| U | N | I | C | O | R | N |
A Subjective Appraisal of
Unicorn on Videotape (and Laserdisc)
| Movie | 31 minutes |
|
This one depicts the band looking their most Duran-Duranish kicking out five songs from "Boom" and one from "Panic Attack" in a small club. 24-year old Tamio jumps around like it's a punk show and never lets go of the microphone. Lots of energy, even if it's a bit raw (read: sloppy) in places.
Originally I thought this contained the four MTV-style videos made to promote the "Boom" album. I was wrong, though, and it appears that, with one exception (see Movie 8 below), those videos were never made available commercially. |
| Movie 2 | 59 minutes |
|
The "Hattori" tour. More jumping, though I think TO picks up a guitar once or
twice here. This seems to be individual songs from different shows, and the
variable (and sometimes extreme) letterboxing adds to the lack of cohesion.
Quite a bit more money seems to have been spent on this one, though the time-lapse sequence in the middle that depicts the road crew setting up the stage and all the chairs in the auditorium is filler pure and simple. |
| Movie 2 1/2 | 28 minutes |
|
Seven videos from the "Panic Attack" and "Hattori" era. The legendary
"Daimeiwaku" video is here, wherin a young Mr. Okuda, sporting a fantastically
stiff puff of hair that reminds this reviewer of flash-fried beanthread noodles, vigorously emotes the lead vocal in and around an orchestraful of oblivious and tuxedoed Asian youth bolstered by Ebi and company. The video for "Peke Peke" is also quite funny.
The "Daimeiwaku" video was also released at one point by itself on a ten-inch laserdisc "single." |
| Movie 3 | 81 minutes |
| The "Kedamono no Arashi" tour. Fan-fuckin-tastic. This is probably the best of the bunch. Good, solid playing, the songs have some complexity to them, good staging and camera, not so much jumping. This is drawn half and half from two different concerts. Makes a good tape for the car, except during Abe's traditionally overwrought SuperElvis introduction to "Jinsei-wa Joujou da." |
| Movie 4 | 78 minutes |
|
The "The War Without Stage Manager" tour. Some songs from "Hige to Boin" and
earlier albums. Can't quite put my finger on why this doesn't do as much for me as #3, but it's definitely worth watching.
Some songs in the second half are shot in some kind of anylagraphic 3D process, and as best as I can figure out from studying the insert sheet and experimentation, you're supposed to put some kind of colored or polarized lens over one eye, leaving the other eye unobstructed. I think I got it to work, and I don't think it's worth the trouble. Early versions of the tape and LD apparently came with custom glasses. Not horrible to watch if you don't bother with the eyegear. |
| Movie 5 | 65 minutes |
| The final tour. Footage from two shows on different nights in different towns. One is notably more energetic than the other, but everybody seems tired. If I read my notes correctly, they were doing four shows a night on this tour and were looking forward to breaking up. Anyhow, there's some good music here and substitute drummer Takashi Furuta keeps things moving as only someone who hasn't played the songs from "Hattori" a zillion times can. Compare with Movie 1 or 2 to see what 4 years of wear and tear have done to the now-almost-statesmanlike lead singer/guitarist. No jumping. |
| Movie 5 1/2 | 41 minutes |
|
Seven videos from "Kedamono no Arashi" onwards. Some gems, and lots of
topless white women. The video for "Blues" is argueably better than the song it accompanies, and the samurai-in-the-American-old-west video for "Hige To Boin" has a certain charm.
Like "Daimeiwaku," the video for "Blues" was once available on a ten-inch laserdisc single. |
| Movie 6 & 7 | 236 minutes |
| "The Very Rust of Unicorn" parts one and two. If I really spoke Japanese, I'd be able to tell you how much better this is than "The Beatles Anthology." Even to a Anglomonophone like myself, it's enjoyable, because once I scan past the talking-head interviews that make up about 60% of its running time there's plenty camcorder footage of recording sessions and clips of goofy onstage antics. Major gripe: no song is seen performed in its entriety -- with one sterling exception that make it all worthwhile: a beautiful, crisply shot, and vigorously energetic "Okashi na Futari" from the same Budokan date (though apparently a different showtime) that half of Movie 5 is drawn from. |
| Movie 8 | 58 minutes |
| "The Other Side of Live." Hard to explain, this seems to be songs omitted from the earlier concert videos. It begins with three songs that could have been in Movie, including a rather poorly-sung "Peke Peke," but it does get a lot better from there. The "Risshuu" and "Springman's Theme" from the Budokan show in Movie 5 might just be better than anything the producers chose to actually put in that film (this is the same version of "Risshuu" that appears on the live "Very Rust of" CD). The studio video for "Maybe Blue" is here too (finally!), and the movie finishes with a weird reggae-tempo version of "Yuki-ga Furu Machi" filmed at an outdoor festival of some kind. Maybe this isn't a good single-disc/tape introduction to live Unicorn, but I think I will probably watch this one a lot more than most of the others above, if only because it skips the hits and delivers some more unexpected tracks ("Peter" and "Milk"). |
| Tamio Okuda: Tour "29-30" | 98 minutes |
| An awesome concert film, and the audio track makes a fantastic live-album-in-lieu-of-a-live-album (I actually spun it onto a pair of CDRs at one point so I could carry it around in digital spendor). The track list is mighty-mighty and covers about 70% of Tamio's two studio albums. Halfway through, the whole band comes out and sits on the edge of the stage to do four songs on acoustic instruments. Breathtakingly beautiful. Look for two songs here that aren't on either "29" or "30," one by TO and one -- really excellent, actually -- by the drummer. No complaints about this one at all. |
| Tamio Okuda: Tourdust | 117 minutes |
| A companion piece to the last one, in that Tour 29-30 is all music and this one is everything else you might want to see in a concert film: camcorder footage of Tamio rehearsing the band, Tamio onstage telling jokes between songs, Tamio fishing, Tamio pounding tequila, Tamio turning thirty, etc. In the vein of Very Rust of -- you'll really need to know Japanese to get the most out of it. Thank you Sony for dividing this up into two separate issues, because, as I said, Tour 29-30 makes for good listening as a cassette for the car and it wouldn't if all this stuff was left in. Best moment: TO practicing his fly casting in the dressing room from the point of view of a paper cup set on the floor as a target. |
| Puffy: Run, Puffy, Run! | 38 minutes |
| Nothing like any of the above in quality, and zero new music. Videos for four songs are strung together with some forgettable footage showing the girls trekking across the continental United States from Manhattan to Los Angeles. They steal a dog, cruise in a series of vintage autos, trim a christmas tree in the middle of the desert, explore Vegas, buy gas, etc. Okuda-san appears briefly twice during the "Tokusurukarada" video, but the guitarist who thrashes through the rest of it is a stand-in who can barely figure out how to hold the thing. I think it's the same guy who appears in the facade band with Ami and Yumi when they karaoke on TV shows. |
| -- Dave LaDelfa |
Unicorn Home Page
| Created by Dave LaDelfa | Last updated on 7 January 1997 |