Soleilmoon
Soleilmoon's new DVD release of 1998's Live at La Luna VHS adds absolutely nothing to the original release, sharing the same set list and running time, and boasting absolutely zero extras. Most disappointingly, the DVD does not even have chapter stops, making it impossible to cue forward or back at anything more than double speed. Would it have killed Soleilmoon to put some chapter stops between songs? It certainly would have made this DVD a slightly more attractive premise, especially for those who didn't spring for the VHS the first time around. Live at La Luna documents a 1997 performance at La Luna in Portland, Oregon: one of many stops on the Pink Dots' North American tour behind the Hallway of the Gods album. Hallway represents one of the most accessible, straight-ahead psych-rock albums the band ever recorded, and as the set list is drawn mostly from that album, these shows must have seemed pretty alienating to the average esoteric music fan, or even to the many shapes and sizes of goths that always seem to find their way to Dots shows. For diehard fans of the band, the Dots throw in a few choice selections from the back catalog: "Love in a Plain Brown Envelope" from Faces in the Fire, "City of Needles" from Shadow Weaver, and the ubiquitous "Hellsville" from the band's unequalled masterpiece Crushed Velvet Apocalypse. Over the 15 or so Pink Dots concerts I've seen over the years, this particular show does not strike me as particularly remarkable in any sense. Rather, it seems fairly workmanlike, the Dots churning out an accomplished, if predictable set of Hallway-era jazzy prog-rock numbers to a mostly sedate audience wondering what happened to all the scary shit. It's nice to see ex-Dot Ryan Moore on bass and drums, but I'm wondering why Soleilmoon couldn't have included his ace opening set as Twilight Circus Dub Sound System on the DVD, which I remember clearly from this tour. Slightly more youthful versions of Niels van Hoorn, Edward Ka-Spel and Silverman are in fine form, with the short-lived Atwyn on guitar. The concert was captured with three cameras, which are edited and cross-faded together in a mostly unobtrusive manner which should please most Pink Dots fans who can't wait until the next bi-monthly tour of the Pink Dots to get their live fix. Although at only 60 minutes, it does seem that there are much better concerts with long encores that would have made a preferable live document. In fact, the end of the DVD appears to cut off the encore, with the crowd still clapping and cheering as the Dots exit the stage, presumably to return. Why don't we get to see their encore? What exactly is the point of this DVD, other than another way to cash in on the compulsions of obsessive Dots collectors? I anxiously await proper documentation of the Dots on stage, because Live at La Luna ain't it.