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Jazz - A Film by Ken Burns
: essential video:Accompanied by a menagerie of products, Ken Burns's expansive 10-episode paean, Jazz, completes his trilogy on American culture, following The Civil War and Baseball. Spanning more than 19 hours, Jazz is, of course, about a lot more than what many have called America's classical music--especially in episodes 1 through 7. It's here that Burns unearths precious visual images of jazz musicians and hangs historical narratives around the music with convincing authority. Time can stand still as images ...
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Elvis - The Concert Collection ('68 Comeback Special, One Night with You, Aloha from Hawaii)
: essential video:Elvis Presley's performing career, punctuated by its extra-musical achievement as the first global satellite broadcast devoted to a single entertainer. Both the broadcast and its companion album captured the King in his most grandiose persona, fueled by Hollywood scale and Vegas glitz, as a caped pop superhero. He may have looked trim, but posthumous accounts (especially Peter Guralnick's Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, the second volume in his definitive biography) confirm what a second look ...
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Dreamtime: Live at Lyceum
: essential video:Elvis Presley's performing career, punctuated by its extra-musical achievement as the first global satellite broadcast devoted to a single entertainer. Both the broadcast and its companion album captured the King in his most grandiose persona, fueled by Hollywood scale and Vegas glitz, as a caped pop superhero. He may have looked trim, but posthumous accounts (especially Peter Guralnick's Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, the second volume in his definitive biography) confirm what a second look ...
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Hullabaloo 1-4
: :The short-lived (1965-66) Shindig! knockoff Hullabaloo epitomizes the often-faltering steps U.S. network television made to keep up with the explosion of rock & roll culture in the wake of Beatlemania. Sometimes inspired, sometimes silly (definitely the latter with hosts and guests like Jerry Lewis, Michael Landon, Freddie and the Dreamers, and Vikki Carr), seven episodes plus bonus performances fill this DVD compilation of previous VHS releases. Over its four and a half hours, in black-and-white and color, true rockers ...
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Hullabaloo 5-8
: :Spanning 14 months from February 1965 to early April 1966, this second DVD compilation of the short-lived NBC pop-music series Hullabaloo is fascinating more as an ethereal glimpse of mid-'60s pop trends than a record of enduring music. The majority of these performers (Chad & Jeremy, Leslie Gore, Barry McGuire) were enjoying their relatively brief time in the spotlight, so they're little more than time-capsule curiosities to anyone born after these shows were originally broadcast. The format was so ...
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From a Whisper to a Scream - The Living History of Irish Rock
: :The history of rock & roll in Ireland is presented in suitably lively fashion in a series produced by RTÉ, Ireland's national television network. In these first three installments from the series (each an hour long), the story advances from the 1950s to the early 1980s, with archival footage providing a glimpse of what all the excitement was about. The first stirrings of rock music in Ireland took the form of 'show bands,' hugely popular ensembles that gave many ...
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Perry Como - Collector's Edition, Vols. 1 & 2
: :The history of rock & roll in Ireland is presented in suitably lively fashion in a series produced by RTÉ, Ireland's national television network. In these first three installments from the series (each an hour long), the story advances from the 1950s to the early 1980s, with archival footage providing a glimpse of what all the excitement was about. The first stirrings of rock music in Ireland took the form of 'show bands,' hugely popular ensembles that gave many ...
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Grateful Dead - The Concerts Gift Set
: :The history of rock & roll in Ireland is presented in suitably lively fashion in a series produced by RTÉ, Ireland's national television network. In these first three installments from the series (each an hour long), the story advances from the 1950s to the early 1980s, with archival footage providing a glimpse of what all the excitement was about. The first stirrings of rock music in Ireland took the form of 'show bands,' hugely popular ensembles that gave many ...
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Roots of Rhythm
: :Latin music has always been a fixture in American popular culture, but its history reflects centuries of change and complexity from diverse sources. Roots of Rhythm, an incredible three-hour film originally shown on PBS in 1997, traces the development of this exciting musical genre, going back 500 years across three continents. Hosted by the famed Caribbean American entertainer Harry Belafonte, the film begins in West Africa, in the villages that ring with the ancestral anthems of sacred Yoruba beats ...
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Elvis - The Great Performances Boxed Set
: essential video:Searching for a real American idol? Well, look no further. Over the course of these three marvelous discs (totaling about 160 minutes and over 40 songs, including repeats), we are nearly overwhelmed by the charm, charisma, and sheer talent that made Elvis Presley so extraordinarily popular and influential. There are songs from television shows (emphasizing the mid-'50s appearances that helped cement his iconic status), concerts, and movies, along with interviews, some revealing (mostly silent) home movies, and ...
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