The Velvet Forum

Blank Generation/Dancing Barefoot [dvd double bill]

http://www.demonoid.me/files/details/2160621/1368261/

this is an amazing disjointed,wonderful film.no attempt to sync the on screen action to the sound track..leaves a feeling of having just spent a week at CBGB with no sleep..

The Heartbreakers footage is with Richard Hell, for those interested. Just a shame the registrations are closed as this site rejected me after a few weeks.

dial4 wrote:The Heartbreakers footage is with Richard Hell, for those interested. Just a shame the registrations are closed as this site rejected me after a few weeks.

Thanks for the tip.....actually I've been seaching this film for time ago,looks quite great at first glimpse ,just had seen a few excerpts !!

I am downloading it now...but it doesn't look too promising. From Amazon:

Totally thrilled when I got word that Amos Poe's much-touted documentary of the '70s NY punk scene was going to be re-released on DVD (and as a "twofer" with the documentary "Dancin' Barefoot"), I ordered it the first chance I got (read: when I had the money). It was a nice surprise when it turned up on my doorstep Friday, and just having gotten off of work, I made a cup of coffee and sat down to check it out.

Boy, was I ever duped. First off, it's not much of a documentary at all. "Documentary" in this case is a decided misnomer -(...), if Blank Generation qualifies as a documentary, "documentary" might as well become a four letter word. Given, it's a genuine delight to get to see some old footage of Television and the Ramones (and even of less touted bands like the Shirts), but what good is it when there's no one talking throughout the whole thing? The only audio is some over-dubbed stuff of medium to (...) poor quality, and while it's obvious that sometimes the song heard is the same as the one performed, the discrepancy between what's going on for the eyes and what's happening for the ears is positively annoying. Take, for instance, the sequence with Television playing "Little Johnny Jewel": the audio is that of the studio cut (yes, the single version), while the footage shown is (obviously, if you watch Tom Verlaines hands and also his face for a little lip-reading) of them playing that song live, albeit at a quicker tempo. Not too bad...until suddenly the audio cuts into a live version of "Oh Mi Amore" and it's not at all clear whether that song was being played in the footage at that time. THEN it proceeds to cut back to the last verse of "Little Johnny Jewel", AGAIN from the single. As if that's not bad enough, the camera work is sheer (...) . Lots of zoomy closeups render the footage totally useless.

As if that's not bad enough, "Dancin' Barefoot" isn't so much about the doings of the Patti Smith group as it is people like Chris Stein and Debby Harry talking about how great a guy Ivan Kral was, along with some haphazard recycling of footage from "Blank Generation". Worse yet, it's not even interesting. Ivan Kral is made out to be the guy who made the Patti Smith Group into a real rock-and-roll outfit, apparently because he looked the part, blah blah blah...

I apologize if this review sounds like a total trashing. Given, it's very cool to see some rare footage, but in the end, as a whole, this twofer DVD is a waste of time and money. Unless you've got a projector that lets you display video output (in this case, your DVD player's output) on a large screen or wall and need some weird footage to put up during some theme party, or are a completist collector of seventies punk-related material...save your money, alright?