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Music Scene - Best of 1969-1970 (Vol. 2)
Amazon Price: $22.49List Price: Usually ships in 24 hours By: Mpi Home Video Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $13.99 |
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8
Average rating: 3.0 of 5
Editorial Review:
Whereas Music Scene, Vol. 1 preserved a daring TV show's moment in the low-rated limelight, Vol. 2 shows the series in a fascinating tailspin, in the ratings cellar before cancellation in January of 1970. A bold attempt to combine liberal political comedy, harmless pop, and Woodstock-era rock & roll, Music Scene drew its guests from current Billboard pop charts, supplementing those acts with host David Steinberg's intellectual sarcasm and shrewd assaults on the Nixon administration. In these four complete episodes, however, the show is clearly dying, and while the collected performances still qualify as outstanding relics from the volatile Woodstock/Altamont time frame, it's amazing to watch Steinberg--now stripped of his merry band of cohosts--exchanging genial wisecracks for a darker, more cynical acceptance that Music Scene was doomed from the start.The music is an eclectic, full-course buffet, from lip-synced performances by Creedence Clearwater Revival to the chart-topping ballads of Neil Diamond and Gordon Lightfoot to the defiantly leftist folk of Pete Seeger and Buffy Sainte- Marie. Unexpected highlights include Joe Cocker's sublime rendition of the Beatles' "Something" and Frankie Laine's emotional delivery of "Lord, You Gave Me a Mountain." Throughout, Steinberg is like a protestor with a lost cause, and by the time he's joined by cohost Groucho Marx for the mesmerizing final show, he's lost all pretense of mainstream propriety, and it's TV history like nothing before or since. A full menu of 21 bonus songs is icing on a bittersweet cake, from one-hit-wonders Zager & Evans ("In the Year 2525") to an impassioned "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" by Janis Joplin, whose own fate would soon echo that of this remarkable, short-lived TV show. --Jeff Shannon
Music Scene - The Best of 1969-70
Amazon Price: List Price: By: Mpi Home Video Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $89.99 |
Buy at Amazon.com |
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Editorial Review:
A ratings disaster when it premiered on the ABC network on September 22, 1969 (and lasting a mere 16 weeks before cancellation), Music Scene now stands as a sublime time capsule of the "flower power" era. Although it was smartly conceived by the hipper-than-average producers of the controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the show was riskily scheduled opposite ratings juggernauts Gunsmoke and Laugh-In, and its fate was sealed. Now, with the passage of decades, these shows display a laudable effort to lure serious rock music into the pop-cultural mainstream--there were few if any opportunities for these acts to gain prime-time TV exposure, so it wasn't unusual to find Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young colliding on the guest list with bubble-gum pop stars like Bobby Sherman and MOR crooners like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.Struggling to bridge the generation gap, host comedian David Steinberg--with a group of five regular cohosts including Lily Tomlin and occasional guest hosts--is a well-chosen mouthpiece for Hollywood's anti-Nixon liberalism, able to distinguish the important (Joe Cocker, Richie Havens) from the ridiculous (the nonexistent Archies and their #1 hit "Sugar Sugar" are duly dismissed). This Volume 1 DVD offers four complete shows, combining sociopolitical comedy with a potpourri of music (either live or lip-synched) selected each week from Billboard magazine's Top 100 pop, rock, country, and soul charts. An additional 21 bonus performances are packed onto side B, along with Music Scene promo spots featuring the Rolling Stones. All in all, this may be one of the best DVDs to showcase nostalgic TV in a meaningful and entertaining way, by rescuing a short-lived series from oblivion to remind us of the very best (and not-so-best) that American pop culture had to offer during the height of the Vietnam War. --Jeff Shannon
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