The Devil's In The Detail Volume 1 (US)

In a world of serenely professional biographical DVD overviews of a group's career, of straightforwardly presented videos complete with commentary, of multi-hour documentaries, there's something to be said for sheer, grotesque sprawl. The method to Tesco Vee's madness won't surprise anyone who's followed his intentionally offensive career to any degree, but The Devil's in the Details, Vol. 1 -- and yes, more volumes are planned -- will completely frustrate anybody looking for an easily digestible ramble through the many incarnations of the Meatmen. Instead, this is an intentionally chaotic presentation covering nearly three hours of randomness, with no clear indexing, a complete lack of chronology, interstitial skits featuring family members, poorly animated stills of ABBA, and, of course, the devil, and much more. Plenty of the humor falls flat, some of the skits can't even be dignified with the phrase "bad taste" in terms of sexual and racial stereotyping, a near-endless Behind the Music parody...and yet, no question about it, there are enough nuggets amid it all to make for prime viewing. The collection of video clips reaching back to the early '80s, including some gloriously grainy public cable rampages and various tour films, will be entertainment enough for some, while even "Centurions of Rome," a video during the band's hair metal days -- featuring a pre-fame Courtney Love at one point -- is a bizarre treat. Even more entertaining are the various snippets of classic commercials for old toys and games -- Vee himself turns out to be quite a collector of such things and random Americana in general, and there's a wonderfully head-spinning couple of clips featuring a quite restrained Vee talking about his hobbies with a local Virginia TV host. The prize of the collection, though, is the first episode of his short-lived late-night 1990s series on MTV, Way USA -- a funny-as-hell celebration of American culture at its trashy best city by city, starting in this case with Baltimore and touching on everything from massive egg dishes to an interview with a perfectly simpatico subject, John Waters. Sure, a more straightforward presentation of the whole series would be handier, but who cares? ~ Ned Raggett|