"Video Views": Black Sabbath, Blondie, Pat Benatar, Warren Zevon

8/13/2019 "Video Views": Black Sabbath, Blondie, Pat Benatar, Warren Zevon

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FRANK LOVECESABBATHFEATUR'NGOSBOURNESAY DIE: A DECADEBLACK SABBATH)

by Brian Wiseman.CL/Media casseffe. Beta Hi-Fi, VHS60 min. approx. $29.95 ither my ears have gotten betterl- since my friends and I got off onyears ago, or Ozzygotten worse.undeniably charismatic as he is-Metal himself-this Ham-

Odeon show is cursed bybad leadVicious croaked.Save yourself postage and don'tsending me death threats;would probably be first toThroughout the years until hethe group at the turn of theThe Oz cheerfullY admittedlimitations and more or lesswhat all the fuss wasAnd even so, this particular

is from his waning days withband, and probably not some-Ozzy'd want in a time capsule.for hard-core Sabbath fans, hishere are pretty tough sledding.The rest of the guys are in consid-better form. Tony lommi'sbarrages are forceful withoutgrating, and now-dePartedBill Ward is hale andand banging away. The au-is enraptured from the start,with the rhythm for prac-the whole show. And thenoor Ozzy starts to sing again.Director-editor Brian Wiseman,work is new to me here, ob-was working on the cheaP.effects are limited to camerathrowing light and color con-

trols out of whack, and to occasionaldouble-imagery. With suc-h a budgetconstraint, Wiseman might havetaken the opportunity to deliver im-aginative, evocative images in lieu offlashy effects. lnstead, he settles foran array of stock shots that becomeannoyingly repetitive quickly.Wiseman's opening holds greatpromise, with the concert coming onless like a documentary than a fic-tional movie, but the promise turnsout to be just a misunderstanding.lronically, this tape's sole value isdocumentary, since Ozzy left BlackSabbath years ago. The reconstitutedgroup has since proven itself asviably-visual in this video age, andOzzy is probably having more suc-cess with his Blizzard of Oz than hedid with Sabbath. I can't imagineeither faction, though, being par-ticularly proud of this drab cassette.

THE BEST OF BI.OND'EDirected by Stanley Dorfman, DavidMallet, Keith "Keef" McMillan, HartPerry and Richard Bobinson & BobGruen. Pacific Arts cassefte. BetaHi-Fi, VHS Hi-Fi. 47:39 min. $29.95BLOND'E L'VEDirected by Stan Harris. MCAcasseffe. Beta Hi-Fi, VHS sfereo. 55min. $29.956 ome things are best appreciated\J from a distance. Blondie, thenow-disbanded pop powerhouse, isone of them. On the concert tape, thegroup is surprisingly bland. Yet incontrolled video portraiture, withsupremely photogenic lead singerDebbie Harry as the focal point,both Blondie and blondie canbe mesmerizing.

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This isn't too unusual; lots ofbands shouldn't be let out of thestudio, and even such mega-stars asthe Beatles professed themselvesmore comfortable there than on astage. Not to slouch Mike Chapmanand Giorgio Moroder, who producedsome of Blondie's best stuff, but aseven the earliest clips on the Eest olretrospective show, Blondie maYhave been less a studio band than avideo band. From the very firstsingle, "X Offender", in the rock-video Neanderthal age of 1976, thegroup had an accompanying videoclip (directed by Robinson & Gruen).1979's Eat to the Beat album wasdesigned for simultaneous releasewith a full-length videocassette(which legal hassles held uP for ayear), putting Blondie in the companyof similar video trailblazers Devo andThe Kinks. (The tape is available fromWarner Home Video.) ln fact, Best oforiginally came out a few years ago,on the Chrysalis label, and was sub-sequently pulled until this reissue.For all this video background andfor all her charms, Debbie Harry isn'ta graceful performer either live or onMemorex. Fortunately, directorsMallet and Keef in Best of keY on herface and fashions, often employingsoft-focus videography and glamback-lighting..ln Keef's clips for"Denis" (Blondie's remake of the '63hit by Randy and the Rainbows),"Detroit 442" and "Picture This"especially, Harry looks smashing, if alittle too "marketed."

Virtually all the Best of videos areperformance clips..Mallet's "Atomic",Perry's hideous "The Tide is High"(the only one on film) and Keef's"Rapture" clips are conceptualpieces, awkward at best. Since mostof Blondie's earlier songs are nicelycrafted pop tunes that assimilatediverse influences well, the straighttreatment they're afforded actual lyworks, and this aside from Harry'sriveting presence-these aresimple, straightforward songs thatmight seem lightweight in agrander setting.. Besf of is marred mainly by aridiculous framing sequence with acab driver hacking up and downSixth and Seventh Avenues in Man-hattan. This was Keef's idea, and asmuch as I respect the Brit director, Ihave to point out that in all my yearsin New York, l've never seen a taxidriver wearing a "cabbie hat" andchomping on a cigar. Especially notan unlit one. (l also have to notethat Frank lnfante's name is mis-spelled throughout.)Blondie Live is the Toronto showfrom the group's final tour. Notedsession guitarist Eddie Martinezplays "jazz guitar" (which is bullshit;it's just rhythm guitar), filling in forlnfante, who'd briefly rejoined thegroup after settling a lawsuit he'd in-stigated against it. All the negativesof the promo clips with few of thepositives show up here, and Harry'svocals are noticeably more con-strained than on record. Visually, lit-tle excitement sparks the TV screen,no matter how much fun the designeraudience seemed to be having.PAT BENATAR: HIT YTDEOSDirected oi aoo Giratdi, MarkRobinson, J uliano Waldman.RCA/Columbia cassefte. Beta Hi-Fi,VHS stereo. 26:04 min. $19.95Fl at Benatar's music is easy tol- ti","n ro and Pat Benatar is easyto look at. Just like most TV shows.Benatar and band are enormouslytalented, but both the material theychoose and the way they choose tointerpret it fall far below theircapabilities. Since it's virtually im-possible to treat the four songs here ",-"Anxiety (Get Nervous)", "LipstickLies", "Shadows of the Night" and"Love is a Battlefield"-as otherthan crunchy junk food, the questionbecomes, how nice are the wrappers?

cSurprisingly. they'reMt so hot,and that includes Giraldi\hilaribLrslyoverblown "Battlefield" clip. Con-sidering Benatar's had a promo madefor virtually every one of her singlesand several album cuts since her1979 debut, I'm astonished at herlack of taste and her shallowness inideas. I mean, an old-cliche dentistoffice for "Anxiety (Get Nervous)"?Get serious.Paradoxically, that clip's director,Mark Robinson, also turns in the bestof the bunch, the WWll mini-epic for"Shadows of the Night". Sure, thistale of Pat and her men bravingenemy lines to plant bombs at aGerman high command is B-movieand simplistic, a regular Sgt. Furystory. But since it's a fantasy se-quence framed by Benatar as a day-dreaming, home-front factory worker,minor plot excesses are excusable.To both the director's and thedirectee's credit, the frame also il-lustrates an important bit of oursocial history, the large-scale arrivalof women to the work force whilemost of the men were at war.

"Shadows" works as a narrative(as opposed to abstract) conceptualclip for two reasons. First, itacknoWledges the traditional short-story unities of time and place, tell-ing a condensed tale with limitedlocales over the course of one day.Notice I said "acknowledges": ln thiscase, Robinson observes the unities;


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another director may twist our expec-tations and play against them, asSteve Barron does in Joe Jackson'sexcellent "Steppin' Out" clip. lgnor-ing these unities, however, is justplain sloppy; Paul Justman's "Don'tTalk to Strangers" for Rick Spring-field comes immediately to mind.The second reason "Shadows"works is that the characters havedepth. This doesn't necessarily meanthey're believable. Bugs Bunny isn'tbelievable, but he's got more depthas a character than any ten guest-stars on "The Love Boat." Robinsontreats the Nazi soldiers and officersas human beings-hardly an easyassignment for any moral person.The regular actors are top-notch, andexcept for Benatar herself, the bandmembers do creditable take-offs onWilliam Holden in Stalag 17.Waldman's "Lipstick Lies" nar-rative, on the other hand, has its owndream sequences and even dreamiercinematography, but it doesn't work.The plot is essentially Flashdancedone seriously. That's bad enough initself, but the real-life and dreamsequences mesh far too ambiguous-ly, and the bedroom-mirror transfor-mation of Patricia Andrzejewski toPat Benatar is way too miraculousfor an ostensibly realistic clip.The cassette finishes up withBenatar talking none too comfortablywith an off-camera interviewer aboutthe making of the "Battlefield" clip.The accompanying outtakes are asunextraordinary as the clip itself, theclaim to fame of which is that it'ssupposedly the first rock clip to in-corporate dialogue. I'm not surethat's true, giyen Devo's 1977 "JockoHomo" interplay between Booji Boyand General Boy, and given thewealth of lesser-known, independent

bits of video art floating around eventhen, but "Battlefield" can certainlyjoin Lionel Richie's "Hello" andMichael Jackson's "Thriller" aspioneering efforts. lt stands aloneonly in ripping off most of its sensi-ble ideas from Sue Seidelman's in-dependent flick, Smiff,ereens.And you know what else? Not eventhe directors get screen credit onthis tape.WARREN ZEVONDirected by Len Dell'amico. Sonycassetfe. Beta Hi-Fi, VHS sfereo..68min. $29.95I hate to say it, but I think ZevonI was better when he was a drunk.Cruel? Sure, and though I'm notcalling for alcoholism in the name ofart, this concert tape painfullydemonstrates that the multi-talentedZevon hasn't replaced his olddemons with any new ones. Withoutromanticizing his much-publicizeddisease in the least, you can see inhis early work an Albert FinneylUnderthe Volcano crazed lucidity that maynot have had anything to do withbooze, but had everything to do withthe demons that drove him to it. He'dapparently kicked his addiction by1980's masterful live album, Stand inthe Fire, but those demon-musesmust still have been fresh.Unlike Flre, unfortunately, andunlike Zevon's shows in generalthereabouts, this performance is far'from perfect. One reason is thatwhether at the piano, on guitar orsimply pushing out vocals, the manseems equally depressed. On theopener ("Johnny Strikes Up theBand") Zevon wanders on stage likea seedy magician-angel, stubbly

bearded, the tamed werewolf of theBronx Zoo. His blue-collar band-allnew since Fire-is appropriate to theminor rock-mecca of Passaic, NJ'sCapitol Theatre, which doesn't muchattract Manhattan trendies. Butmostly, the four members don't playwith the kind of passion that getsyou out of the steel mills and oilrefineries, and mom-and-pop pizzaparlors. Tragical ly, neitherdoes Zevon.The man is yet so talented that hepulls out cliffhanger rescues at near-ly every last possible moment. Whilehis voice isn't what it could be, forinstance, and his lack of techniqueshows (as on "The Envoy" especial-ly), he's often able to turn that into avirtue and simply belt with all thepassion accumulated in years of in-evitable music-biz politics and back-knifed trust. Late in the show, whenhe recaptures his marbles and leapsinto Springsteen's "Cadillac Ranch"halfway through "Poor Poor PitifulMe", the audience bolts. He's got'em now. With "Excitable Boy" andthe marvelously arrogant "Ain't ThatPretty", where he wades into thegrateful crowd, the unity of rock per-former and rock audience-ideally, afamily of outcasts-is complete.

Even at the lesser extreme, for-tunately, director Dell'amico (whosefine Grateful Dead video productionssome years back make him an earlylink in the chain from rock movies torock video) does Zevon more justicethan Zevon does himself. Languidzooms fade into close-ups right onthe lyrical button, and though a tad.predictable at times, this smooth-ness is a good counterpoint toZevon's rawness.That rawness-as in passion overcrcfl, not a lack of craft-is vital torock'n'roll. Yet armies of far better-selling performers than Zevon haveforgotten that fact, and afterestablishing themselves becomeconservative, no longer taking thecreative risks that the early rockerssurvived stones, bans and insults for.A glance at Zevon's songs here-from "Simple Man" to "Werewolvesof London" to "The Envoy"-shows arichness of musical and lyrical ideasmost other rockers can't touch. lfthe lact he hasn't broken (a/aSpringsteen) from cult-hero to thestar he deserves to be, is whatbogs down his mind and much ofthis show, that's inexcusablebut understandable. I

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"Video Views": Black Sabbath, Blondie, Pat Benatar, Warren Zevon