Separated at birth?

Well shrink my mini-dress and colour me violet, if Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel isn’t the twin brother of Jeff Beck then I’m Mary Quant! But oops, I’m getting distracted…

Riding the blues/rock coattails of the Rolling Stones, a bunch of English white kids calling themselves the Yardbirds burst onto the British music scene back in 1963, and through the years counted three very major guitarists within their line-up – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Staunchly anti-pop, they still managed to pump out the odd catchy little classic - For Your Love, Heart Full of Soul, Shapes of Things to Come, Over and Under Sideways Down etc – all of which feature in some way within this brief documentary.

Through a collection of television and other live appearances – most of which are incomplete or regularly interrupted – as well as interview segments with all the surviving members (singer Keith Relf passed away in 1976), the story of the Yardbirds’ five years together is told in reasonable detail from those who experienced it. From whinging about the rigours of touring, to whining about Blow Up - the film they featured prominently in that went on to become some sort of frozen moment snapshot (heehee) of the ‘60s for many - to moaning about their sound becoming too commercial, this offers a perfunctory history of the band which, while only marginally engaging for the casual music-doco aficionado, will have fans of the many incarnations of the band hanging on every syllable. Even if, sadly, when discussing amplifiers Mr Beck doesn’t mention whether they go up to “e-lev-en�…

Historical footage, in a documentary put together back in 1992. As such anybody reading this should have a pretty good idea what to expect in the quality stakes – not much of it. In all fairness some of the ‘60s footage scrubs up fairly well, but not surprisingly the massive grab bag of sources utilised never throws up anything resembling sharp, detailed or well-saturated vision. Add to all this the fact that we have here an NTSC presentation, and...

When it comes to the sound, well, there’s no great magical aural trip in store. The audio is presented in Linear PCM stereo, although the majority of the source material is quite resolutely mono and just lobbed out of the left and right speakers for the sake of it. Much the same caveats apply as with the video presentation – some music sounds OK, some sounds utterly shitful, but at least audio synch is essentially on the money.

“Perfunctory� is usually not the sort of word you’ll see appearing twice in the one review, however as far as describing this disc’s presentation it’s the best concoction of letters forming an English word available, so anybody reading this gets to thrill to it’s multi-syllabic beauty a second time. After all, something associated with this release has to be vaguely enticing, for the static menu is simply a photo and a list of chapter stops, and the only option other than to play the blessed thing is to select English subtitles.

If you’re a diehard devotee of this “most blueswailing band� then you’ll be in your element with this skeletal release (even the title is devoid of any thought), otherwise for a much more entertaining rockumentary pop This is Spinal Tap in the player. After all it has Dobly…