Latest music DVDs reviewed

THE MONKEES
Head Warner Music Vision
***

"A Hard Day's Night on acid" was one of the many descriptions used to try to pin down this rather endearing mess of a movie that contains a couple of The Monkees' underrated high points as a working pop group: Porpoise Song and Circle Sky. The remainder of the music is very much hit and miss, as is the film. Its erratic style - it was the first in a collaborative line of projects for actor Jack Nicholson and director Bob Rafelson - alienated the core teenybop fanbase yet was embraced by the more lysergically-enhanced adult, who riffed on the (now sorely dated) psychedelic sequences and the surreality of Frank Zappa mixing it with the likes of Victor Mature. Overall? Slight, bizarre fun, but one guesses you really had to be there. Tony Clayton-Lea

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Rewind Universal/EMI
**

Oh god, the hours I wasted watching these videos on MTV back in the 1980s - that's time I'll never get back. This double CD and one DVD of classic 1980s vids is already burned into the hard drive of anyone who lived through the golden age of music video, when silly storyboards, ill-advised attire and cheesy special effects were the industry standard. All the familiar props are here: Robert Palmer's sexy "backing band", Adam Ant's muskets, Buggles's big specs, Dexys' dungarees, Spandau Ballet's cummerbunds, Bowie's teeth, Midge Ure's mac 'n' moustache, Duran Duran's yacht, Sinead's tears, Kate Bush's rain-making contraption, Dire Straits' fridges, Sting's school tie, ABC's boaters and, of course, Freddie Mercury's vacuum cleaner. But where's Madonna? A-ha? Prince? Flock Of Seagulls? And where's the bloody erase button? Kevin Courtney