("Song to the Siren," "Leave Home," and "Get Yourself High" are exclusive to the audio disc). In exchange, the DVD features clips for "Life Is Sweet," "Elektrobank," and "Hoops" and a live-in-concert segue of New Order’s "Temptation" into the Chemical Brothers’ "Star Guitar," four numbers not on the CD. Materials are split into "Promos" and "Live"; those who wish to chart the duo’s progression can select "Chronology."

Simons and Rowlands make subtle, Hitchcock-like cameos that you can enjoy trainspotting. As for the live footage, it’s a kinetic multi-camera mesh of stroboscopic, supersaturated sweeps and hallucinogenic overlays. The audio is firmly mastered and with the appropriate processing is discretely mapped to rear channels in a manner that provides more width than movement, never challenging center stage but exhibiting satisfying girth. An "Interviews" section offers short sound bites from such collaborators and contemporaries as Beth Orton, Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook, and the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, plus Oasis’s Noel Gallagher, Charlatans UK’s Tim Burgess, New Order’s Bernard Sumner, and former Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft — or "Britain’s Great Rock Voices," as Rolling Stone’s David Fricke refers to them in the liner notes. A behind-the-scenes "Private Reels" section rounds out the DVD’s perspectives.

— Tony Ware

Devo, THE COMPLETE TRUTH ABOUT DE-EVOLUTION (Rhino). If MTV had never existed, Devo would have had to invent it. Before they were a working band, the Kent State art department’s gift to new wave were a high-concept visual entity, equal parts aggressive nerdiness, dehumanized sexuality, and Midwestern kitsch. Starting with 1976’s two-song short "In the Beginning Was the End," this release collects all but one of their videos (their morphed "Are U Experienced?" is missing, thanks to a flat refusal from the Hendrix estate), from the image-defining "Satisfaction" to more elaborate productions from the hit Freedom of Choice/New Traditionalists period. (And, it must be said, some weak work from their late-career decline.) Tube watchers of a certain age already have the S&M-dude-ranch setting of "Whip It" branded on their libidos, but less-aired clips like "Love Without Anger" (chicken masks, decapitated Barbie dolls) and "That’s Good" (animated French fry penetrates animated doughnut and breaks in half) are just as witty and disturbing.

Mark Mothersbaugh’s alter ego Booji Boy rears his latex baby head repeatedly, controlling the parade of found film in "Beautiful World" and loading a truck with leaky toxic-waste barrels in "Worried Man" (from Neil Young’s vanity feature Human Highway). Beyond articulate commentary by Mothersbaugh and bassist/"Chief Strategist" Gerald Casale, the disc’s extras include a short interview with Chuck Statler (Casale’s frequent co-director), goofy testimonials for Pioneer’s first consumer laserdisc players, and vintage between-video "bridges" featuring Laraine Newman and Dr. Timothy Leary. Rarest of all: shaky footage of a pre-Devo performance in 1973 in which a monkey-masked Mothersbaugh derails the band’s blues-rock rudiments. History-minded fans should also track down Jade Dellinger & David Giffel’s definitive new biography Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! (SAF Publishing). But the DVD itself may be just the gift for that precocious 14-year-old who’s begun to suspect that human progress might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

— Franklin Bruno

Duran Duran, GREATEST: THE DVD (EMI). Location, location, location: it really was the secret to Duran Duran’s success. It didn’t hurt that they were handsome, but what cemented these photogenic Brits in the public consciousness, and made them one of the earliest acts to parlay MTV rotation into mainstream popularity, was a trio of promotional videos for their 1982 smash Rio, shot against stunning South American and Asian scenery and featuring a bevy of scantily clad models smeared with neon body paints.

You’ll find all three — "Hungry like the Wolf," "Rio," and "Save a Prayer" — on the first half of this two-DVD set, which features videos for 21 of the quintet’s hits. Surveying the first four years of the band’s career, disc one is the keeper. After apparently exhausting their travel budget, the boys veered into Mad Max territory (if Mel Gibson had been fussier about his bronzer) for "Union of the Snake" and "Wild Boys." This jaw-dropping pair of clips forges the missing link between Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and Fischerspooner, teeming with jungle-gym choreography, hairstyles teased to the heavens, and fur-trimmed leotards.

The second disc, documenting the lean period following 1985’s #1 "A View to a Kill" theme for the James Bond movie, is spottier. As the group began to conform to the standards of the medium they’d helped pioneer, their on-screen charm waned; "Notorious" looks suspiciously like a collage of leftover bits from Robert Palmer’s "Addicted to Love" and Steve Winwood’s "Higher Love." The boys did develop a sense of humor with the passage of time — elfin keyboard player Nick Rhodes is all smiles during the dreary ballad "Serious" — but the early offerings, where they take themselves seriously in some truly absurd scenarios, are still far more entertaining. Extras include alternate versions of seven videos, interviews, and watching directors find new ways to camouflage Simon Le Bon’s multiple chins.

— Kurt B. Reighley

Foo Fighters, EVERYWHERE BUT HOME (RCA). As frontman of the successful but curiously underhyped guitar-rock outfit Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl has married pungent, melodic songwriting to an arena-ready sense of bombast; when the singer and former Nirvana drummer titled the band’s 1997 album The Colour and the Shape, he might have been searching for a way to describe the qualities he wanted his music to have. The centerpiece of Everywhere But Home, a new DVD documenting the Foos’ world tour in support of last year’s One by One, is a 15-song set recorded in Toronto. There’s plenty of hard-rock muscle for those Foo fans enraptured by riffs, including a rendition of Colour’s "My Hero" that devolves into a 6/8 metalhead swing and a cranky "Have It All" that retains the residue of Grohl’s short-lived stint in Josh Homme’s SoCal stoner-rock unit Queens of the Stone Age. But there’s also the sweet alterna-rock optimism of "Learn To Fly" and "Times like These" (the latter with Grohl on acoustic guitar), both of which suggest what Grohl’s old bandmate Kurt Cobain might have become if he’d overcome his depression and found happiness as an LA studio pro. Two songs filmed at an enormous outdoor concert at Slane Castle (one of them "Everlong," Grohl’s best tune) revisit the heady days captured in Dave Markey’s 1991: The Year Punk Broke, back when Cobain got a kick out of having mud flung at him by crusty European festivalgoers. Still, some backstage shenanigans from Grohl and sidekick/drummer Taylor Hawkins would’ve provided this all-business DVD with a crucial third dimension.

— Mikael Wood

The Hellacopters, GOODNIGHT CLEVELAND (Music Video Distributors). Sweden’s Hellacopters are nothing if not children of the ’70s — after escaping the death-boogie metal outfit Entombed, drummer-turned-frontman Nicke Andersson threw his record collection (Kiss, Stooges, MC5, Sonic’s Rendezvous, Radio Birdman, Motown) into a trash bin and set it on fire. Or at least that’s what their first few records sounded like, until original guitarist Dregen split and the band began alternating fast, loud, and lean hard-rock albums with more prosaic, noodlier affairs. This documentary, which was filmed for Swedish television and "shot using the same direct-cinema techniques developed by the master filmmakers of the early ’70s," catches the group during an upsurge, on the last leg of an American tour behind 2002’s raucous High Visibility (Gearhead). They weren’t enjoying any, having squandered their shot at US stardom with the lackluster Grande Rock (on Sub Pop several years earlier), but the live performances here confirm their godhead — from psychedelic feedback orgies in New York to a frantic duet with Sonic’s Scott Morgan in Detroit to a wailing three-guitar onslaught with a guest spot from Gaza Stripper Rick Sims at a show at Boston’s Axis. The film is also pretty good at explaining why the ’Copters never caught on: thanks in part to federal subsidies at home, Swedish rockers are lazy, petulant bastards who seem allergic to even the slightest hint of work. (Bonus points for the English subtitles, which catch ace guitarist Robert "Strings" Eriksson whining in Swedish about a photo shoot with Revolver.) The extras include some extremely rough bootleg footage of the band’s early days — a reminder that any outfit’s second gig ever is probably not a keeper — as well as an obstructed-view document of the Hives’ Howlin’ Pelle joining in for an electrifying take on the Stooges’ "Search and Destroy."

Carly Carioli

The Jam, THE COMPLETE JAM (Universal), Paul Weller, TWO CLASSIC PERFORMANCES (Ype-Roc). Led Zeppelin’s double DVD got all the attention, but this Jam set may rank as the definitive example of a great band’s getting the obsessive treatment they deserve. A pair of two-hour-plus discs contain all the Jam footage that could be found: all their promo videos, two short documentaries on the band and their ’70s fans, and more than two hours’ worth of live TV appearances. This last is the meat of the set, showing how the Jam progressed from rough and punkish to polished and soulful over a mere five years. A 20-minute concert clip from right in the middle features the definitive "Going Underground." As a bonus, you get Paul Weller doing a hilariously cranky interview for Swedish TV. (Interviewer: "In Sweden, jam means jelly, but that’s not what you meant, is it?" Weller: "No.")

The disc also offers one explanation of why British punk arose: late-’70s England had some of the best music television in history. Most of us have seen the Sex Pistols’ notorious TV clip where the soused, middle-aged Bill Grundy goaded them into swearing for the cameras, but the Jam’s disc reveals that much British TV was far hipper. On one clip, they’re introduced by a glammed-up Marc Bolan of T. Rex, who had his own series just before his death. And the first clip comes from the 1977 youth-culture show So It Goes, whose sharp-dressed host opines, "A lot of people knock the Jam for being too popular and not avant-garde enough. That’s the kind of snobbery slouching into punk these days — elitists!" It speaks volumes about how important punk was at the time.

Weller remains a god in England, but most American Jam fans are taking a pass on his solo career, having found it slicker and more retro. Which it is, but he’s maintained the urgency of his Jam-era songwriting — or at least got it back after the Style Council fiasco — and he’s a far better singer nowadays, as recent live versions of "That’s Entertainment" prove. The three-hour Two Classic Performances (which is actually two recent performances) finds him in both electric and acoustic mode, favoring his recent solo catalogue and exuding smarts and soul throughout. And a recent interview proves that Weller, bless ’is ’eart, could still use a translator.

— Brett Milano

Avril Lavigne, MY WORLD (Arista/20th Century Fox). A couple of highlights you won’t find on Avril’s first DVD: her rhymes-with-Howie screw-up at the Grammy announcements; her pre-fame triumph at a Shania Twain–sponsored talent contest. Everything else is in the bag. A full concert shot the last night of her first and only headlining arena tour, during which she performs everything on Let Go, throws in Green Day’s horniest/catchiest tune and Dylan’s most morbid ("Basketcase" and "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door," both also included on a six-song bonus audio disc, along with her cover of Metallica’s "Fuel" live at MTV), and debuts one new song of her own ("I Don’t Give," as in "I don’t give a shit what they say about us," her most Punky Brewster tune since "Sk8er Boi"). All five of her videos, including her skate-ramp bubblegum classic "Complicated" and the flashmob-inspired street-riot vignette for "Sk8er Boi." A half-hour featurette in which the 17-year-old star is seen to drink, drive, skate, cuss (bleeped), pick her nose, flash the camera, cry when she gets locked in the bathroom, and get sick on a roller-coaster.

On stage, she’s never more excited (and often far less) than the Matrix’s scripts call for. She cracks her biggest smile when her dog makes a surprise visit and seems most disappointed when accepting a Canadian Music Award for album of the year. Through it all, she displays her signature ambivalence: she’s less skater than bored. Her inability to hide this is one of her charms. The same hazy indifference she brings to Metallica — it looks about as exciting as homework — also imbues her tomboyish sad-and-lonely songs with heartbreaking pathos: when she tells you, "I’d rather be anything but ordinary," you may wonder whether anyone could sing with such exceptional mundanity.

— Carly Carioli

Pearl Jam, LIVE AT THE GARDEN (Epic). Earlier this year, Pearl Jam made headlines when frontman Ed Vedder decided to have a little fun with a George W. Bush mask during the incendiary "Bushleaguer" on the first night of the band’s latest tour. The funniest part of this new two-disc set is the "Bushleaguer" montage, which reveals that Vedder not only slammed the mask onto the stage but also mischievously serenaded it while wearing an outrageous Vegas-style outfit. That’s just one of the loads of DVD extras here; an unlisted performance of Temple of the Dog’s "Hunger Strike" with Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker on guest vocals is another.

During the three-hour Madison Square Garden gig itself, the most political statement Vedder makes is about how the band oppose tax cuts even though "you’ve made us rich motherfuckers." He says that during the encore, right before he invites two members of Buzzcocks on stage for exuberant covers of Dead Boys’ "Sonic Reducer" and the Who’s "Baba O’Riley." The rest of the encore is more relaxed but just as emotional: Vedder shines on the group’s classic take on Victoria Williams’s "Crazy Mary," then duets with Ben Harper on the smoldering "Indifference." Live at the Garden is an old-school technical affair: the cameras focus primarily on the stage, and the only real prop is a giant disco ball that appears during the riveting "Wishlist." But Pearl Jam let the music speak for itself, and Vedder is a charming host as he switches on and off guitar and prowls the stage with a bottle of wine. Guitarist Mike McCready looks the most punk; his fiery solo on "Even Flow" is the show’s most genuine rock-god moment. As Buzzcock Tony Barber says after "Sonic Reducer": "These guys are the bollocks."

— Sean Richardson

The Pretenders, LOOSE IN L.A. (Red Distribution). Pretenders fans will attest to the continuing validity of the band’s shows and the quality of their slow but steady output over the past 20-plus years. But until now, the only legit live material available was 1995’s "unplugged" Isle of View, an uncharacteristically subdued set. Filmed in February of this year at the Wiltern Theater, Loose in L.A. showcases a catalogue rich with pop expertise and delivered with punk-veteran know-how. What the show lacks in spontaneity it makes up for in tightly rehearsed professionalism, and Chrissie Hynde’s singing is spot-on throughout despite her admitting to being under the weather. The 26-track set list covers the best of what 2002’s Loose Screw had to offer ("Time," "Complex Person," "The Losing"), leaving room for a few hard-rockers from the debut ("Precious," "Tattooed Love Boys") and including all the radio-friendly hits en route. Although Hynde has worked overtime to establish herself as a hard-drinking tough cookie of a gal, a closer look at the emotional range of the material she’s penned reveals it’s her tender side that appeals the most ("Kid, I’ll Stand by You," "Don’t Get Me Wrong").

Hynde is entertaining to watch alongside her cohort, versatile lead ax man Adam Seymour and founding member/underrated drummer Martin Chambers (bassist Andy Hobson looks as if he’d rather be napping at the hotel). Zeben Jameson does a commendable job of filling in on keyboards, percussion, and harmonies. And director Brian Lockwood makes excellent use of the Wiltern’s bright and expansive stage with unusual camera angles that, along with bonus interview footage from both backstage and the tour bus, make Loose in L.A. a memorable snapshot of the Pretenders in action.

— Christopher John Treacy

Steve Reich/Beryl Korot, THREE TALES (Nonesuch). This collaboration between composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot weds music and image in a moving meditation on the ways technology has changed our lives over the past century. Using digital editing technologies to manipulate and fuse words, film, and music, the creative duo explore three iconic moments in the history of technology: the crash of the Hindenburg, the A-bomb test at Bikini atoll, and the cloning of Dolly the sheep. The music, which is also included on a companion CD, conveys only a portion of the full work’s meaning and impact. Reich and Korot find countless ways to marry audio and video into a single multimedia union. Portions of libretto appear as a visual elements in the video; text alone adds meaning to piano motifs in "Bikini"; visual rhythms clash or flow with the music, as the subject demands.

Each artist makes outstanding individual contributions as well. Korot uses the terrifying film of the Hindenburg explosion and somber footage of the burnt wreckage to bookend a passage of manipulated video that turns zeppelin factory workers into graceful dancers and offers footage of the magnificent vessel in flight. Reich’s music in "Bikini" grows by turns elegiac and stern as it alternates between military technology and the people whose home is destroyed by the nuclear test. Korot’s painterly treatment of the footage of the islanders creates a lovely, vulnerable counterpoint to the stark footage of American military might. In "Dolly," Reich’s motor rhythms set in motion sampled quotes from scientists and academics to convey the sense of giddy excitement and foreboding uneasiness that accompanied that particular technological advance. The interplay of ideas, music, and visuals suggests a future rushing too quickly forward — these developments should "give us pause," as one academic warns. Reich and Korot have taken big ideas in this elegant and haunting marriage of music and video and given us that "pause" about our technology-dominated world.

— Ed Hazell

Rush, RUSH IN RIO (Zoë/Rounder). At last, through the miracle of technology, a chance to bring 50,000 Brazilian boneheads into your living room — and Rush are apparently on this DVD as well. The Canadian trio have come off well on the handful of live albums and long-form videos they’ve done in the past, but their first DVD is a surprising botch. Instead of showing you what the musicians are doing, director Daniel Cutuollo III keeps cutting away with show-offish camerawork and sticking crowd shots — mostly the same dozen guys shouting the lyrics, shaking their hair, and raising goat horns — into practically every verse of every song. Worse, the audience is mixed almost as loud as the band (and usually louder than Alex Lifeson’s guitar), so it’s just like a real concert where the jerk next to you won’t shut up.

Rush fans tend to be serious musos rather than headbangers, so it’s a bad call to present them like this. Even in "Distant Early Warning," one of the most thoughtful songs in all of arena rock, you get a distracting round of cheers whenever they navigate a key change. The wrong people get photographed during solos — no small feat when a band have just three members — and you barely get to see the videos and projections, like the dancing skeleton in "Roll the Bones."

Which is too bad, because Rush were in prime form when this show was filmed last year, after a five-year layoff caused by tragedies in drummer Neal Peart’s family. The three-hour set list is heavy on chestnuts (including a few that weren’t done on most tour dates), but some good album tracks sneak in as well, like "The Pass" and "Bravado" from their prog-pop period. The second disc’s extras wind up being more enjoyable than the main program; you even get to watch Peart’s drum solo from three different angles. And an hour-long documentary presents the trio as likably self-effacing, with Lifeson proving the only guitar hero who’d berate himself on camera for going off his diet. By the way: remember when Rounder-associated labels used to put out alternatives to major-label music?

— Brett Milano

TENACIOUS D: THE COMPLETE MASTER WORKS (Sony Music). Fat guys are funny. Especially fat guys who like Dio better than Ozzy. But watching Tenacious D: The Complete Master Works, specifically the ripping live set recorded last year at London’s Brixton Academy, you’re reminded that Jack Black and Kyle Gass aren’t just funny — they’re better songwriters than many of those whom they parody. And between the mock metal machismo and the sophomoric sexist shtick, you notice that these two doughy devil worshippers, striding the stage like rock-and-roll colossi and arpeggiating their acoustics with extreme prejudice, are monstrous musicians. KG is a bravura classical guitarist; JB — moaning like Robert Plant in heat, busting some Bobby-McFerrin-on-brown-acid mouth sounds, or unleashing some frenetic "saxaboom" skronk — is frontman as pure id. As the crowd sings along in unison to songs from their homonymous record ("Explosivo," "Karate") and a few that aren’t on it ("Flash," "The Cosmic Shame"), it’s clear that the D aren’t lampooning the majesty of rock and the mystery of roll. They’re living it.

As great as the live set is, the real draw for most fans here will be the three über-rare ’99 HBO episodes (six shorts, at 15-minutes each) that introduced the Greatest Band in the World to the world. A second disc — prohibitively labeled "for psycho fans only!" — sweetens the pot. There are videos for "Fuck Her Gently," "Wonder Boy," and "Tribute" (with making-of’s for the latter two), clips from guest spots on Conan O’Brien, Mad TV, and Crank Yankers, and documentary footage from in the studio and on tour. Best of all are three gut-busting, gut-churning short films directed by Liam Lynch, who’s also helming the band’s upcoming feature, The Pick of Destiny.

This is not the greatest DVD in the world. But it’s close.

— Mike Miliard

U2, GO HOME: LIVE FROM SLANE CASTLE, IRELAND (Interscope). "We don’t deserve this — nobody does," says Bono, like the humble Christian he strives to be. In a split second, the rock star catches up, relenting, "But we’ll take it anyway." At that, 80,000 Irish lads and lassies roar their approval. It’s September 1, 2001, almost a year after the release of All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and U2 are closing the European leg of their Elevation Tour with a homecoming celebration of their 21st year in the public spotlight. Very few rock bands shine that long; none has risen to the year’s coming-of-age symbolism so triumphantly. Capping that triumph is this concert, the second of two Saturday-night performances outside the same castle where these Dublin boys opened for Thin Lizzy 20 years before, and where they later joined Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to record parts of The Unforgettable Fire.

The question is, two long years later, does this triumph still deserve to be revisited on the band’s first live DVD? Well, if U2’s balancing act between the pain of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and the release of "Beautiful Day" is too finely calibrated to withstand the cataclysm that came 10 mornings after this innocent evening, that only adds an external layer of poignancy. The close-ups and swooping crane shots underscore the swelling music, and the careful editing undercuts a lot of the primping that marred the concert I saw on the first American leg of the tour. True, the slow, stripped acoustic segment still feels a bit flat — most of the band’s music rides on the force of its rhythmically propelled harmonic undercurrents, after all. But the five songs from All That You Can’t Leave Behind, U2’s most sublimely melodic album, are spaced to pick up the slack. And if nothing else, the DVD’s biggest bonus — an amateurish documentary of the Unforgettable Fire recording session — reminds you how much flatter a live-music DVD can be.

— Franklin Soults

Various Artists, ONE NIGHT WITH BLUE NOTE (Blue Note Records). According to producer Stephen Reed, this is a complete re-editing of both sound and music from the 1985 Blue Note "reunion" concert held at New York’s Town Hall and first released on VHS. But he apparently still had limited footage, and so he runs into the usual vocal-versus-instrumental problem: as camera subjects, singers have all those words pouring out of their mouths, but jazz players tend just to stand there bent over their instruments. Which in a club is fine. But watching some of the these performances (and constrained camera set-ups), you might be tempted to go back to the original (and better) audio performances of Herbie Hancock’s "Cantaloupe Island" and Joe Henderson’s "Recorda Me," where your attention and your imagination aren’t diverted by static visuals. Weren’t there more than a couple of good angle shots on Bobby Hutcherson’s vibes or, heck, any of the pianists (none of whom seems to play with two hands at once)?

That said, this is Blue Note records, which in the ’60s with artists like Art Blakey and Horace Silver helped foster a new jazz sound, hard bop, that was both progressive and popular. Silver isn’t here, but Blakey is, leading one of the better segments ("Moanin’," with Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Walter Davis Jr., and Reggie Workman). Despite a handful of torpid Hancock/Ron Carter/Tony Williams–based groups, Jackie McLean and Woody Shaw, Charles Lloyd with Michel Petrucciani and Jack DeJohnette, and a very young Stanley Jordan make up the difference. And a varied, powerful, 12-minute Cecil Taylor solo piano piece is worth the price of admission.

— Jon Garelick