WHAT IS IT?
In 1988, MTV was a different empire. Cable television was available in most of North America
but the number of channels was rarely higher than 30. By virtue of this, showing musicians
to people on MTV brought them to life in the imagination of a large number of people with much more centralized power than ever before(and perhaps ever will again). Guns and Roses was perhaps one of the 10 biggest
beneficiaries of this. Their debut album was released in 07/87, sold 200,000 and stalled.
David Geffen flew to the MTV office and said, "Put this band on the air." and the momentum began, reaching its flashpoint in summer 1988, with the "Sweet Child" video. Accuracy in accounting has never been one of the music industries' strengths, but Wikipedia reports that the record went on to sell 28 million copies and was the fastest selling debut album in history. One of the events leading up to this was a MTV broadcast of a concert at New York City's the Ritz. There are five or six available audience shot videos of GnR dates prior to this date, playing to non-stadium crowds, but this event was pro-shot for cable television, and is perhaps the best video document of the band prior to their superstardom...
1. Intro 2. It's So Easy 3. Mr. Brownstone 4. Axl Rant/ Out Ta Get Me 5. Sweet Child O' Mine 6. My Michelle
7. Knockin' On Heaven's Door 8. Welcome To The Jungle 9. Slash Rant/ Nightrain 10. Paradise City 11. Mama Kin 12. Rocket Queen
This is the complete, uncensored version of the famous Ritz '88 concert. This version contains almost 10 minutes of exclusive, additional footage,
including the song "Mama Kin", and a few Axl rants (plus the complete Slash rant introducing "Nightrain").
SOURCE: Pro-Shot (TV broadcast) LINEAGE: Low Gen VHS > Stand alone DVD recorder > DVD Decrypter >
Re-tracked and menu authored on PC > DVD Maestro VIDEO: MPEG2 variable bitrate
AUDIO: Track #1: Linear PCM ("Silver Bullet" CD bootleg sound patched with original VHS sound) Track #2: Linear PCM (original VHS sound cleaned up)
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 1h07min.19s.
PERFORMERS: W. Axl Rose on Lead Vocals/ Slash on Lead Guitar/ Izzy Stradlin on Rhythm Guitar
and Background Vocals/ Duff McKagan on Bass and Background Vocals/ Steven Adler on Drums
HOW IS IT?
This show has been authored many times. A comparison of many different versions can be found HERE and the version I am reviewing HERE . What is particularly impressive about this disc is that someone has taken the audio from a kick ass sounding CD bootleg of the event and flown it into the DVD. The visuals themselves are merely OK...there are some color artifacts at the edges of the screen, an occasional warble, and mediocre resolution. While you never forget that it's a VHS sourced bootleg, it's not difficult to watch
None of us believed it would ever happen, but the proverbial Chinese Democracy has indeed arrived. All it took, apparently, was putting them to work for extremely low wages building personal computers and dvd players. Twenty years after the meteoric rise of GnR, the world has truly changed. I just finished watched a well-made video (the last fifteen minutes were a little slow) called Good Copy Bad Copy, whose producers traveled around the world talking to the rich and the poor about the state of recorded music and the music industry. But don't expect that the people who are in official control of the music of Guns and Roses are going to applaud your interest in DVDs such as the one I just described in this blog entry. In June of 09, a 32-year-old single mother of four, was instructed to pay $80,000 dollars for the illegal MP3 of Welcome to the Jungle found on her hard drive. (to add insult to injury, they also wanted another 8oK for "November Rain!") ...And then there was the blogger who got two months house arrest and a year of parole for posting some songs off of the soon-to-be-released "Chinese Democracy" CD. ....So yeah, I'd like to close this blog entry by explaining that all of this was just a theoretical review. Like, I've never actually owned or seen this video, this is just stuff I might say...if I really had.
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