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Punk aficionados are notoriously forgiving when it comes to their idols. As
such, the varying levels of audio and video quality on What the Punk?!
2 will no doubt be glossed over by many fans eager to catch a glimpse of
vintage Bad Religion or T.S.O.L. performances. As a sampler, the DVD is a
telling snapshot of the past twenty-odd years of punkdom, including live
concert footage, professional music videos and excerpts from documentaries.
It's also a clever introduction to the hundreds of titles available through
MVD's expansive vaults, ensuring that there's something here for almost
everyone. But the overarching question of whether or not you'd want to delve
any deeper into some artists' back video catalogues depends on how excited
you are about contending with problematic picture and sound.
I suppose the purest way to explain the disc is to grocery-list its
contents -- something I'd be reluctant to do if it weren't a sampler
intended for just such a purpose.
We've got the Three Degrees of Fan Footage: unfortunately handheld (from Bad
Religion's The Riot DVD, in which we spend a lot of time staring at
bassist Jay Bentley's frets and ass), capably distant (roaming the stage
from afar with T.S.O.L.) and gratefully still (H2O performing "Guilty by
Association", as captured with the help of a still camera). The H2O clip is
notable for its absolute lack of motion or haphazard editing, which spares
us the Blair Witch-induced nausea and allows us to focus on the
hidden ironies of the scene, like the photographer at stage left who lowers
his camera every time the band comes near because he's less interested in
getting a closeup than he is in proving that he knows the words.
We've got the Important Documentary Footage (or Self-Important Documentary
Footage, depending on your point of view), which includes archives of
Weirdos and The Germs, The Peechees and Dee Dee Ramone. (One odd
observation: for a company that so consciously identifies every piece of
media it produces with a title, the gent being interviewed between the
Weirdos and Germs clips is left unidentified in this excerpt.)
We've got the Professionally Edited Videos featuring Texas Terri and The Stiff
Ones (which juxtaposes sleek film and grainy video for an as-yet-undisclosed
artistic purpose), Psychic TV and Shane MacGowan. We've got DOA marshalling
through a live set with a rare blend of anarchy and late-career stage
presence, as though they've forgotten they don't have to work this
hard. We've got film trailers for Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter and
Desperate Teenage Lovedolls (which answers the question: "What if the
characters in Pretty in Pink started a band?"). And we've got
legitimately impressive performances from the Butthole Surfers and Meat
Puppets, the latter of which suffers from notable VHS degradation but is
still worth hearing, if only to prove there was an earlier, energized
version of "Lake of Fire" before Nirvana went Unplugged.
And then we've got the Car Wrecks in Motion, like Wesley Willis and GG
Allin. On one hand, there's Willis, harangued by an amiable drunk on
a bus in conjunction with the song "Chronic Schizophrenia", which makes me
wonder about the motives of a person who would follow Wesley Willis onto a
public bus with a camera. On the other hand, we've got GG Allin assaulting
his audience and slithering through the feces he shat out minutes
earlier. When compared to Brad Nowell's affable, offhanded charisma during a Sublime performance several clips prior, Allin's extreme showmanship
practically digs a trench between the punks who play the music and the punks
who live it (though really, comparing Nowell and Allin in most regards is an
exercise in polar opposites, not least because Sublime were barely
punk to begin with).
With so many of the principals featured on the disc having passed on
(Nowell, Allin, Willis, Ramone, The Germs' Darby Crash), it's as much a time
capsule as it is a catalogue sampler. However, its most fascinating moment of all
may be a female fan, obviously on several good drugs, who is determined to
sit on stage during Allin's "Live to Be Hated" despite being walloped by both
other audience members and Allin himself. When he comes to rest near her,
writhing and shit-smeared, she stops her head-banging long enough to rub his
thighs and ass in such a personal, primal way that it momentarily transcends
the theater of the show. And it momentarily allows What the Punk?! 2
to transcend its own existence as an obvious marketing tool and reminds us
that, despite the uneven quality, there is a reason these
performances were committed to tape in the first place.
-- Justin Kownacki
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