Thursday, May 7, 2009

Target Video Tribute

This post is about a week late, but I've been sick with The Swine! Not really, just a normal cold. So many people are stressing over this damn thing. It's just another damn flu! Influenza mutates every couple of years anyways! If it didn't we would be immune and never catch it. Anyways, enough of that crap.

So about a week ago I caught that Target Video Tribute movie that Joe over at Last Days spoke so very highly of. Having a few of the old Target Video Tapes myself, I was expecting to recognize some of the clips. Man was I wrong! This film was absolutely fucking amazing! Sooo much rare footage of great bands from the late 70's/ early 80's. 2 hours of just pure live performance. I felt like I was a little kid watching cartoons for the first time!

It started with Joe Rees (founder of Target Video) coming on stage & saying a few words about the film & how their whole operation came about. The first band of the movie was really one that I could not have picked better myself. 1978 black & white footage of Middle Class performing Situations. After there was The Mentors & The Bags from 1979. Others like The Weirdos, Avengers, Geza X, The Plugz, The Dickies, Screamers, Fleasheaters, The Cramps, The Dils, The Zeros, Tuxedomoon, Nash The Slash, DNA, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Catholic Discipline, B People, Castration Squad, Go-Go's, Flipper, The Offs, Chrome, Black Flag, T.S.O.L., Gun Club, Minutemen, CH3 & The Feederz!!!! And that's just the 30 that I can actually remember! They ended it with great footage of Gang Of Four doing Damaged Goods. Good stuff.

I have to say one of my favorite clips was from The Cramps. They performed at a mental institution in 1978. To just see all these mental patients dancing and smiling and laughing to The Cramps play, truly amazing. Especially with Lux Interiors recent passing, this was really great footage to see. So all in all I really can't put into words how great this film was. Truly timeless footage you wouldn't be able to see anywhere else. I wish you all could have seen & enjoyed it as much as I did. I really do.

After a little bit of searching, I did track down two of the videos that were in the film. The first of the Screamers doing 122 Hours Of Fear and the second of Tuxedomoon doing Jinx. Now the Tuxedomoon here is a bit different from the one in the film. Same exact footage, but this one has some kind of weird effect on it that makes it kind of unclear. Oh well. I tried to find better. Enjoy none the less!





3 comments:

Punk Rock Daddy said...

oh man, i'm drooling over that video. i'm from the philippines so the chances of acquiring that video is so slim.

Anonymous said...

I'm jealous you got to go!

Dentist Escondido said...

You're very lucky!