CAVEAT FUCKIN' EMPTOR -- 'Video Collection: Montreal TV 1994,' is not really a compilation of actual VIDEOS as the title would have you believe. Instead, this is a hodgepodge of music video FRAGMENTS that are mostly seen during the course of a Musique Plus documentary on the history of Pink Floyd (and solemnly brought to you by Labatt's Ice, as we are told time and time again by an unhappy talking beer bottle with an evil Gallic accent). Alongside of this documentary, we are shown some very dated interview clips, a few local news concert reports, and a gaggle of raving fools babbling endlessly en Francais.

Indeed, if you despise the sound of the French language, then 'Video Collection: Montreal ...' is definitely not a VOIO you'll ever want to own. Strung together from multiple French-language broadcasts covering Pink Floyd's rapturously-received stopover at what the rest of the world calls Olympic Stadium, this horrendously-edited tape is rich with endlessly repeated clips of the same two minutes of "What Do You Want From Me" and "Learning To Fly" from the evening's concert, a handful of videos shown in their full form (nearly all of them sourced from 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' - ha ha ha), and oceans of interminable screen time between these clips showing VeeJay Phillipe Fehmiu in cod-hippie street gear yapping and gesticulating a lot while interviewing the overwhelmingly hirsute and tie-dyed crowd waiting to get into Olympic Stadium. Only one of the local news wrap-ups shown on this tape is in English and all of these reposts show the same pieces from that night's performances of "Learning To Fly" and "What Do You Want From Me" that we've seen a dozen times by this point anyway. Ah well, I suppose these repeated live shots at least provide an oh-so-brief respite from the nonstop "les fantastique! les marvelooos!" pre-and-post-concert stroke fest that dominates the rest of the proceedings.

A sample of what to expect when the camera cuts to VJ Fehmiu and company ...

(live clip of "What Do You Want From Me" from that evening)

FEHMIU -- "Ahhh! Bonjour! Oui! Oui! Blahn lingerie mare d'escargot! Es Peenk Floid halflahn za blah largesse le bon soir friccion d'Montreal!"

GROUP OF FANS -- "LE WAAAAAAAAHHH!! PEENK FLOID!!! Le hammerre!! Le hammerre!!"

FEHMIU -- "Hahhahhah. Les blonde est punque eau d' toilette chardonneau amore 'Zee Wall' no?"

GROUP OF FANS -- "LE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

FEHMIU -- "Et nous le cinematique le garamonde de fromage! Moi! Bo fwah! Est 'Lairnang Toh Flah'!!"

(promo clip of "Learning To Fly")

FEHMIU -- "Ahh, chapeau! Oui oui! Le peeg est t'amor rrrrrrraison en el publique! A la carte!!"

GROUP OF FANS -- "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! PEENK FLOYD!!! La jette! OUI DOHN NEENA ED-YOU-CAH-CEE-YOAN!!"

FEHMIU -- "Hah hah hah. Les yeaux sans visage. A'von de'mure David Geelmore essahn blancmange eh Peenk Floid za fla le las les mans!! Est de 'Les Pooches Del Guerre!'"

(video for live "The Dogs Of War" from 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder')

FEHMIU -- "Les flan del mare, la femme d'argent! Les sier bwafohn PEEENK FLOYD!!!"

FAN -- "YAAAAAAAAHHHH. Oui oui! PEEENK FLOID!! Le fahn paflahn le arc 'Dark Side Of The Moon' havahr chateau arc de triomphe! Pour d'arby raison d'etre!"

ANOTHER FAN -- "Oui oui! Les croissant! Les yeaux! Carte blanche! Beau coup! Mua mare le frizzon 'Monet' y 'Coomftably Noomb' en 'Zhine Ohn You Clazee Diamohn' est la finne francais!"

FEHMIU - "Oui oui! Les parlez sol cest pas at mua bois blanc banorr Peeenk Floid blah mahn blah en Stade Olympique wahm blahm mer fwa dahm vous!!"

(repeated live clip of "What Do You Want From Me" from that evening, etc. etc.)

Getting the picture yet? Am I a sicko fanboy son of a bitch for sitting through this more than once or what?

If all of this weren't enough to scare you away, I could mention all of the mislabeled video clips scattered merrily about - but that's more of a background thing compared to the constant glitches that continually plague the sound playback here. Apparently, most of this collection plays back in mono, which would be perfectly acceptable if it weren't for the sound frequently "clipping" as the tape attempts to switch the sound over to stereo for a half-second to a second at a time every half-minute or so. As you might well imagine, this gets incredibly annoying very quickly.

Perhaps the most grating aspect of this compilation is the total lack of care that went into its creation. Sure, the slapped-together-with-paste-and-blue-Xerox-paper styled artwork is a bit iffy on it's own right, but even that is a secondary concern to the contents of the tape itself. In *that* department, one definitely gets the impression that whoever taped this footage did so while they were channel-surfing elsewhere (or perhaps even out for the night) and hardly anything at all was done to make the material presentable afterwards ... like, say, editing out the fucking commercials / videos that have no business being on here anyway. At one point, we get to see the final minute of Voivod's "Astronomy Domine" video, which is at least has something to do with Pink Floyd and is therefore forgivable in it's inclusion - which is FAR more than can be said about the interview with Scott Weiland that starts this entire compilation off in the first place (not to mention the footage of Tim fucking McGraw that follows), and the handful of full length videos shown later in the program from the likes of Cracker, Rush, US3 and some amazingly awful Franco-Canuck rapper named Iam (I think it was during Miseur Iam's video that I finally broke down and started mumbling incoherently to myself).

I guess that if I were to think of one thing even remotely redeeming about this awful compilation, it'd have to be the interview footage scattered liberally about the first half of its running time. We get a VERY brief snippet or two of Roger Waters chatting rather snootily with reporters near the Berlin Wall in 1990, a brief series of chat bites with David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright in 1994 that are so bland that they're repeated twice in ten minutes, a snip of Gilmour and Mason in their fleshy 1987 forms, a helpfully French-subtitled interview with a leather jacket-clad Gilmour from March, 1984 (the most interesting by default of all the interviews in that dear ol' Dave discusses 'The Final Cut,' his views on death, and gives a dismissive commentary on badly done videos during this chat is especially amusing considering the brightly colored turd he was readying to drop on humankind a few weeks later).

Gah. No. Forget it. The interview footage is nowhere *near* entertaining enough to make the rest of this shit worth sitting through. Perhaps even more so than the hated 'Video Anthology 3,' 'Video Collection: Montreal TV 1994' is the rankest, most revolting hunk of worm-ridden monkeyshit that I've *ever* purchased in the name of Pink Floyd fandom.

Fin.