For Those About To Rock: Monsters of Moscow

publisher

impulse buy

Warner Bros.
Produced by Curt Marvis

This concert video was originally put together in 1992 to document and celebrate one of the biggest landmark concerts in rock history, which took place the previous year in Moscow, Russia. A five band line-up featuring headliners AC/DC plus a supporting cast of Metallica, The Black Crowes, Pantera and local band E.S.T. was put together to celebrate the end of communism and stage the country’s first ever rock concert.

Unfortunately, as good as the live footage is, the music is secondary to the political messages and “documentary” style footage and interviews focusing heavily on the violence between the heavy-handed Russian police and military and the over-excited fans. Not only is the music constantly interrupted for long periods of time by backstage scenes, handy-cam shots of crowd violence and other such footage which would understandably deserve it’s place in a documentary about the concert, but not in the concert itself, but the editing is the quick-fire MTV-style stuff that often single-handedly ruins a live recording, each band’s set is incomplete, and the chapter points do not split music from additional scenes. Each chapter includes a complete song, but it’s often somewhere in the middle of everything else. And for the duration of each track, the camera isn’t even focusing on the band the whole time. Even then, when the band are playing, we’re still watching cut-scenes of crowd and police/army violence.

It’s not until the four songs from AC/DC that each chapter begins at the start of each song, by which time the viewer is either far too bored to care, or has long since given up and put in a real music DVD, because that’s what they sat down to watch in the first place. This is a documentary disguised as a music DVD and is likely to satisfy absolutely no one.

If Warners actually released the complete set by each of the main four bands on separate DVDs, uninterrupted, they’d sell thousands upon thousands of copies of each. They’ll be lucky if they sell hundreds of this. Even if they’d made a live video that was highlights of the show (which is exactly what the back cover suggests this is) and made a 30-odd-minute documentary as a bonus feature it would have at least been on its way to being a decent DVD, but that’s not the case. This is simply a straight copy of the original over-political VHS edition, offering nothing new and not correcting the original mistakes (including the misspelling of The Black Crowes’ Stare It Cold as “Store It Cold” on the back cover).

I’m a big advocate of the phrase “do it properly or don’t do it at all”. This hasn’t been done properly. What should have been an amazing rock DVD has been destroyed by poor editing and a far-too-heavy focus on political and social issues. Of course the issues before, during and after this historic event should not be ignored or forgotten, but if you’re going to make a documentary, make a documentary. If you’re going to make a live rock video, make a live rock video. Don’t mix the two, because you end up with this unwatchable mess.

“ music constantly interrupted ”

Tracklist:
E.S.T. Bully
Pantera Cowboys From Hell / Primal Concrete Sledge / Psycho Holiday
The Black Crowes Stare It Cold / Rainy Day Woman
Metallica Enter Sandman / Creeping Death / Fade To Black
AC/DC Back In Black / Highway To Hell / Whole Lotta Rosie / For Those About To Rock

Written by Andy Lye
More: Hard Rock, Live DVDs, Thrash Metal, AC/DC, E.S.T., Metallica, Pantera, The Black Crowes