HERBIE HANC(ICK AND

THE ROCKIT BAND

Directed by Ken 0'Neil. cBS/Fox cassette. Beta Hi-Fi, VHS Hi-Fi. 73 minutes. $29.98

Before the word became associated with

the'perils of nuclear energy, "fusion" described a'70s pop music vogue. A spacey mix of jazz,funk and pop-rock elements, it flared up for a few years and much less spectacularly burned out. Unlike the purer, relatively stable forms from which it drew, fusion was volatile, and all bets were on it to evolve from a hybrid to its own pure form, just as its roots had done. lnstead, it's settled into a background-music niche sniffed al by jazz, funk and rock purists alike. Lately, keyboardist Herbie Hancock-who made his mark with jazz legend Miles Davis more than twenty years agohas sparked some new interest by fusing fusion with synthesizers and computers more adroitly than anyone else in the popular realm. Yet as this concert tape shows, Hancock's present popularity may be more a result of his abstract video visions than his concrete video or musical ones. Hancock and his Rockit Band are technically proficient, and live, they can be incendiary. On this concert tape, however, director Ken O'Neil puts out the fire. He and the band seem to be fighting each other throughout, with O'Neil treating a par-

O'Neil does seem to realize that straightforward concert tapes are on the wane, with hybrid concert-concept ual tapes, such as the Eurythmics' Live from Heaven and Thomas Dolby's Live Wirb/ess, proving more viewable. He injects moments from the amazing "Autodrive" and "Rockit" conceptual clips to perk up the stage show. Unfortunately, they manage only to point up the visual limitations of ing surrounding them. Thankfully, these

technical first. The audio portion of VHS format copies was recorded in and can play back via
a super-sound process

called VHS Hi-Fi. Similar to Beta Hi-Fi, introduced last year, this means that by hooking up a hi-fi videocassette recorder to your stereo system, you can get better sound than from any other type of audio gear except digital.
Some technical bugs are working their way through early batches of VHS HiFi tapes, but if you're a well-heeled rock video buff, a hi-fi VCR is well worth the investment. More so-if it weren't for the Godley/Creme clipsthan can be said for this tape.

ticularly visual live show as just another concert.

Hancock's funky robots, created by performanceartist Jim Whiting for his own Judgrhent Show, he treats casually, as if they were just props and not the personalities Hancock intended them to be. Occasionally, special effects created on a Fairlight CMI video synthesizer manage to enliven the tape, but more often than not, they're merely gimmicky. When they do work hand-in-hand with the songs, however, the video effects can be marvelous, creating a sum-is-greaterthan-its-parts audio-video experience. When disc jockey D. ST. intones a synthetical ly distorted song-intro, O'Neil creates matching funhouse-mirror effects. When, in the hit, "Rockit", the DJ starts to mix eerie sounds, framewith i n-a-f rame ef fects visually interpret his scratching by bobbing back and forth.

two Kevin Godley/Lol Creme clips are tacked on

whole at the tape's end, making this cassette worth every penny. lf only O'Neil and producer Lexy Godfrey had thought to integrate these"two masterpieces with the concert itself. What they do integrate, and it's a little confusing, are shots from two live shows. Mostly this is a concert taped at'London's Hammersmith Odeon; however, a few shots from a separate concert at
Camden Palace fill in where, apparently, tech-

RICK SPRINGFIELD:

PLATINUM VIDE()S
Directed by Rick Springlield,
Paul Justman, Doug Dowdle.

RCA/Columbia cassette. Beta Hi-Fi, VHS stereo. 23 minutes.

$1

9.95

nical goofs at the Odeon show led to some missing footage. These inserts are well-matched, I must admit, but it's a little jarring seeing Hancock's jacket and instrument change from shot to shot.
Whatever its creative shortcomings-and none are so bad that this

ln Springfield, a young woman's fancy turns to thoughts of love, lust and the range of possibilities in-between. The boy can't help it, which is a shame, really. Despite his Australian bubblegum roots, he's actually more
an out-and-out rocker than a pandering teen idol; so were the Beatles, after all, though it took a while for the distinction to shine through. lf Springfield can likewise climb above the limitations of teenidoldom, he'll surely become a more potent

wouldn't make a gooii' background tape at a parly-Herbie Hancock and the Rockit Eand marks a

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he has loolishly given his heart). The lonely balladeer does get the girl in Justman's "What Kind of

among the first prerecorded cassettes-predati ng virtually all but porn and a

ed" and "you exploded in

my heart," we have the dice with R & J's pictures,

force than the one he gives us on most of these half-dozen clips. He takes the image, on

all but Doug Dowdle's

"Human Touch" vignette,

of a lonely, romantic balladeer searching for Ms. Right. A lot of male

rockers have looked for the same girl-Bruce Springsteen even'sings to his mythical Wendy and Mary by name-and the more profound ones explore what it means to find her and live with her. Unfortunately, only a couple of these pieces try to poke beneath the surface of Springfield's tuneful but shallow songs, and so the romantic imagery never reaches any meaningful conclusion. Paul Justman's "Don't Talk to Strangers" clip is particularly a mess, filled with pointless props (flashing police cars that command attention but don't do anything), pointless special effects (anothei rock clip restaurant table gets toppled in slow motion) and a pointless plot (something about Rick's eternal love saving his lifeand that of the painted woman to whom

Fool Am l" and in Dowdle's "Souls" and "Affair of the Heart". But only in "Affair" is Ms. Right anything but a good-hearted, almost virginal trouper. Not surprisingly, the best in the bunch, "Human Touch", breaks away from this wimpy theme, and thus given the chance, Springfield rocks out with spirit and thought. Here, the song's appeal for genuine feeling is illustrated by a future world wherb a cold scientist-soldier gives the fallen Springfield a human touch at a very touchy moment. The song's the best rocker on the tape, and the clip, despite an obvious plot inconsistency, does it justice.
The same can't be said, unfortunately, for Spring-

few uncopyrighted straight movies-the form yielded few big sellers until just recently. Making Movies, produced in 1980 and first released in '81, was pulled and kept in "moratorium" for over a year by Warner, along with tapes by Blondie, Devo and other pioneering worthies. Does this just-reissued trio of conceptual clips hold uP today, after we've had Russell Mulcahy's miniepics and John "Twilight
Zone Killer" Landis' "Thri ller"? Absol utely. When Making Movies was originally released, critics harped on the literalness of the visualizations. The band hates the tape to this day, for that and other reasons. It's true that when vocalst/son gwriter/g u itari st Mark Knopfler sings "Tunnel of Love", we see two lovers bopping through a tunnel. And when, in "Romeo and Juliet", he sings the "dice are loadi

and-but of course-one of them explodes.

Regardless, after seeing enough rock promo clips to stretch to the moon and back, I say the literalness amounts to a minor objection and to hell with it. These three clips are among the rich' est in texture, most visual' ly stylish and sexiestwithout berng sexrsf-of any. Look to Gerald Gasale and Devo or Todd Rundgren and Utopia if you want powerfully raw surrealism. Look to Mulcahy and Duran Duran if you want cinematic values and scope. And look to Bob Giraldi if You

want Dr. Pepper commercials. Lester Bookbinder's

work, on the other hand, is the Vanify Fair, the Esquire of rock clips.

All three of the filmed

pieces take place in an off-white limbo. Each has such an economy of movement and set design that every little gesture, every little pass from shadow to light, achieves significance. When, in "Skateaway", Bookbinder gives us a free-sPirited rol ler-skater "sai I i ng through the crowd," she

field's direction of "Jessie's Girl". You've got to give him points for trying, yet not only is his ef-

fort filled with the worst sort of rock clip cliches,

but even the editing and the audio-sync are off. Take the girl, Rick; just stay in front of the camera.
DIRE STRAITS: MAKING MOVIES
Directed by Lester Bookbinder. Warner cassette. Beta mono, VHS mono. 21 minutes.

is the only splash of color among stuffy silhouettes. When, in "Romeo and Juliet", the song calls for a glamorous heroine, Bookbinder gives us one

in Vogue-cover olose-uPthen lingers on her serious face as she blows a silly, pink bubble. Such telling details reveal more about characters in a moment than most directors can do in an entire cliP. This trait is Bookbinder's most significant. Even beyond his stylish

$29.98

A lot of before-theirtime music videocas' settes have been re'released lately to cash in the rock video boom You just heard coming out of your stereo TV. Even though music taPes were

60

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eye for shapes and colors and light and shadow, Bookbinder should be remembered for injecting f lesh-and-blood characters

rather than rock'n'roll caricatures into his work. Gertainly, his characters come off as being symbolic rather than realistic. Still, just look at "Tunnel of Love"'s glamorous dancer when Bookbinder gives us a close-up. She's not glamorous then, simply a person, one who's evidently a little tired of keeping up appearances for appearances' sake. She becomes human to us then, as does Juliet when she struts by her vanquished lover, writhing in the joy of her body, celebrating it. Yet for all of Juliet's agonizingly sexy moves, she.stays a person and doesn't become a one-dimensional sex object. Rather, it is the men in these clips who are clumsy, inarticulate creatures, victims of desire. Even in "Skateaway", where the spiritgirl is "making movies" ol rock songs in her head, the band she imagines as perfect humans are simply fallible people that stumble into a room and don't know how to act. Bookbinder, to his credit, gives screen credit to his cast and his formidable crew (including art directors Peter Richardson
and Jeff rey Woodbridge, whose work is stunning). Somehow, full credits are still a rarity among con-

into them, she's at her best, on both tapes, with nasty rock. Both tapes, fortunately, include her standards: her self-penned "Nutbush City

Limits", lke's and Phil Spector's "River Deep, Mountain High" and (as part of a medley on
Queenl Creedence Clear-

TINA TURNER: OUEEN

OF ROCK'N'ROLL
Directed by Steve Turner. VCL/Media cassette. Beta Hi-Fi, VHS stereo. 60 min. approx. $29.95

demonstrate, sharpened her rock act to a consistent, almost formulaic point. The formula is all hers, as teasing and tense as rock'n'roll is supposed to be. The newly re-released VCL tape, distributed by Media Home Entertainment, is from one of her

TINA TURNER LIVE:

NICE'N'

ROUGH

Directed by David Mallet. Thorn EMI cassette. Beta Hi-Fi, vHS

stereo. 55 minutes. $29.95

Though the lke and Tina Turner Revue had reaped some of its biggest successes after touring with the Rolling Stones in '66, and crossing over from the black to the pop charts, it was

earliest post-lke shows, in early '79 at the Apollo Theatre in Londgn-not, as the ads say, in Harlem. The now-defunct homevideo division of Time/Life
released it originally in 1980, making Tina a concert-video pioneer. The

water Revival's "Proud Mary". Although her voice can build and drop from scarlet whispers to postorgasmic screams and back, she's not as effective on such ill-chosen ballads as "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" as she is on songs like "Hot Legs" or "The Bitch is Back". Accordingly, her primal, passionate rocking is better presented in the relatively raw Queen than in the slicker Nice'n' Rough. The latter has better material, but it seems less suited to video. The songs here are too extended, while the more rapid-fire Queen seldom drags it feet. Same with Tina, of course. Even at 44, she moves like a female James Brown, and slaps on a sex-queen mask that, though it's become almost a parody over the
years, still out-smolders Joan Collins and Linda Evans.And what she can't arouse, she leaves to her dancers-like her, ex-. cel lently choreographed and erotically costumed. Her trademark rock-

Thorn EMI tape contains

alwaysclearl&T's
musical hearts lay in different places. After their early :70s split, lke retreated to his studio and

ceptual pieces-as is, unfortunately, veteran glamour-photographer and commercials-director

Bookbinder, an American

tried-unsuccessf ul ly-to return to his roots. Tina concbntrated on England,

where the duo had found more popularity than in the U.S., and, as these years-apart concerts

a London, Hammersmith Odeon show from 1982 the year of the cassette's release. The latter tape is slicker, and with Tina's repertoire less embarrassingly voguish. ln 1979, she still included disco in her act, and while hcr version of "Disco lnferno" and "Don't Leave Me This Way" pack more passion than the authors likely put

in London and a rock-clip

pioneer whose absence since Making Movies is a sad development.

burlesque routines are only one aspect of the lady, though;the act may get parodic, but never Tina herself. lf you need convincing, just watch either of these concert videos, and compare the latest hot young thing to the hardest working woman in rock.

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