However, today proved that statement wrong. The first disc of this insipid set was a bootleg in it's worst form. I'm all for the fan trading of rare/live/unreleased stuff that's out there, as are many bands. When it gets to selling these items, that's where I become a little disgusted. (Aside from the people out there who only charge their cost for the disc/case/packing, that's completely fair.) However, the people who assembled this, as well as the people selling it, should be disgusted with themselves. I purchased this, at a legitimate record store (albeit a Mom and Pop shop, not a chain.) and it was with the legitimate legal releases. I buy it, get it home, and the two discs both have a plain white top. (That is no label, no printing, no NOTHING, save for a 1 and a 2 handwritten on the inside ring to differentiate each disc.) It was at this point that I became aware that I had purchased a bootleg. (And for $30.00 no less.) I put the first disc in my Mac laptop and after spinning it for about 30 seconds, it spit it out. I was concerned it was a bad disc, and tried it in my regular DVD player. After about 15 seconds it became clear what I had. It was a bootleg of the excellent Gram Parsons documentary DVD Fallen Angel with German subtitles. And to add to the pitiful bootleg quality of the disc, it was zoomed in to eliminate the widescreen format of the original, thus smooshing the image and cutting off the edges of the closed captioning. I honestly only watched about 10 minutes, and it was EXACTLY the same as the legitimate release. I was so pissed off that I stopped it at that point, so I have no idea if it has material that wasn't released on the US release of Fallen Angel or if it's the exact same show. Bootlegging an already available commercial product and then selling it is not only disgusting, but it's also COMPLETELY illegal. It's things like this that give the trading community a bad view in the eyes of the studios/labels/artists/etc.
At this point, I put in the second disc. And it was only more disappointing, if you can imagine that. The disc starts with a brief history of Gram's heroes and small clips of their music, followed by his cover. Then it proceeds to show a photo/video montage to some of the lyrics of Return Of The Grievous Angel while the song plays. The program is narrated by a disc jockey from Florida who introduces himself at this point, and goes on to talk about a GP fan club and does a montage of footage from Las Vegas casinos, circa the late '70s or early '80s to the music of Sin City. The sound quality was awful, the video quality pitiful, and rates at a 3 out of 10 for me, based on the 10 minutes of this I was able to handle. There's allegedly footage of Gram performing later on in the film, but between the pitiful quality of the film and sound, and the unlikelihood that it was actually there, I decided to stop at this point.
Both discs (at least in my set) are lacking in a menu or chapters, making the only way to skip through the disc the scan forward/scan backward settings on my DVD remote, making it not only annoying but also not practice to watch part of these and come back to the point where you left off.
I wanted these to be good so bad that I guess it's my fault for falling for them. The only information on the back of the package was a biography of Gram. The front offered the tag "Two complete documentaries!"
I give it 0 out of 5.
Also, to complete my warning against wasting your money, time, effort, blank discs, or anything else on this worthless piece of junk, here's the cover art:
(note: This is not a copy from my actual copy, but rather a picture I found online.)
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