With several Ramones DVDS on the go already, it’s a case of buyer beware. If you want to know the history of the band then there are are docmentaries to be easily found – Raw, and The True Story, whose title is self-explanatory.
As is It’s Alive, though the double DVD’s contents aren’t just live shows as the name suggests, but a video version of seminal live recording It’s Alive – which is for many, the best live album ever.
Like the original vinyl which you all know (or should!) it’s the New Year show in 1977 at London’s Rainbow (which Joeyproves by reversing his famous ‘Gabba Gabba Hey’ sign to read ‘Happy New Year’. And with what looks like 5 cameras trained in the band, that show is brought to life. However, concentrate and it’s very clever editing – video technology 30 tears ago was expensive but some modern cut and paste techniques have fleshed out what may have been less than 90 minutes of footage – there’s 14 tracks in all – and turned it into a pretty faithful Ramones live show rather than a mere document of the event.
Of course, with a double DVD you can expect a lot more for your cash. And in truth, there’s some frankly best-avoided later material (e.g. ‘9 to 5’). However, live performances are what’s promised in the title, and from places as unexpected as Spain, and Finland in 1988! The viewer can see how the quality of filming improves if not the songwriting – come album #6 ‘KKK’ is as good as it gets – but they can still knock out ‘Surfin Bird’ just like it was 1977 all over again.
Theres also documentary footage of sorts – from 1978, in Misikladen in Germany, a glossy studio-shot TV performance is of interest, despite an unenthusiastic audience (the Argentinians are the most appreciative of all crowds, the UK audience in the 70s a mix of still-bemused people in sports jackets, plus ‘proper’ punks). There’s a couple of tracks shot in Oakland a year later – the handheld camera work is rough, but a nice contrast to San Bernadino which looks like a sunny T in the Park. There are bonuses too for buyers who will doubtless flock pretty much blindly to purchase this – a version of Johnny Thunders’ ‘Chinese Rocks hand the ubiquitous extras like interviews plus another 20 live tracks.
Disc 2 is more the ‘extras and outtakes’ and the main surprise is that Dennis Norden doesn’t show up to introduce them. Instead, it’s DLT in cardie introducing ‘Don’t Come Close’ , detailing the time when punk rock and the Ramones themseves got aceptable enough for TotP. But just to show that the band didn’t completely decline, towards the end of DVD2, they’re back to Argentina for ‘Blitzkreig Bop in 96’. Despite being 20 years older, they play it harder and faster than anything that ‘s gone before.
Obviously when a band becomes more famous that’s when they’ll get more coverage, and that’s when the Ramones softened up – sadly in the 70s, camcorders weren’t the ten-a-penny documentary tool of today. And that’s why the brief footage from It’s Alive is so precious.