Voivod - Tuttlingen, Germany 11/7/87 aud (DVD)

Voivod are the type of group that makes me think “the emperor has no clothes.” Starting as a thrash group in the 80s, they became the favorites of a lot of underground metal heads for what are apparently unusual and progressive ideas in their music, usually based around their late 80s material like “Nothingface.” This video of the group hails from the (slightly) earlier thrashier period and like a lot of metal bands Voivod don’t translate all that well to the live setting. Most of the time I was trying to ascertain if there was any sort of competence or chemistry in the work, for the most part it sounded like four musicians doing their own thing. The nasally guitar tones are way too weak to cut through the rhythm section or the caterwauling vocals and it leaves the whole thing sounding like an aural catastrophe, anarchic in a way that’s a lot more like punk than metal.

Caravan, Hatfield & The North, National Health - “Canterbury Collection” (DVD)

Very short collection of what appears to be the extant video sources of these three “Canterbury” groups, basically the German and British television performances. The Caravan clips, assumedly from Beat Club, are a bit beat up to derive much enjoyment from (”Golf Girl” is a kind of doofy ditty, better in its flow on the album than as a snapshot of the group). The Paris Theatre Hatfield clips I’ve seen before and they’re worth every second, in fact I’m not sure Hatfield were around long enough to have a bad period. They demonstrate pretty soundly that they were one of the great groups of the era, navigating complexity as if it was intuitive. And I believe it’s the Whistle Stop clip for the National Health from the second album, which is the band in their prime. The main emotion from watching this group of videos is a yearning for more, as these are not only highlights of the Canterbury stable but of progressive rock as an entirety.