collisionwork | Video Blitz

Well, despite all the busyness, I still have time for some video watching (generally in a window to the right of whatever I'm working on on the iMac desktop).

So, I've made up some playlists of videos I've been watching recently - longer programs that have been broken up for posting on YouTube, which I've brought back together so you (and I) can watch them straight through.

So, inside each of these cuts, a playlist (or four) embedded for your dining and dancing pleasure.

First, this 66-minute documentary on the career of the Pre-Fab Four, by Eric Idle, Gary Weis, and Neil Innes:

I was led to this next one by queencallipygos, a project from 1990 I'd never heard of - One World One Voice, a "chain tape" started by Kevin Godley and sent to musicians all around the world to add parts in a massive jam, with over 250 musicians and groups coming together to try and raise consciousness about environmental issues, becoming a massive jam of musicians of all styles and lands coming together on multitrack tape.

The musicians include Afrika Bambaataa, Laurie Anderson, Bagamoya Players, Cedric, The Chieftains, Clannad, Johnny Clegg & Savuka, Terence Trent D'Arby, Dred, Peter Gabriel, Bob Geldof, Dave Gilmour, Kevin Godley, Eddy Grant, The Gipsy Kings, Rupert Hine, Chrissie Hynde, Howard Jones, Salif Keita, The Kodo Drummers, the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra, Maria McKee, Milton Nascimento, Native Land & Themba, New Frontier, New Voices of Freedom, Nu Sounds, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Courtney Pine, Lou Reed, Robbie Robertson, Michael Rose & Junior, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shakespear's Sister, Dave Stewart and The Spiritual Cowboys, Sting, Joe Strummer, Steven Van Zandt, Suzanne Vega, Venice, Adam Woods and Guo Yue. And others, who looked familiar, but I wasn't sure (I think I saw Yellowman - annoyingly, I couldn't find a complete list of the players online).

The final 52-minute-long piece is all over the place, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but the ridiculous is at least entertaining, and the sublime is . . . sublime:

In 1997, all four of The Monkees reunite to create a new album, Justus, which Mike Nesmith only agrees to do if they actually write all the songs and play all the instruments themselves, which they do. Then Nesmith writes and directs a pretty-much-ignored TV special, Hey, Hey, We're The Monkees!, based on the concept that TV shows never actually stop when they go off the air - the characters are going on with their stories, they're just not getting aired anymore. So The Monkees are still trapped in their looney show as middle-aged men trying to ignore the "adventures" that come their way and still trying to get their band off the ground. This is a playlist of the bits of this bizarre show I've found on YouTube and stitched together:

And, more in the research category, an interview with Orson Welles, back when TV had something like real interviews:

And finally, all four parts of John Berger's classic 1972 Ways of Seeing series for the BBC. It seems everyone reads the book version of this in college now, but the video version is a far preferable version of the text, and worth sitting down and watching:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Enjoy.