Very Best of

Very Best of
by Andrew Morahan, Brian Grant, Pete Cornish, Russell Mulcahy, Simon Milne

List Price: $32.98
Category: DVD
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Movie Reviews of Very Best of

Movie Review: Wow! -- They're alive and well and still making music!!!
Summary: 5 Stars

Well, not only was I overjoyed in actually getting such a DVD, but I had the most amazing surprise in store for me when I found out that they had NOT broken up after the last video of theirs ever shown in my part of the world ("Human"), and that in fact they had continued making music aaaall these years and were even still together and making music today. I had no idea! It's made me SO happy!! It's like finding out one of your best friends who you thought had died in a "Crash" (pun intended) years ago is in fact still alive and well and living just around the corner from you!

I loved seeing the two videos I've been dying to see again -- "Open Your Heart", and "Fascination" -- after all these years. Still great, great songs and classic videos. And the opening notes of "Mirror Man" made me think "Hey I know this song...wait a minute...what is it? ...Oh yeah!!" It was wonderful rediscovering a song I had TOTALLY forgotten about.

Some real treasures for me here were the Top Of The Pops performances, which I had always dreamed of owning but thought I would have to wait endless millennia for some sort of TOTP compilation to get. Thank you, Virgin!

I see the beginning of the band's decline as "The Lebanon". Still a good song, but Phil's sudden change in image -- from an avant-garde icon who led the way that others followed, to a more regulation-issue jeans and leather jacket with gritty unshaven beard and "rock star hair" kind of look -- sent alarm bells ringing in my head and told me some record company exec must have gotten hold of them and told them they had to change their image to appeal to a "wider demographic" or some such nonsense. Grrr...

It's been interesting going through the rest of the videos, catching up and following the ups and downs of their career over the years since then. The sickeningly sweet saccharine sentimentality (--whew, how's that for alliteration? ;) ) of "Louise" I can do without. And the Human League trying to be The Gap Band?? Say wha..? And the utterly conventional rock tune "Heart Like a Wheel" seems pretty uninspired. "Soundtrack To A Generation" sounds pretty good, until you get to that annoying "ooh wow -- holy cow!" chorus which puts it instead into the "what WERE they thinking???" category.

But then, miracle of miracles, things very suddenly start to improve. "Tell Me When" actually has that good old techno sound that I LOVE, and the videos for this and "One Man In My Heart" are utterly beautiful. Yeah, they're clearly directed at what the record company believes is an older, more mellowed and cappuccino-drinking audience, but still very, very good.

And then we come to the video which just blew me away -- "All I Ever Wanted". THIS is the Human League I remember, updated for the new millennium! All the elements which once made them great are back -- the fashion sense, the technology, the futurism -- plus one of their most solid songs in years! So WHY~ is this not getting the airplay it deserves and becoming the hit it should be???

Which brings me to my most favourite part of all of this DVD, which is the extended interview. It's wonderful to finally meet the people who've brought me so much musical pleasure over the years. We find the band in a rather sombre and demoralized state after having given their all and made a killer new album, but being unable to reach anyone with it due to being completely shut out from today's totally cookie-cutter radio playlists.

It's like somewhere around 1990 or so, some fat backroom exec in LA said "okay, as of today everything we've called 'New Wave' will now be called 'Old School' or 'Retro', and we'll only play the old hits of these artists but nothing new. From now on we're only gonna push Grunge, Rap and made-in-the-USA plastic pop icons." And from that day onward music descended into the utter PAP which infests the airwaves today.

So if this DVD helps the band to cut through this crap and re-connect with more long-lost fans like myself, all I can say is a huge "BRAVO!!!"