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VIDEOVIE\^/S

PRINCE IREVUE Iand the Antslby Mike Manslield. Icassette. IVHS stereo. Iminutes. $3e.esItne clamor raised over Iturning over Iof her Workout earn- |to husband Tom Ipolitical group, the Ifor Economic Iit seems fair toIis the f irst of a series oflViews" from Frank Iwho has been a Iscriptwriter and pro- |as well as a media I

and critic for Video Re-lthe Village Voice; and Itasty iournals ol rock IWith Andrew Sar- |Rex Reed, and severalIcritics, Lovece is a con-lto Movies on Video IPubtishing). I

point out that one of the con-certs in The Prince CharmingRevue lour of December,1982, was a Falklands Warbenefit. Fortunately, the con-cert captured here was notthat particular show. So, buy-ing/renting this cassette doesnof support the policies mak-ing such a friendly neighbor-

hood war possible.Like the Kate Bush videocassette also reviewed here,this concert tape has thevisually arresting shape ofgenuine rock theater. Anyother comparison to Ms.Bush's efforts would bestretching things since theshape of The Prince Charm-ing Revue eventually melts toreveal mere rock theatrics.

Howeveir, if you consider thatthat's all Stuart Godard a.k.a.Adam Ant seems to have inmind, this performance isrefreshingly honest in itsshallowness.This video is as good adocument as any record ofAnt's self-described "ant-music" - a well-blendedbrew of certain Africanrhythms, sea shanties, andother influences - served upas a catchy, sing-song soup.The video, which has alsoplayed on the Nickelodeoncable service, is a seamless ifunexceptional capturing of

the live concert.Filmed or taped concertsarguably work best when thedirector can weave theseventh-row-center experiencewith eye-of-God/l nvisible-Mandetails, as if the viewer leaveshis or her seat via astral pro-jection to wander among themusicians. Mansf ield doesthat here and even adds ahandful of special effects,such as a step-frame tech-nique known as pixilation.But he does all this coldly,treating Ant and his band ascharacters rather than as peo-ple. There is something a lit-tle distressing about the stateof rock video when this by-the-number tape is, from apurely visual standpoint, oneof the best concert tapesaround.Ant himself makes theword "fop" come immediatelyto mind; still, he is an arrest-ing presence, playing thestage like the most flam-boyant of actors who stillknows just how much isenough. The sloppily choreo-graphed male dancers areanother thing, and for onefinal gripe, Ant's pirate-shipstage looks as if it'd beenlifted straight from JethroTull's Sformuvatcr-tour set.By the way, does anybodyreally know how Ant got ontothe Motown 25th anniversaryshow?I(ATE BUSH LIVE ATHAMMERSMITHODEON.Featuring Kate Bush.Directed by Keef. Thorn EMIvideo cassette. Beta and VHSmono. 52 minutes. $49.95Sqfne like to strike poses. I'dlike io strike poseurs. Herewe are, children of a media-literature age, who ought toknow better, and we keep

&of the

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buying the same old rock 'n'roll poses because we can'tseem to keep "form" and"content" straight.For all the theatrics of rockand related music, there isvery little rock theater. I'm nottalking necessarily aboutsuch overtly ambitious "rockoperas" as Tommy, or suchglitter spectacles as those ofKiss. l'm talking about thatgrand marketplace of ideas,about the concerts of DavidBowie, Neil Young, BobMarley, Bruce Springsteen -and Kate Bush. Disparate art-ists, yet they all know how toweave stories and provokethought. When the worids ofrock and theater - naturalplaymates - coincide, asthese artists make them do,the hybrid can be compelling.Kate Bush's elaborate rock-theater concerts in spring,1979 are warmly rememberedand, here, thankfully pre-served. Unfortunately, this

video cassette's soundtrackis merely mono, and the well-known video director, Keef,though working with enoughcameras to tape a footballgame, turns in a lacklusterpnd - worsel - technicallybelow-average document. Per-

I you really can judge a bookI Oy its cover. With one excep-I tion, these rock shorts by fourI Wicnita-wow. New York avant-I Oardists each have thatI calculated "posture." WhileI Sony's heart is in the rightI place, and while producer-I directors Aldighieri and Tripi-I cian are videographers withI admirable credentials, the in-I Oividuat videos in DanspakI are, for the most part, appall-I ingty pretentious.I Granted, most unsignedI bands face financial andI creative hardships (that'sI oeen true of performers ofI any kind probably since per-I forming began). And granted,I self-produced, independentI videos may be a little rough.I eut tnese aren't half as roughI as you would expect, andI from their relative slicknessI rises a feeling that some sortI of conscious narrative -I linear, free-floating, anything| - should have evolved. LetI me put it this way: RememberI tne oislointed TV productionI ol Magicat Mystery Touf?I Same problem.I Aldighieri realizes this, inci-I dentally, and asserts the,4---4I r)*;wI * t-g ,*-* ,, B4,'.i| "'lr?I F"tl'R"$

haps Keef was reaching for adreamlike vision; all that wasachieved is a washed-out lookNonetheless, some beauti-ful video imagery still breaksthrough, such as the crashingocean which is ghosted in be-hind the stage action. AndBush, by no means naturallYglamorous, is captured as animpossibly erotic stage Pres'ence throughout her grandweb of alienation and missedcontacts. Her costumes keePchanging, from super-heroinein tights to BroadwaY-boundchimney sweep to a skY-bluehuman kite to a movie-imagecowgirl (cowperson?).She doesn't just changeher clothes, she changes Per-sonae in the service of eachsong - or, rather, she triesto. She's not a verY convinc-ing actress, I'm afraid, andher emotional range on stageseems as limited as herbreathy soprano. The con-sumrnate effect, however,overshadows virtuallY al Iimperfections.Bush's song-Poems, likeher almond-eyed counte'

nance, demand long, hardcontemplation. Yet her vocalphrasing makes her lyricsgenerally indecipherable, andso, much of her songs' im-pact is lost. Considering thatso little of her work is avail-able in the U.S., it's difficultto understand why Thorn EMIdidn't take this opportunity tobreak one of the stupidertraditions of video-cassettepackaging and include a lyricsheet. Without one, the com-pany undercuts what mighthave been Kate Bush's state-side breakthrough.DANSPAKFeaturing Man Panish, ShoxLumania, Richard Bone, andLiving. Directed by MerrillAldighieri and Joe Tripician.Sony video cassette. Beta Hi-Fi stereo, VHS stereo.20 minutes. $15.95 (Beta),$1s.ss (vHS)lnside the corporate-cool,neo-f ifties package s'omeonedecided on for this SonyVideo 45 is a five-song collec-tion proving that sometimes

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pieces are supposed to be"mood-setting" and not"narration-oriented." That's abit of a cop-out. First, moodand narrative are not mutuallexclusive, and second, any-one familiar with the cine-matic language is certainlyaware of film scholar EricBarnouw's cornerstonethat the very process ofchoosing images gives theman order and so imposes anarrative line whether youwant one or not. Playingagainst our expectations ofnarrative storytelling is onething; pretending they don'texist is another.An exception to all thiscomes from the only one ofthe four bands I've seen live,Shox Lumania. At the time, Iwas underwhelmed by theirsheer gimmickry, and twoyears later, hollow visualhooks still take up too muchof the band's efforts. Strange-ly, though, their very decentillustration of "Pointy Head-gear" is from that very time,while the recent visualizationof "Falling" isn't as good. Gofigure. "Pointy Headgear" ac-tually even predates some Lr-uid Sky images and themes,and uses an Outer Limits-tyle vertical roll that speaks language derived from TV-- rather than frommovies, music, or anything

There are arresting mo-ents in the other clipsgenerally blend filmedsegments a laritish sitcoms), such as a bitdancing dolls on eitherof a living doll in Bone'sGirl." More often, how-there are visual cliches,as in Living's "Boatwhen a group of evidentfinally reachesand sees the skyline ofNew York City. Anduse throughout

FACES

Da n s pak of negative-positiveswitching becomes pointMusically, this collectionelectronic DOR is adventure-some, though far from beingTalking Heads. Particularlyfecting is the haunting,ironically pretty nihilism of"Boat Talk," although neitherthat nor anything else onDanspak made me want tojump up and dance or danswhatever. lt's impossible,though, not to bethat such minor, yet ambi-tiously creative bands havebeen given a showcase theyand others like them muchdeserve.RUSH: EX|T...STAGE LEFTFeaturing Rush. Directed byMartin Kahan. RGA/Columbiavideo cassette. Beta Hi-Fistereo, VHS stereo.59 minutes. $29.95The unavoidably handy term"rock" video" is much mis-used by press, performers,and public alike, often beingtagged onto anything thatisn't a "concert film" or a"rockumentary." Most"videos," in fact, are shot onfilm; they're merely stored onvideo cassettes. lt's the oldcontent-versus-f orm d icho-tomy at work. So where doesone end and one begin? Noquestion, really: Film is theprocess with photographictexture, and video is the pro-cess with mirror-like texture.Which brings us to Rush;Exit ... Stage Leff. Unlike morerecent rock-concert programs,this video cassette is of afilmed concert. For somereason, maybe because mir-ior images seem more real tous than photo images, thingsthat are videotqped look morealive, more immediate, more

news-in-the-making. As avisual production, Exit ...

Stage Left is very good in-deed. Yet because it is filmed,it feels once-removed, arecord of something thatbelongs to some "then" andnot to "now."Director Kahan (strangelyuncredited on both the pro-gram and the package) andhis crew follow in the slicktradition of late-70s concertfilms. This means, unfor-tunately, without thedocumentary-verite ol lheMaysles brothers and theircinematic descendants, butalso without the stageboundcamerawork of less illustrious

concert-movie pioneers. Theuse of voice-overs by theband - while revealing asomewhat sil ly, high-falutin'air ("... the most importantthing about songwriting is'feel."' Like, right, man.) -does create a very personalbridge between songs, mak-ing bearable what is normallyan interminable wait for theapplause to die down. Ap-plause segments are certainlynaturalistic - and importantfor pacing - but unless youlike applauding to your TVset, they're dull as tax tables.Special effects are sparse butextremely effective, especiallyin the dreamlike, road-racingvisuals accompanying "RedBarchetta."Geddy Lee's personable,high-register voice gives awarm feeling to the band'scraftsmanlike rock. Despitethe lack ol any major hitswith radio/record audiences,Rush knows how to play liveaudiences like an anglerplays a trout. They areunflashy but pleasant and tothe point.The concert is also out onlaser video disc, courtesy ofPioneer, and on CED videodisc, courtesy RCA. No mat-ter the medium, fans of theband should get a rush fromthis film-video treatment.