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The Plasmatics

Plasmatics - Live! Rod Swenson's Lost Tapes 1978-81 DVD

Review by Gary Hill

Don't expect to find long concert clips here. Instead, we get a collection of single song pieces. This footage had been sitting unreleased for years until it was recently discovered. This is really a treasure trove of lost Plasmatics stuff. 

Since this material was forgotten, it wasn't treated all that well. For that reason, there is some degradation here. Add that to the fact that a lot of punk video wasn't great at the time, and the video quality of the period isn't up to modern standards, and you'll understand that this isn't the best quality. The clips vary in terms of video quality from one to the next. No matter the video or audio quality, though, the performance really makes up for any short-comings. This band was purely intense and on fire. The song titles are all included at the beginning of the clips.

In addition to the live clips, we get a video that was made while they were doing a photo shoot for one of their album covers. All in all, this is a great set of lost videos. I find it fascinating how the band's sound seemed to move from pure punk toward more metal music as time went on. Given that there is little Plasmatics video available, this is highly recommended.

 

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2017  Volume 4 at lulu.com/strangesound.

 
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