PAI BENATAR

Directed RCA/Columbia cassette. Beta Hi-Fi stereo, VHS Hi-Fe stereo. 72:45 min.
$29.95

'N by Marty Callner.

CONCERT

I saw Pat Benatar "in concert" years I ago at a small club in redneck
Florida, at the crossroads where route 441 meets Alligator Alley. Her debut album was still wet from the pressing, and so, there in a corner of this room, not even on a raised stage, she and her band played as if

their lives depended on it. For all the

lack of imagination and musical innovation the supremely talented Benatar has shown since, this early performance was fire. Now usually, you put money on a fire and it burns. lf you put millions of dollars on a fire, though, the fire goes out. That's the problem, to an extent with this concert, originally taped for HBO. Benatar stumbles out of the gate, her voice hoarse and incapable of hitting-even reaching for high notes. Director Callner, -the HBO's house hack for these things, has his own troubles trying to deal with a stage set-up far too spread out and diluted for tiny Pat. And lead guitarist/house hubby Neil Geraldo, who produced and mixed the sound here, is inept: The whole show sounds as if he bootlegged it on a cassette deck next to one of the speakers. About halfway through the concert, though, Benatar suddenly reminds us why the act is named "Pat Benatar" and not "The lnepts." Starting with "l Live for Love", the songstress breaks out of her stupor. Her voice comes back. By the next song, she's in command of the stage, her sound full and confident, her pauses bursting with tension. By the song after that, she's even better, with her silly stage moves replaced by tigress stretches.
60 FACES

ones who give lead players the chance to take their flights of fancy.. That Wyman has booked his own Year's Eve and Times Square. (ln flight here is what makes this rich fact, in a moment that should've man's home movie interesting. Also been edited out, Benatar wishes the the fact that he's peopled it with crowd Merry Christmas.)After inchoice guests, such as film megaterminable applause, which also star James Coburn as a seedy angel could've been tightened, the band listed as "God's Gift to Wyman"; comes out for some extended enRichard O'Brien, the butler lrom The cores; to Benatar's credit, she Rocky Horror Picture Sfow; and doesn't present herself as a singles animator Gerald Scarfe, best known machine, and skips over a couple of for Pink Floyd album covers and for early hits. ("Love is a Battlefield", swiping his style from illustrator which became big sometime after Ralph Steadman. Even wife Astrid gets into the act, donning several this concert, is represented by Bob Giraldi's laughable Video.) roles with a deadpan versatility. And there's a cameo by the other relatively "straight" Stone, Charlie Watts, D'GIIAL DREAMS and his wife Shirley. With Bill and Astrid Wyman, James ln the midst of these friends and Coburn, Richard O'Brien. Directed by lovers, Wyman paints himself as an Robert Dornheim. Media casseffe. incorrigible hobbyist who gets interBeta Hi-Fi stereo, VHS Hi-Fi stereo. ested in fishing or photography or 70 min.,939.95 especially computers, and then does it to death. He also keeps flashing back to himself as a child in post!t ass players always seem the lJ normal ones. Look at Paul Mc- war England-Brits just love doing Cartney, or John Entwistle, or Mike that in films-and reenacts some Anthony-not exactly Mick Jagger or choice moments from his life. The Keith Richards, eh? Yet as Rolling best is when-he tells his boss at Stones bassist Bill Wyman suggests some veddy proper job that he wants in this "autobiographical fantasy," to leave to pursue rock'n'roll. Go on, says the irate old coot, and don't the Micks and Keiths of the world come sniveling for your job back. owe the Wymans, et al., a bit of How delicious. For history's sake, thanks. For every yin, he implies, Wyman also gives some insight into there's a yang, and the guys who keep the bass lines steady are the his early days with the Stones, and

It's grand, lt's downhill after that, at least on video; the concert audience seemed to think it was New

includes what looks like a bit of prehistoric rock video. Since Dlgrtal Dreams comes down to Monty Python without the laughs, some of it gets a little tedious and precious. There are, to be sure, some choice bits, as when Wyman anticipates Woody Allen's Purple Rose ol Cairo and has TV-screen characters talking about the "real world out there." Mostly, though, Digital Dreams is the home movie it appears to be. And like any home movie, the honesty of the "performers" will long outlive the rough edges.

seeming change of heart. But the Doors are still certainly far more than, as Dave Marsh puts it, "the most overrated group in rock history." For one thing, as both the clips

compilation Dance on Fire and the

video-portrail Tribute attest, focalpoint Morrison was both a remarkably visual stage presence and a remarkably dangerous performer. He was an avatar of rebellious self-destruction-not an original orientation, but an extreme one grounded in centuries-old schools of thought. He certainly practiced what he preached. And in terms of putting anarchic ideas in people's heads, the man was far more dangerous than a made-up and-"Something Heavy Going Down" heavy metal band that considers clips. You have to give them dubious "booze'n'broads" a philosophy. credit for being daring, though. Aside from "Twilight Zone"'s dancing Nazi Then there's the Doors' music, dominatrices (Ah! I love the way that which Dance on Fire offers in digitalrolls out), we have a transvestite in ly re-mastered versions. Although "Something Heavy", graphic violence unavoidably weighed toward perforin "Glear Night Moonlight", and the mance clips, often lip-synched, the attempted rape of a nun in "When tapes give equal time to the Doors' the Lady Smiles". These are the Top Ten and conceptual stuff. And at kinds of things, believe it or not, that the risk of sounding like a member of Alfred Hitchcock could pull off with what Dave Marsh calls an "obpanache. But De Nooijer and Maas noxious and insipid cult," how, I are not, as you may have surmised, wonder, can you not admire a band Alfred Hitchcock. that could manufacture hits and yet not be a slave to them? A band that could create on the same albums fHE DOORS: DANCE ON FIRE both distinctive-sounding singles and Directors uncredited except for "L.A. ambitious opuses that could inspire Woman," dir. by Ray Manzarek. MCA a Francis Ford Coppola, no less (or casseffe. Beta Hi-Fi stereo, VHS Hiis he too adolescently overblown to Fi stereo. 65 min. $39.95 be "serious" about, also)? Leaving that decision up to my fHE DOORS: A TnrBUfE readers, for some of whom the Doors may be all but unknown, I recomTO T'M iIORR'SON mend Tribute and Dance in that fNo oNE HERE GETS OUr order. The former is a passable ALIYES A fRrBUfE fO though factually skimpy look at TlM MORR'SON' Morrison-as-tortured poet. The latter Directed by Gordon Forbes. Warner is an historical gem featuring 14 casseffe. Beta, VHS mono.60 min. clips, mostly from TV appearances but also including early Elektra $29.98 Records promo films which are imoth these tapes take pains to in- portant rock video precursors. One of form us that the Doors were the these, for "The Unknown Soldier", is listed as "banned since 1968" on the first American rock band to score cassette box, and according to Moreight consecutive gold and platinum rison's biography (upon which Tribute albums. Congratulations, guys. is based), the song had indeed been You've gone Yuppie. OK, maybe the Doors and singer-songwriter Jim Mor- "virtually banned from airplay, while the violent film . . . had been rison did try too hard to present totally censored." themselves as genuine artists above 'Censored by whom or what exactsuch petty commercial concerns. ly, no one I spoke to could say. Rock And maybe the critical blahs that history is shrouded like that. The savgreeted Morrison's posthumous ing of these important pieces of it is album of poetry, An American Prayer (1978), had something to do with this thus reason to celebrate.
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GOI.DEN EARR'N@
Directed by Paul De Nooiier, Dick Maas. Sony casselte. Beta Hi-Fi stereo, VHS Hi-Fi stereo.25 min.
$79.95

I t's a funny thing, but if you go to a I foreign country and find an

"American-style" restaurant, you'll get things like hamburgers with pickles, mustard and spaghetti sauce. The point of this food flight is that Dutch directors De Nooijer and Maas are somehow just a little off when they try to place Dutch AORockers Golden Earring in "American-style" videos-you know, with '50s cars and girls in ponytails. Yet-they succeed marvelously when they go back to what for many Europeans is the sole source of their knowledge about U.S. culture: American movies. This makes the dancing Nazi dominatrices of Maas' "Twilight Zone" fascinating, albeit incredibly distasteful. (Doesn't Maas know his country was overrun in World War ll?) Same with the trenchcoated, oldmovie spies doing Motown steps on stage. Same with the James Bondian beautiful woman (partially nude here, as opposed to the cable version) who tries to kill our square-jawed hero, Golden Earring lead singer Barry
Hay. For all its excesses, this clip distills the best moments of every good, tras[y spy movie ever to play

the late, late show, and for an added

retro chuckle, even plays havoc with those crazy science-ciass films of slow-motion bullets slicing playing cards in two. Maas' half-'50s, half-'80s teenageoutlaw tale for "Clear Night Moon' light" doesn't work half so well. Neither do the strained, new wave "hipness" of De Nooijer's "News" '
VHS Hi-Fi VGR courtesy GE