Home :: DVD :: Music Video & Concerts :: Rock & Roll  

Biography
Blues
Classic Rock
Concerts
Country
Documentary
DVD Singles
General
Hard Rock & Metal
Jazz
New Age
Other Music
Pop
Rap & Hip-Hop
Rock & Roll

Series
World Music
Billy Joel - The Essential Video Collection

Billy Joel - The Essential Video Collection

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Billy's video history.
Review: (...)These videos help to chronicle that career, but they also show the maturation of an artist alongside an artform. The crude early videos juxtapose with the slick look of the later ones. Take special note of the videos circa "An Innocent Man," where Billy decides to go all out on the over-produced spectacle.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: why the complaints???
Review: basically this DVD is a repackaging of the two VHS video albums that billy released after the greatest hits in 1987 (only exception being the live version of "piano man". what this does is give us GREAT extras - the video for "she's right on time" has been sought after by fans for years; quite frankly i'm pleased and shocked that it was included. only a few are missing, notably the other promos from songs in the attic... but this is more than we had. anything that came after this can be found on the greatest hits 3 DVD. frankly, i prefer this stuff to the later stuff.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: why the complaints???
Review: basically this DVD is a repackaging of the two VHS video albums that billy released after the greatest hits in 1987 (only exception being the live version of "piano man". what this does is give us GREAT extras - the video for "she's right on time" has been sought after by fans for years; quite frankly i'm pleased and shocked that it was included. only a few are missing, notably the other promos from songs in the attic... but this is more than we had. anything that came after this can be found on the greatest hits 3 DVD. frankly, i prefer this stuff to the later stuff.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good but not Great!
Review: Billy Joel is one of the best performers of all time and this DVD presents a variety of his music videos for that reason. Unlike the past two DVD's "Yankee Stadium" and "Greatest Hits III" there are no lyrics to these videos. One thing I was dissapointed in was that for Piano Man, they decided to add the Yankee Stadium version to the DVD(which I already bought), not adding instead the original Black & White music video he made singing in a bar. I was really dissapointed there, but you can't go wrong with this DVD for all of his great songs. Lastly, considering the age of the videos some of them are not top quality but instead they give I guess a feeling of the time in when he made them.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good but not Great!
Review: Billy Joel is one of the best performers of all time and this DVD presents a variety of his music videos for that reason. Unlike the past two DVD's "Yankee Stadium" and "Greatest Hits III" there are no lyrics to these videos. One thing I was dissapointed in was that for Piano Man, they decided to add the Yankee Stadium version to the DVD(which I already bought), not adding instead the original Black & White music video he made singing in a bar. I was really dissapointed there, but you can't go wrong with this DVD for all of his great songs. Lastly, considering the age of the videos some of them are not top quality but instead they give I guess a feeling of the time in when he made them.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice DVD. Fun Videos
Review: Billy made some of the most original videos of the 80's and they're all here. My favorite is the "Rube Goldbergian" SHE'S RIGHT ON TIME.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice DVD. Fun Videos
Review: Billy made some of the most original videos of the 80's and they're all here. My favorite is the "Rube Goldbergian" SHE'S RIGHT ON TIME.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: True 5.1 Dolby Digital Sound Mix!
Review: Few DVD music video collections feature a 5.1 Dolby Digital sound mix, and the ones that do are usually just standard stereo with a little echo thrown on to the rear speaker channels. So I was shocked to find that nearly all of the tracks on "The Billy Joel Collection" were remixed in true 5.1 sound.

According to the DVD case, the man responsible is Thom Cadley. I have no idea who he is -- he's not a relative or a friend or a friend of a friend -- but I feel moved to give him kudos for a job well done. Some purists might not like hearing certain instruments and background vocals isolated on the rear speakers (and in one instance I was annoyed by an isolated tom overdub that should've been mixed in with the rest of the drum track), but if they don't like it, they can always choose the PCM stereo mix.

I'm not a tremendous Billy Joel fan, but I like many of his big hits and even the songs that annoy me bring back memories of the time when they were omnipresent on the airwaves. So I was a bit chagrined to find that they failed to include the video for "We Didn't Start the Fire." I wonder if Joel himself has grown to dislike this song.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Truth In Advertising
Review: For a Billy Joel fan, this really is an essential video collection. It contains all of the videos found in both "Billy Joel: The Video Album, Volume I" and "The Video Album, Volume II." The only difference I detected was the inclusion of the live recording of "Piano Man" from the Yankee stadium concert, instead of the video filmed in a piano bar used in Volume I. My favorite concept video is "Tell Her About It," in which Billy is the lead singer of BJ And The Affordables performing on the Ed Sullivan show. Will Jordan does a great Ed Sullivan impersonation. Rodney Dangerfield makes a comedic cameo appearance at the beginning and end of the video. This collection also includes 4 previously unavailable videos, my favorite being the humorous "She's Right On Time." In addition, there's a complete discography with a nice feature. When you click on an album, in addition to listing all of the song titles, it plays a brief snippet of one of the songs. This collection does stop short of including the later videos found in "Greatest Hits, Volume III: The Video." That's not so much a complaint as it is a testament to how many hits Billy Joel has had.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Truth In Advertising
Review: For a Billy Joel fan, this really is an essential video collection. It contains all of the videos found in both "Billy Joel: The Video Album, Volume I" and "The Video Album, Volume II." The only difference I detected was the inclusion of the live recording of "Piano Man" from the Yankee stadium concert, instead of the video filmed in a piano bar used in Volume I. My favorite concept video is "Tell Her About It," in which Billy is the lead singer of BJ And The Affordables performing on the Ed Sullivan show. Will Jordan does a great Ed Sullivan impersonation. Rodney Dangerfield makes a comedic cameo appearance at the beginning and end of the video. This collection also includes 4 previously unavailable videos, my favorite being the humorous "She's Right On Time." In addition, there's a complete discography with a nice feature. When you click on an album, in addition to listing all of the song titles, it plays a brief snippet of one of the songs. This collection does stop short of including the later videos found in "Greatest Hits, Volume III: The Video." That's not so much a complaint as it is a testament to how many hits Billy Joel has had.


<< 1 2 3 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates