Dom Robinson reviews
The Style Council: Live At Full House Rock Show
Distributed by
Wienerworld Ltd
This DVD: 
Greatest Hits CD: 
- Cert:
- Cat.no: WNRD2399
- Running time: 37 minutes
- Year: 1987
- Pressing: 2006
- Region(s): All, PAL
- Sound: Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £12.99
- Extras:
Interview
One of the first singles I ever owned was from The Style Council.
It was Speak Like a Child and I got it for my birthday in April 1983. Making No.4, it was the first
single for someone else too - this new band from Paul Weller, in fact, having finished The Jam the previous
December with a No.1 hit for one of their many classics, Beat Surrender. It seemed so daring to
have the lyrics "Bullshit is bullshit", but he never pulled any punches in getting his message across.
Even today, it's rare to have even mild language in a mainstream song except when it's some dumbass rapper
thinking they're clever by putting profanities in a song for the sake of it, but when it came to 1985's
Walls Come Tumbling Down, that one began with "You don't have to take this crap, you don't have
to sit back and relax", and while it didn't make Maggie Thatcher rethink any of her policies regarding
the miners, at least Casualty used it in one of their early episodes over a matter on hospital policy - sadly
not one involving scrapping the terrible soap in which it was to later become.
Sadly, neither of those above two SC tracks feature here. They begin with With Everything To Lose,
a song I'd never heard of before so I was mystified as to why they were using the exact same melody and
phrasing of Have You Ever Had It Blue. Hmm... all I can say on that one is that while Paul Weller
can choose to sing things how he likes, this does seem a big no-no compared to what I'm more used to of this
tune.
Walking The Night is another song I haven't heard of before and doesn't exactly set the stage alight
so this isn't going to be one I'll be returning to, and Heavens Above follows this trend. Oh dear,
we're nearly halfway through now. Next up, Internationalists, titled onscreen as 'International List'
(ahem!) continues along in the same vein. I can see now why they released the singles they did if stuff like
this was their album filler...
The fifth piece of music, Everlasting Love, is not the Love Affair classic, but instead a song written
by resident singer and, now, ex-wife of Mr Weller, Dee C. Lee. Could she ever see the day? Can she get across
any charisma as she warbles this feeble effort out? No. So, try Mick Talbot putting his vocal chords forward
for the first time I've ever heard on Homebreakers, trying his best to sound like Elvis Costello, all
the while making me spot on the track listing that the next, and last on this DVD, two tracks were both hit
singles so we can't go wrong there, surely?
Yes, things are back to normal with a song I can relate to again. Money Go Round just missed out on
the Top 10 back in 1983 (it got to No.11) and then things move to a jauntier-than-normal Shout To The Top
which makes for a different take on the track, but not a better one as it's lost its edge over the single
version.
By the end of this, the crowd applauded long and loudly. Perhaps it was because the camera had been turned
on them and the warm-up man had told them to do this. It can't have been for the lacklustre set which I had just
witnessed.
The picture, presented in 4:3 fullscreen, looks like its been through one of those filters to make it look
like it was shot on film... several times, making it look pretty ropey. This is a very disappointing picture.
The sound is in both Dolby Surround and Dolby Digital 5.1. Clearly it certainly wasn't originally recorded
in the latter, and what it tends to do is copy most of the front output into the rear speakers so that it
literally echoes around the room. It's probably more palatable to go for the former option which keeps
the music at the front and has some crowd noises behind you in the surround channel as that'd be more
reflective of what it's like to be at the gig.
The menu features a looped piece of an instrumental from what I thought at first was Have You Ever Had
It Blue which, came across as uneven as it repeats itself in various sections and sounds a bit odd,
particularly since that track isn't even on this DVD. Upon starting the disc, as pointed out above, it turned
out to be With Everything To Lose. Doesn't make it any better though and gets very annoying after
a while if you leave the menu playing.
There's one chapter per track, which is spot-on, with separate menus giving you the option of either the
straight-forward 'Track Selection' and a stylish 'Individual Playlists' menu that lets you choose the
tracks you want to hear and their order. Just select and press 'Play'.
Extras are few and far between on this DVD, alas. In fact, it's just a 5-minute interview with Paul Weller
and Mick Talbot, hosted by Full House Rock Show's curiously named Alan Bangs and with only Weller doing
the talking on behalf of the band. On the one hand, full marks must go for giving a whacking 8 chapters to
it during that short piece, given the number of DVDs out there where you get, say, a whole hour-long
documentary about a film which doesn't have *any* chapter points to break it up.
On the other hand, Weller's interview has stupidly been dubbed over in German for its target audience,
even if English subtitles are an option. Surely they could've got a clean version of the audio for an
alternate version of the interview?
Overall, a definite one for die-hard fans only, since it's way too short as a concert video - even if it
is the entire set - and also the music selections largely aren't that great on it.
The full list of tracks included are :
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
