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Smashing Pumpkins and Green Day DVDs. Reviews? (1 Viewer)

Mike Woods

Agent
Joined
Jan 13, 1999
Messages
37
Hi.

Anyone picked up either of these discs yet. I'm still waiting for mine over this side of the pond, so I'd appreciate any comments on A/V quailty and the like. Any body seen any reviews up at other sites?

Cheers,

Mike
 

Eddie W.

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Mar 20, 1999
Messages
63
I picked up the Green Day disc a few days ago. Seems it's a little difficult to find for some reason. At any rate, the picture & sound are good but nothing special. About as good as you'd get off a decent satellite signal. 2.0 Audio only...no remixes. No extras...the default automatically plays all the clips in order, but by selecting the DVD menu button, you can select them separately and they are grouped by the CD they appeared on. One thing I was a little disappointed in is that the clips run just as they did on MTV, with the curse words removed. Would have been nice if they could have provided the complete uncensored versions of the songs. But overall it's a nice collection to own.
 

Chris Sypal

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Dec 2, 2000
Messages
86
I just picked up the SP disc today after a bit of searching (Best Buy didn't have it, and I ended up finding it at Borders).
I am very pleased with it. I didn't know that it would have the alternate angle, and comentary track. The commentary was fantastic and very informative (unlike the boring one ond the Beastie Boys set).
The video quality isn't perfect. The quality varies greatly with the videos as some are supposed to be grainy to begin with.
I haven't played it on a good system to hear how good the audio is.
In the end, 21 videos. Almost all of them have comentaries, most have an alternate video track. All this for $15. This is a must buy for any Smashing Pumpkins fan.
Oooh, I forgot to mention, for those with a DVD-ROM drive there is a 600 dpi image there so you can make your own t-shirt. :)
 

Jeremy_Z

Agent
Joined
Oct 14, 2000
Messages
35
I picked up the SP as well..but I have a question. How do you access the "Untitled" video? I couldn't find it on the disc anywhere....however it is listed on the package.
 

Jesse Clift

Agent
Joined
Jul 30, 2000
Messages
44
I went to Best Buy looking for the Smashing Pumkins DVD but they didn't have it and told me that the release date had been pushed back to 12/11! Is this true? I don't have a Borders near me so I can't check there. Has anyone seen this released elsewhere?
 

Cary

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jun 30, 1997
Messages
61
Jesse, I got the same message from Best Buy. Of course I didn't believe them, and found SP at Tower today.

I can't believe that the Green Day videos are edited, I may have to return my copy now that I know. I find that incredibly annoying! The CD also has about half a dozen extra tracks.
 

Kyle McKnight

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2001
Messages
2,504
Damnit. I just bought the Green Day disc and put it in the player to find out it was edited. Guess I should have ran a search here first. Time to return it to the store. Maybe I'll check out the SP disc.
 

David Illingworth II

Second Unit
Joined
May 11, 2001
Messages
444
The SP disc is pretty excellent. You get a video from their last concert, plus the unreleased Untitled video. The commentaries are all great, and it's especially fun to listen to the commentary while watching the outtake/making of footage after viewing the video. I really couldn't ask for more. I can't wait for the release of the entire last concert at the Metro in 2002!
 

Travis D

Second Unit
Joined
Feb 15, 2001
Messages
368
I can't believe all you guys are returning your Green Day discs. I received it for Christmas and absolutley love it! The videos appear the way we've all seen them on TV(unless your in Europe.) in edited form. The subtitles however are completley uncut except for "shit" in Walking Contradiction. Also, the middle fingers in the videos are not mosaiced out like they were on TV. Video for the later songs is exceptional and since it is only a hour's worth of stuff the bitrate on the video almost stays exclusivley on the 10MBps mark. Music also sounds good as it is 256Kbps stereo. Though I wish it was PCM like the Pearl Jam disc. The Music Videos themselves warrant a purchase and I recommend the disc to anyone who enjoys GD's sound and visuals.

The Pumpkin's disc on the other hand blows GD's out of the water content wise. Commentarys, outtakes, visual ducumentarys, and the best video/song of all time (Thirty-three) make for an impressive package. The bitrate hangs in the 6MBps area and unlike the 256 audio of Green Day, songs are recorded at 224KBps. The only downside to the disc is the EXTREMLEY graphic video to "Try,Try,Try". I simply cannot watch the video anymore without the urge to vomit. Maybe some of you have stronger stomachs than me, hopefully.

EDIT: The fact that they left off subtitles made me mad. Bad move. Any music disc should be required to list the lyrics in my opinion.
 

Kyle McKnight

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2001
Messages
2,504
Well guys...to my suprise I went to BB today to buy the Guns & Roses Use Your Illusion I and II, but they had the Smashing Pumpkins DVD in stock this time. I was 90% sure I was gonna pick it up, and when I saw it priced for $14.99 I had to. What a packed, feature full DVD for the price, compared to Green Day's extraless $20 disc.
 

Travis D

Second Unit
Joined
Feb 15, 2001
Messages
368
I was floored by the 14.99 price on the Pumpkins's disc when I bought it. Somebody has got to be taking a hit on that.
 

Matt Birchall

Supporting Actor
Joined
Feb 22, 2000
Messages
839
Well guys...to my suprise I went to BB today to buy the Guns & Roses Use Your Illusion I and II, but they had the Smashing Pumpkins DVD in stock this time.
It's a little off-topic, but this reminded me of the first concert I ever attended--it was a G N' R show here in Oklahoma City in April 1992. Guns were at pretty much the peak of their popularity, and I was a huge fan, and was incredibly excited that they were going to be my first concert. I found out the day of the show that some band named "Smashing Pumpkins" was opening for them, and all I knew about them was that they were "weird". Never heard their music before.
Got to the show, and the Pumpkins came on, and man, was it weird. They sucked. They were kind of contained to this little square of the massive G N' R stage, and just stood there, playing their crappy little weird songs. After maybe 20 minutes, something happened. I don't know what exactly it was, but I guess that it was that the crowd was booing and throwing stuff at the Pumpkins--they were here to see G N' R, who'd never been here before, and didn't want to see this Pumpkins crap. Billy went off on a tirade about Oklahomans, saying how all of the Okies rode around on horses and didn't have electricity and that the Pumpkins worshipped the Devil, and all sorts of things, just antagonizing the crowd even more. Needless to say, after his spiel, the crowd went ballistic and booed them off the stage. Myself included. A couple of hours later, G N' R finally decided to come on, and put on quite a good show.
A year later, of course, the Pumpkins released Siamese Dream and were on their way to becoming one of the biggest bands of the 90's, while G N' R just kind of faded away after the release of The Spaghetti Incident?. I can't tell you what a strange feeling it was for me to purchase Siamese Dream, after taking part in booing them off the stage a year before. I fell in love with Siamese Dream and have been a huge fan ever since. Saw them two more times, actually, during the Mellon Collie and Adore tours, both without Jimmy. I've always been a little bummed that the one time I saw them with the original four members was that horrible G N' R opening stint.
Anyway, sorry for straying off-topic like that, but I always love to tell that story. Thanks for indulging me.
The Pumpkins DVD really is just chock-full of all kinds of sweet Pumpkiny goodness, and for such a good price. It's very similar to the Criterion Beastie Boys disc--kind of like a "lite" version of it. It's great to be able to have all of those options available for every video. My only beef with the disc is that "The End is the Beginning is the End" isn't included, which I'm assuming is due to rights issues for the Batman stuff. I'd like to have it on there, but it wasn't one of their better videos anyway, so not such a big deal. (Interestingly, when G N' R released a video collection a couple of years ago, the video for "You Could Be Mine" with all of the Terminator 2 footage wasn't included.)
Think my favorite part of the DVD is the Siamese Dream-era live cut of "Geek U.S.A." with all of the clowns on stage. That's just amazing. Can't help but crank the stereo and whip out my air guitar for that one. . . :D
Anyone that's interested in what Billy and Jimmy are up to these days, check out the website for their new band, Zwan:
www.zwanmusic.com
Longest post ever. Thanks for reading.
-mwb-
 

Travis D

Second Unit
Joined
Feb 15, 2001
Messages
368
I don't blame you for not liking Pumpkins pre-Dream. I do not like Gish and never have liked Gish. There is a reason they became popular after Siamese Dream, it was good music. Unless they played stuff from the unreleased Dream album, you and that crowd had every right not to enjoy them. If they did play stuff from Dream, I'm afraid they were correct in dissing you Oakies. :D j/k
 

David Illingworth II

Second Unit
Joined
May 11, 2001
Messages
444
There are a couple of good Gish songs, Snail being one of them.

Anyway, I'm not entirely surprised by the Pumpkins low price. The band has been setting a precedent of generosity for some time now, with the 100% charity tour for Adore, the completely free internet album MACHINA II, the double-disc Greatest Hits priced as a single (which Counting Crows also did with their live album), and now the DVD. It's too bad the Pumpkins broke up, but they will be releasing stuff for a long time, and I hear that Zwan is going to be similar (but I haven't actually heard their stuff yet).
 

Colin Jacobson

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2000
Messages
13,328
It's very similar to the Criterion Beastie Boys disc--kind of like a "lite" version of it
"Lite" my ass - the Pumpkins set is more more pleasing than the Beasties package. No, it doesn't offer the sheer AMOUNT of content, but what we find is MUCH more compelling. The Pumpkins' commentaries are uniformly excellent, as opposed to the often dull tracks heard on the Beasties' set. A lot of that DVD's material is cool in theory; the Pumpkins stuff is cool in REALITY. This is easily the best packages of videos I've ever seen (and since I love the Springsteen set, it pains me to say that).

A couple of questions:

What the &%*&! was the deal with the "Jakee2 Betbetba" commentary for "Today"? I'm missing something here - I hope someone can fill in the gaps!

Did anyone else notice the screwy audio mix for "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"? The vocals flit from speaker to speaker, the bass collapses a few times - it's a weirdly botched job...
 

Chris Sypal

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Dec 2, 2000
Messages
86
What the &%*&! was the deal with the "Jakee2 Betbetba" commentary for "Today"? I'm missing something here - I hope someone can fill in the gaps!
I thought that was director. From the Pumpkins' commentary, they kinda describe the him as being...odd :)
 

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