Latest music DVDs reviewed
GALAXIE 500
Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste Plexifilm
****
One of the real joys of Galaxie 500's aptly entitled two-disc DVD set (which features Sergio Huidor's collage music videos, quirky archive live recordings, a wry band interview and a rare television appearance) is the inclusion of two bootleg concert recordings - shaky, fuzzy, fan-made time-capsules of one of the most influential bands of the 1980s American independent rock scene. Galaxie 500's Dean Wareham, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang began their all-too-brief career in the small bars of Boston in 1987, released three critically acclaimed albums - Today, On Fire, This Is Our Music - toured extensively in North America and Europe, and broke up suddenly in 1991. Both the bootlegs of their laconic live performances, recorded in The Point in Atlanta and University of London in 1990, and the accompanying 30-page booklet of photos and interviews (conducted by Yo La Tengo's James McNew) capture exquisitely Galaxie 500's out-of-the-blue-and-into-the-black greatness.
www.plexifilm.com
Jocelyn Clarke
VARIOUS
The Festival in the Desert Wrasse
***
The only festival in the world which requires undertaking a two-day trek into the Sahara, the Festival in the Desert has acquired a mystical hue. Lionel Brouet's DVD looks at the 2003 session in the sand from many angles: hearing about the lives of the nomadic Tuareg tribesmen in this remote part of Mali; detailing the logistics involved in putting on a show a couple of dozen sandy miles from Timbuktu; and filming the acts who turned up by camel or Landrover to perform. There are many stars here - including Robert Plant hitting all the right dusty blues notes, French act Lo'Jo and such notables as Oumou Sangare and Ali Farka Toure - but only one Tinariwen, their thrilling electric Tuareg folk leaving you eager to taste more. After this, who really needs Glastonbury or Oxegen?
www.wrasserecords.com
Jim Carroll
THE CULT
Pure Cult - Anthology 1984-1995 Beggars Banquet
*
Re-released, presumably (it was first released in 2001), to capitalise on former Cult vocalist Ian Astbury's current stint as a faux-Jim Morrison in Doors of the 21st Century - and not as a sop to all those millions of Cult fans out there, waiting breathlessly for an updated visual document - this is lacklustre and not altogether necessary. The Cult's best and best-known song, She Sells Sanctuary, still sounds great after almost 20 years (we defy you not to twitch), but do we really need Astbury and fellow Cult member Billy Duffy introducing almost every song with such mind-numbing blandness? Bonus material - if we can call it that - is equally secondhand: MTV specials, record company-approved EPK (Electronic Press Kit) guff, a Tube appearance and some live show material recorded in London, Belgium and Argentina. Ho, and indeed, hum.
Tony Clayton-Lea
