Cheap Trick - From Tokyo To You
Cheap Trick Unlimited/Big3 Records, 2004





Made to commemorate their 2003 Japanese tour, this DVD serves as both a love letter and an inside joke for Cheap Trick's longtime fans. There's 80 minutes of concert footage here intercut with interviews where the members tell outrageous stories and tall tales about each other. The live material is excellent, as is always the case with this band.

This is well worth picking up if you're a fan, but if you only know the hits, it would be worth the time to get into the history of the group before viewing it. These guys have a bizarre and sometimes subtle sense of humor about going from a Midwestern bar band to one of the most celebrated acts in the history of American rock and roll, quite literally almost overnight, and that can be lost on someone without any sense of how it all happened.

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Judas Priest - Electric Eye
Columbia Music Video, 2003



The centerpiece of this DVD is a concert recorded on the Fuel For Life tour (1986) in Dallas, TX. This show was previously released on VHS and Laserdisc as Priest...Live! in 1987. The video includes four tracks that were left off the album of the same name. It's a good show, a little dated maybe, but still a lot of fun to watch. You could try a drinking game where you take a shot every time Rob Halford changes into a different leather jacket, but you'd likely die of alcohol poisoning long before you get to the end. I saw Priest on this tour, and remember thinking they must have a crew member whose sole responsibility was to be in charge of the leather.





Also on this DVD are 13 videos taken from albums starting with British Steel up through Painkiller. The earlier ones are worth a look for the sheer pleasure of remembering how cheesy videos could be before record companies began taking the production value of them seriously.





There are also six TV performances on this set. The first two from 1975 are the best, as they are actual live performances taken from the Old Grey Whistle Test show that was aired on the BBC. Note how the band dresses like they were moonlighting as stunt doubles for Lynyrd Skynyrd.





There's a decent amount of content here, clocking in at a total of almost three hours. Well worth spending a few bucks on if you see this laying around somewhere.

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Gordon Rekcikssa
Judas Priest - Electric Eye
Columbia Music Video, 2003

That looks cool. I should pick up a copy of that one. I've seen those Grey Whistle videos before, the band was onto something even at that early stage, even if they would break more ground later.

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Butthole Surfers - Blind Eye Sees All: Live In Detroit 1985
originally released on VHS by Touch and Go, 1985 - this DVD by MVD, 2002



Filmed in Detroit at two separate shows in February-March 1985 and spliced with intervals of an interview with a very stoned band in bed together, this video shows why the Butthole Surfers were one of the most innovative bands of the 80s Texas punk scene. Equal parts of weird depravity and visionary psychedelic virtuosity combine for something totally unique in the annals of underground American rock.

The original VHS release came with a 5" single containing a cover of The Guess Who's American Woman. While the DVD doesn't have that, it does contain a bonus live video of Negro Observer recorded in 1991.

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Quote
Gordon Rekcikssa
Butthole Surfers - Blind Eye Sees All: Live In Detroit 1985
originally released on VHS by Touch and Go, 1985 - this DVD by MVD, 2002

Nice pick. I don't know their whole catalog very well (only have a few albums) but this is a good period for them. Definitely a unique band.

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