God Save the Queen: A Punk Rock Anthology – DVD
Music Video Distributors
God Save the Queen is a collection of mostly live footage of old New York and UK punk rock bands from the early days. Each band featured on this disc has one song and a few feature some early interview footage along with the video. Quite a few of the live performances feature video edited together from various sources to either a live or a studio track, and others such as The Adicts are just a straight up MTV style video. In total there are 20 clips on the disc, 19 of which are videos and one of which is a short interview with Marky Ramone.
Some of the footage here was taken from other DVDs that is available through MVD or other sources, and a good portion of it I have never seen before. The disc starts off with the Dead Boys doing “Sonic Reducer” from the Live DVD that was released in 2005. Johnny Thunders follows with a live rendition of “Born to Lose”. The footage for this one was shot at two different live shows from what appeared to be a few years apart. Following his performance is an interview with him in his later years and it was sad to see how drugs had taken its toll on him from how he was in the recently released New York Dolls documentary.
The rest of the disc plays out as follows. UK Subs (early performance), Germs (from the Media Blitz DVD), Iggy and the Stooges (from the reunion a few years back, doing “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and it made me kick myself for not going to it), The Adicts (a video for “Viva La Revolution”), Buzzcocks (live performance of “Boredom”), The Exploited (who I still feel is the absolute worst UK band ever), Subhumans (a live performance from here in Chicago at the Metro from a show I was at when they reunited!), Vice Squad (live and interview footage with Becky Bondage), Generation X (some great old interview footage and live footage set to “Your Generation”), Toy Dolls (“Nellie the Elephant” live), Chelsea (a live performance of “Right to Work”), X Ray Spex (“Identity” and an interview with Polly Styrene), 999 (a live version of “Homicide” that appears to be filmed in recent times), Blitz (“New Age”), GBH (live version of “Generals” and has the worst quality of the entire disc), Goldblade (who the hell were these guys?) and Sham 69 (early recording of “Tell Us the Truth”).
The disc runs close to 75 minutes long with stereo sound. You’ll have to keep your remote handy as the volume is very loud in some clips and softer in others. With the exception of the GBH clip, the video quality is very good to excellent. While one could probably look at this DVD as a sampler of other available discs, the very low price tag (Amazon lists it at ten bucks) and solid lineup make it a pretty fun way to spend an evening drinking with some friends and watching it, which is what I plan to do again with it in the near future.
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Whaddya mean who the hell are Goldblade?
one of the best punk bands in the world and big in the UK. Do your homework and check them out dufus.