MUSICDVDs

Latest music DVDs reviewed

50 CENT

Real Money Chrome Dreams
**

With fellow G Unit gobshite Lloyd Banks setting all manner of sales records Stateside for his début album, it seems that everything 50 "Fiddy" Cent touches turns to a gold or platinum disc. Hence, no doubt, why the makers of Real Money have foisted this DVD onto an unsuspecting public. Featuring in-depth interviews with various celebs (Ed Lover and Mr Cheeks come on like hip-hop's answer to Big Brother contestants from a couple of years ago) and people who knew Fiddy when he was just a muscular hood on the street, as well as a couple of live splashes and freestyles, it's an interesting if muddled look at one of hip-hop's potentially fascinating characters. It seems that the rapper's NYPD file still remains the best untold 50 Cent story of all. www.50cent.com - Jim Carroll

Live from Loreley EMI
**

There are too many bands languishing in the footnotes of rock that forged successful careers by aping the music and stylisms of other, better, more successful acts. Marillion formed in the early 1980s as a direct result of being profoundly influenced by Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. This live concert DVD ladles on the prog-rock conceits, notably through the stage theatrics of frontman Fish, aka Derek William Dick, and several songs that seriously mimic the Genesis blueprint of swirling time signatures and Lear-like lyrical conundrums. But there is at least one great pop song that just about swings it around: Kayleigh. Recorded in 1987 in Germany in front of 18,000 adoring fans, latterday Marillion buffs might want to give this a miss. Diehard nutters, however (and there are quite a few, believe me), will surely lap it up. www.marillion.com - Tony Clayton-Lea

Messin' with The Blues - Live at Montreux Jazz Festival, 1974 Classic Pictures
****

Resting in the vaults for three decades because of contractual wrangles at Chess Records, this is a landmark show. It finds the grand old man of Chicago blues reunited with guitarist Buddy Guy and harmonica player Junior Wells - two of the musicians he spotted in the 1950s and helped develop into major talents - playing to a European audience who appreciated them in ways American crowds never did. And, oddly, you have Bill Wyman to thank for its release. His thumbprint is found right across the disc. A blues devotee, Wyman was the bassist in Waters's Montreux band, and he interviews Guy and Waters's son Big Bill Morganfield for DVD extras. The performance is all too brief, though. Waters appears for just four songs, really opening up on Mannish Boy and an amazing Got My Mojo Workin' (wait for his peculiar soul chicken dance at the end of the set). And while you can't really label Wells and Guy's solo spots as filler, it would have been great to see more of the man whose influence on the development of rock 'n' roll can't be underestimated. www.classicpictures.co.uk - Paul McNamee