{"id":6917,"date":"2014-12-22T05:30:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T10:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=6917"},"modified":"2014-12-22T05:30:37","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T10:30:37","slug":"best-of-2014-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/12\/22\/best-of-2014-videos\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of 2014: Videos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/center>With 1\/1\/15 mere days away, it’s time for Musoscribe’s annual best-of lists. These are \u2013 of course — wholly subjective, and reflect my tastes and interests. I viewed quite a few music-related DVDs this year, and while quite a few were excellent (and none truly awful), four stood out. As it happens, all four concern music of the past, but remain sturdily tooted in the present.<\/p>\n

Ian Anderson \u2013 <\/strong>Thick as a Brick Live in Iceland<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nI’ve written a fair amount about Anderson and Jethro Tull<\/strong> on this blog, and have interacted with the man in two (#1<\/a> and #2<\/a>) wide-ranging interviews. This DVD documents a night on his celebrated and successful 2012 tour. I’ve written about Anderson’s strengths and limitations; this tour (and by extension, this DVD\/Blu-Ray) makes the best of the former and deal creatively with the latter. Recommended. (Watch for my review of the four-disc WarChild<\/em> set, coming soon.)<\/p>\n

Money for Nothing<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nThis fast-past documentary is tailor-made for the ADD generation: thought it’s packed with images, ideas and information, nothing stays on the screen for more than a few seconds. As such, it suits its subject matter: the rise and fall of the music video as an artistic and commercial medium \u2013 exceedingly well.<\/p>\n

I Dream of Wires<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nSpeaking or rise and fall, this documentary \u2013 presented in a \u201chardcore edition\u201d that appends the original film with hours of fascinating bonus material \u2013 charts the history of the analog modular synthesizer. The film had a premier at a recent Moogfest<\/a> here in my hometown of Asheville; it received a warm welcome. If you\u2019re at all interested in the electronic side of music where technology and creativity meet, you’ll enjoy this. Note that because of the breadth and depth of its subject, the DVD is best digested in small portions.<\/p>\n

The Doors \u2013 <\/strong>R-Evolution<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nThese Los Angeles-based legends might not be the first 60s rock act one thinks of when considering intelligent use of the visual medium, but since both Jim Morrison<\/strong> and Ray Manzarek<\/strong><\/a> had backgrounds in film, it makes sense. A passel of rare video clips show the group wriggling free of convention and creating enduring audiovisual works of their own. The quality of the clips here is nothing short of amazing.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for best-of lists covering 2014’s music-related books; concerts; archival and compilation releases; and new music.<\/p>\n

Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on \"\" Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With 1\/1\/15 mere days away, it’s time for Musoscribe’s annual best-of lists. These are \u2013 of course — wholly subjective, and reflect my tastes and interests. I viewed quite a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25,49,50,51,56,62],"tags":[1032,1140,1537,2154],"class_list":["post-6917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-list","category-dvd","category-new-release","category-new-wave","category-pop","category-prog","category-rawk","tag-ian-anderson","tag-jethro-tull","tag-mtv","tag-the-doors","cat-8-id","cat-25-id","cat-49-id","cat-50-id","cat-51-id","cat-56-id","cat-62-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}