Uncensored versions of "The Other Side" and "What It Takes"
Aerosmith have had a stop-start career in the UK, their biggest hit to date being No.13
for both Love In An Elevator (Sept 89) and a re-release of "Pink" , nearly
ten years later in June 99, the original position being in the Xmas chart of 1997, not
as the Xmas No.1, but more the Xmas No.38. Other notable hits include a re-issue for
"Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" (No.20, Feb 90), "Crazy" (No.23, Nov 94) - if mainly
for an 'interesting' promo featuring actresses Alicia Silverstone and Steven's
daughter Liv Tyler , also taking in 1990's "Rag Doll" which just missed the UK
Top 40 (No.42, April 90).
There's no doubting the quality of the encoding which is up the usual high standard of
Sony, as can be seen on the promo video clips when the only imperfection is the
quality of the NTSC-to-PAL conversion which could be better. However, the rest of the
documentary is camcorder footage shot on film that looks like it was bought from
Honest Joe's for a dollar per film cartridge. Maybe they wanted it to have that
"rough-and-ready" look, but it just looks rough.
The average bitrate is an excellent 8.39Mb/s on side one and a consistent 8.38Mb/s
on side two. Given that the concert is in fullscreen, the disc is obviously not
anamorphic - a process used for prints with a ratio of 16:9 or wider which allows
extra resolution on widescreen televisions.
The sound fares little better. When the promo clips come on, it's time to wake up
the neighbours. Those moments don't come often enough though and the rest is just
chat from the band. There are choices for Stereo and Dolby Digital 2.0 (Dolby Surround).
Extras etc. :
Chapters :
There are 32 chapters, covering just about all of the separate incidents as the album
is made, plus a few promo clips. The track listing is as follows :
Side One
1. Programme start
Side Two
1. "Love In An Elevator"
Languages/Subtitles :
All chat from the band, as well as the songs, come in English, not to mention
the fruity language on occasion. There are no subtitles though which would have
helped when conversations from the band tail off and you can't quite make out what
they've said.
Menu :
The menu is static and functional, but bland.
Overall, I was really looking forward to this before I watched it but it does make
for disappointing viewing. Promo clips, the few that there are, generally get
interrupted by studio footage either about the song or other things. This especially
goes for "Janie's Got A Gun" , a song which never made the UK Top 40, but reached
No.4 in the US. From what I remember the video was very intriguing and it was also
quoted as being something different by the band. How annoying then that all we get is
the first chorus before it cuts back to the band bickering amongst themselves again.
It may have been better to release the music video compilation to accompany the 'Best Of'
album, "Big Ones" , which was called "Big Ones You Can Look At" , as the
promo clips were the best thing about this release, although that appears to have come
from the BMG stable and not Sony. Big fans of Aerosmith will already have this 10-year-old
documentary on tape so there aren't going to be too many people wanting to own it on DVD
unless it was released for a budget price of about a tenner and their tape had worn out.
It's also a flipper - something I can overlook if the content takes my mind off it and a
natural break occurs, but here the break comes between Steven Tyler talking about "Love
In An Elevator" and the actual clip of the song!
As for me? If I wanted to watch a band bickering amongst themselves, I'd go back to the
Comic Strip spoof Bad News , since at least that's funny when they argue.
FILM : **
PICTURE QUALITY : **
SOUND QUALITY : **½
EXTRAS : 0
-------------------------------
OVERALL : *½
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.
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