Ed
Sullivan's Rock & Roll Classics
(1965 - 1971/Time Life DVD reissue box)/Elvis
4K
(2022/Warner 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Misty:
Here Again
(1969/GrapeFruit Import CD*)/Randy
Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon
(2022/MVD/VMI Blu-ray)/Stacey
Q: Better Than Heaven
(1986/Warner Music UK/CD set/*both Cherry Red Records U.K.)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: C+/B/X/B-/X Sound: C+/B+/B/B-/B
Extras: C/C+/C/C+/B- Main Programs: B+/C+/B-/B-/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Misty
and Stacey
Q
Import CDs are now only available from our friends at Cherry Red
Records UK and can be ordered from the links below.
Now
for a huge batch of new music releases, though it is all classic
music and classic artists...
Ed
Sullivan's Rock & Roll Classics
(1965 - 1971) was originally issued in a big DigiPak box set by Rhino
Records in the mid-2000s, but has long gone out of print and the
result is an insanely expensive set if you can find it. Time Life,
with a few changes (based on rights and royalties issues we gather)
has reissued it in a smaller packaging and you can read about the
abbreviated 3-DVD set we covered back when it was new at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3232/Ed+Sullivan+Rock+&+Roll+Classics+Box+Set+(Vent
Extras
are different here to some extent and a high quality, illustrated
booklet with essays and text on the content of all discs, while the
discs add never-before-released full interviews from The
History of Rock 'N' Roll documentary
series, including David Crosby, Felix Cavaliere, Gladys Knight, James
Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis, Michelle Phillips, Peter Noone, Roger McGuinn
and more, a collectible, full-color 36-page booklet, packed with
archival photos and fascinating facts, along with The
All-Star Comedy Special,
a free bonus DVD which includes performances by the top comedians on
The Ed
Sullivan Show
including Alan King, Flip Wilson, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Phyllis
Diller, Rich Little, Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield and many more.
Some interview clips are on the main discs, but the rest of the
materials are there.
The
Sullivan
series just gets better and more important with age, so its nice to
have this material back in print again and joins the other great
releases that have been issued over the years. Hope we get more
soon.
Baz
Luhrmann's
Elvis
4K
(2022) is one of the oddest films of the year, a hit with mixed
reviews, also tasked with telling yet another variant of how Elvis
Presley became the main figure who broke music genre, race, color and
ideological barriers to become still the most successful solo artist
of all time. He made plenty of films (they all made money, even by
narrow margins, the only movie star in history who can claim that)
including a few fine, solid concert films late in his career and RCA
sold so many tons of records of his that even when they were on the
down side, Elvis music still made money or them.
This
post-modern backstage musical version starts with him as a poor child
in the South dreaming of a better life, discovering Gospel and soul
music at a time most white persons ignored it, loving superhero
Captain Marvel, Jr. and his life experiences synergisting into what
become his massive, bold commercial success and eventually, critical
success. The film barely covers his Sun Records years (the John
Carpenter version still holds up very well) and quickly jumps to his
signing at RCA Records (one of the Big Three record labels of the
time) as we meet him as an adult (a fine performance by Austin
Butler) with the ups and downs of his life and career following.
However,
he is not always the prime focus of the film as his ballyhooing
manager 'Colonel' Tom Parker narrates the 2.5 hour picture, the man
who made him a star, then used him until he was dead. Not a great
man, but the film tries to lessen any such criticism by casting
Forrest Gump and real-life good guy/Oscar-winner Tom Hanks as Parker.
With a questionable accent and a screenplay where he keeps
interrupting every single time the film might take off, Hanks is more
likely to get a Razzie than any major award for good acting. It is
too much Hanks and not enough of him transforming into the
gambling-addicted manager.
It
can make this torture to watch despite all the money put into
costumes, production, music rights and the like, so I guess part of
the plan was just to do something different since the stories are
familiar. In that, I was not totally convinced, Hanks
notwithstanding. The film has other issues, including the usual
'slap-dash-Baz' approach I never liked, even if it also seems to be
imitating Hanks' hit That
Thing You Do
way too often.
Thus,
any edge that exists in the real story is sanded off, any darkness,
lightened up in phony ways and that approach wears very thin very,
very quickly, as the formula they agreed to goes on and on and on and
on and on.
Of
course, many have said they might as well have called the film 'The
Colonel' with Hanks as the star, then many mighty have though it was
a film about the founding of the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain. And
if they ever get crazy enough to make that actual real-life story
into any kind of feature film or series, they'll have to find an
actor to play Colonel Sanders. If it happens in the next few years,
I guess they'll land up hiring... Tom Hanks!
Extras
include Movies Anywhere
digital version, then (per the press release) the actual disc set
adds:
Bigger
Than Life: The Making of ELVIS
Rock
'N Roll Royalty: The Music & Artists Behind ELVIS
Fit
for a King; The Style of ELVIS
Viva
Australia: Recreating Iconic Locations for ELVIS
and
''Trouble''
Lyric Video
Misty:
Here Again
(1969) is the complete album by a band what wanted to be Psychedelic
and Progressive Rock, which makes sense at the time when you hear it,
sounding like Gentle Giant, early King Crimson, early Moody Blues or
when Pink Floyd was called 'The Pink Floyd' and it is a decent album
for that kind of music. Progressive Rock of the time, now dubbed
'Prog Rock' as if it were never cutting edge, and it was and still is
in many ways, eventually grew into its own (thanks especially to Yes
and Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and albums like this or other bands
you have never heard of (like Nektar) prove this was not any fluke.
In
this case, they had a small single with ''Hot
Cinnamon''
but not big enough to keep them going, with any album unreleased,
until now. Yes, over half a century later, you can hear where they
were going and it reminds us how much ambitious talent with ideas the
music industry used to have. Unlike some other such albums I have
heard over the years, they had some more potential and did get signed
to EMI. Fortunately, this 13-track set has its moments (including a
song called ''Animal
Farm'')
and it is definitely worth hearing if you are interested in the most
underrated genre it all Rock Music.
A
booklet and the four live bonus tracks are the extras.
Andre
Relis' documentary Randy
Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon
(2022) is about one of the greatest guitarists in Rock Music history
and pretty much music history, one who we lost early, but more than
beat the odds by becoming a legend early in his career and rightly
so. Originally a for-hire guy like sop many young musicians, he was
supposed to be in an early version of Quiet Riot, but it did not work
out, until one of the greatest twists of fate in Rock history
happened.
Ozzy
Osbourne was still the lead singer of Black Sabbath when his drinking
was so bad by 1979, even they thought it was too much (imagine that!)
so instead of just sitting back and drinking his career away,
Osbourne decided to go solo and landed up hiring Rhoads as his
guitarist. The resulting debut solo album, Blizzard
Of Oz,
was a massive hit as big as anything Sabbath had had and the rest is
history. He later was back with Riot, giving them the edge over
other Rock had 'hair' bands and giving them major commercial success
until he was gone at age 25.
L.A.
Guns guitarist Traci Guns narrates this pretty thorough release that
brings back that period of music, that period of how the music
industry used to be and re-reminds us of the talent and apparently
great guy we all lost. Running 85 minutes, it could have easily been
longer because it is that good, but it is worth seeing once, even if
his music is not necessarily yours.
Extras
include a trailer, exclusive Quiet Riot performances,
never-before-seen footage of Rhoads with Quiet Riot and two on-camera
interviews: one with Riot photographer Ron Sobol, the other with Riot
bandmates Rudy Sarzo and Drew Forsyth.
And
finally we have Stacey
Q: Better Than Heaven
(1986,) the biggest hit album by the one-time Madonna backup singer
with material that was in the same vein, one of a few she managed to
get made and released. She can sing and has an interesting
personality, but there were just not enough interviews or promos
(though I liked her music videos) to give her the kind of separate
representation and developed identity to stay in the spotlight. She
also looked great and as good as any of her 'competition' as it were.
This
new 2-CD set has the album, plus a bunch of remixes of her songs,
many of which were issued on the sadly not-made-much 12-inch single
format for dance clubs, et al. Originally issued by Atlantic
Records, whose WEA distribution also handles Madonna, a few singles
like ''We Connect'' were issued, but the one song that became such a
huge hit that it may have stunted her career and is here in no less
than seven versions (eight if you count the abstract acapella piece
''Stacey's
Dream''
is the dance classic ''Two
Of Hearts''
that was a worldwide hit.
Of
course, the one thing the song does that a madonna song would never
have done is take her singing voice and electronically manipulate it
with the infamous 'I I I I I I, I I I I I I, I Need you, I NEED you'
line that made all those 'I's almost sound like 'A's at times. Then
she sings normally, but it was a hook that worked and is he number
one reason people still remember her and her song. As for the rest
fo the tracks, they also want to be electronic, New Wave, danceable
and catchy and the results vary, but it is an album aimed at a
younger audience for its time.
That
is why it is interesting to hear it now, especially now that the vast
majority of music is digitally recorded, with rare analog exceptions,
from a time analog recordings were striving to sound like something
from a future that has now come to pass to some extent. I was
curious enough to hear it all these years later 35+ years later and
it holds up a bit better than expected.
Fans
will be thrilled, but there are things for the unfamiliar to hear as
well, so those interested will get a kick out of this set no matter
what they think in the end.
A
booklet and the bonus tracks are the extras.
Now
for playback performance. Though it has its sporadic editing style
and is all over the place, the 2160p HECV/H.265, 2.35 X 1, Dolby
Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition
image is the best-looking release here, though two of our five
releases are audio-only and this is the only 4K release here. Color
can be very good and when it is not all over the place, you do get
some good-looking scenes, especially as compared to the 1080p 2.35 X
1 digital High Definition image on the passable, regular Blu-ray.
Both offer a lossless Dolby
Atmos 11.1 (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mixdown for older systems) soundtrack,
but it is not always as impressive s it could be and it offers more
of the same fancy pointlessness as all other Luhrmann films, so no
surprise there.
Randy
Rhoads
has a 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer that is a
mix of every kind of film format and more than a few analog video
formats than you might even expect, but it is as well-edited as
anything here and the impact is solid. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless sound mix does what it can with
the audio, which does include music, but it includes many live and
rare tracks that would not benefit from the hard work that takes
place with a well-controlled and thought out studio recording.
Still, I cannot imagine it being any better than it is here and you
have much interview audio. The combination is just fine.
The
1.33 X 1 on the Ed
Sullivan
DVDs has some stock movie film footage (16mm and 35mm) that was
transferred long ago, plus despite how well the catalog of video
sources has been kept, you still get a some analog videotape flaws
including video noise, video banding, telecine flicker, tape
scratching, cross color, faded color and tape damage. Add that these
are transfers from a few decades ago and expect more softness
(including in newer interviews) at times than expected. The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the actual episodes show their age, though
it has been slightly made to sound stereo-like and all interviews are
simple stereo. Until the owners consider going wild, upscaling the
video and considering lossless audio on some kind of Blu-ray high
definition release, this is the best these will look and sound.
Both
CD releases have PCM 2.0 16/44.1 Stereo and sound fine for their age,
but Misty
shows its age and not because of any budgetary reasons because it is
well-recorded for tis time, but because of its age in ways that
cannot be avoided. The Stacey
Q set
sounds strong and was meant to be played loud in dance clubs, et al,
so it has aged well and never sounds muddy.
To
order the Cherry Red Records UK CD import releases, try the links
next to their titles as follows...
Misty
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/misty-here-again-cd/
Stacey
Q
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/stacey-q-better-than-heaven-2cd-edition/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
