The creative world has once again enveloped DGM. A DVD is brewing that will have intense bearded young men everywhere running totheir banks, extending their mortgages, and parting with their easily loaned cash.
I have Sid Smith to thank for planting the seed,with his mention of the BootlegTV footage. The Tall Pointy One's vision of simple, cheap "I was there" footage, is utterly vindicated. If the Japanese footage does, at times, make the band seem like ageing codgers who didn't ought to be doing this, the BootlegTV footage presents real footage of real musicians playing real music.
But that is not all. It is not even the half of it.Because the crew filmed an entire tour there is an empathy between artist and camera that is never achieved on one night. The BootlegTV footage breaks thegolden rule that any night when KC is filmed will, by definition, be a badnight. This footage captures the good nights...and the blowing. As good asanything I heard from the 1970s. Punk has had a long week viewing over thirtyconcerts, and he has found 12 absolute stompers. Not only do they sound good,but you can see the spider fingers cracking like whipcords.
Which leads to the DVD – and the Tall Pointy One's ongoing quest for a way to replicate live performance on a disc – theuncertainty of what you might hear. Those fiendishly clever people at Apple are writing a program so that each time you watch your BootlegTV DVD it will randomly draw from the bank of improvisations,so that you know not what wonderous sounds may erupt from Frippean bowels or Belewbeloidal nether regions . Over four hours of music stored away, waiting to present itself on the unsuspecting listener.
And how much would you pay for this jewel, I wonder? If four hours of 2 track audio was worth $60, what might five hours of pictures, two track and surround sound audio be worth? Methinks the Led Zep policy of $29.99 (down to $22 on Amazon.com) may be fine for those who sell in the millions, but it will not recoup KC's costs from a smaller (and far less discerning) fanbase.
And I have more to tell. There is more, so much more. A whole story about EMI and their stinky, stinky, attitude to downloads.Get your dirt here. But perhaps first a Gin and Tonic….
"We have the right to choose our form of suffering."
