One of the oldest Pink Floyd VOIOs in circulation (I picked up a copy at a record show in the summer of 1990), the original one-cassette edition of 'Video Anthology' marked the first time ever that most of this archival material became available in conveniently-assembled form to the underground collectors market. Personally, stumbling across this compilation was kind of like discovering the Holy Grail (or at least version 1.0, heh) -- since I had absolutely no grasp whatsoever of what Pink Floyd performances were like back in the band's early days, this collection provided a key to better understanding the band that all of the bios and magazine articles (and their mysteriously vague concert photos) in the world simply couldn't provide.

Despite it's generally good picture and sound quality, the major drawback to the original 'Video Anthology' was that it lacked *any* band footage post-1983 despite having been compiled late enough in the game to use any of the 'Momentary Lapse Of Reason' videos that were shown on MTV in 1987 and later (making this even more glaring was the inclusion of videos obviously sourced from MTV in the spring of 1988). This problem was further exacerbated after the band re-emerged from hibernation in 1994 to a veritable blizzard of media coverage -- suddenly, 'Video Anthology' was 11 years out of date and desperately in need of an overhaul. Furthermore, a wealth of older archival material was constantly being unearthed from various fan archives and television presentations, further necessitating either an additional volume to be compiled and released or a complete overhaul of the first edition.

What ended up happening in 1995 was a combination of both solutions -- the original tape was re-edited and at the same time another (expanded) version appeared under the title of 'Pink Floyd Video Anthology Volumes 1-2.' Featuring a cornucopia of newly-minted videos, a few promotional adverts, some live footage covering both the 'Momentary Lapse Of Reason' and 'Division Bell' albums, and a serving of older footage pre-dating 'The Dark Side Of The Moon,' the updated collections quickly became the most desirable option for a collector to obtain the newer footage circulating around the collector's networks.

With the Floyd lapsing back into stasis after the middle of 1995, what happened next was a bit of a cruel surprise. A *third* anthology began to circulate -- this one featuring footage previously unseen anywhere from the band's 1972, 1975, and 1977 concerts (shows that were legend amongst the thousands of Pink Floyd fans who were too young to attend at the time). Unfortunately, the tremendous news of this release was offset a bit by the quality of the footage offered (much more on that later).

One last note ... it should be noted that not every copy in circulation of these titles is the same as every other copy. What starts off as, say, a batch of 20 videos and assorted clips can mushroom in size or shrink over time as new "master" quality clips are found and older, unwatchable clips are left off. Therefore, the review of, say, 'Video Anthology Part 1' you see here may not reflect the exact contents of the copy you may own. I guess this what they call the nature of the beast.

A word in advance -- the above track listing refers to the most-circulated version of the first 'Video Anthology.' I know of at least one version that contained promotional material in the form of television advertisements for 'A Collection Of Great Dance Songs,' 'Animals,' 'The Wall,' 'The Final Cut' and 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason,' and MTV commercials from their 1987 "Learn To Fly with Pink Floyd" contest (many of which will be reviewed in separate posts down the line)

Being that almost everything included on the original 'Anthology' is replicated on the 3 volumes of 'Video Anthology' that followed years later, I'll save the repeated individual performance / video reviews of this video for the trilogy entries that follow. However, the most notable item missing from the later versions (aside from the previously mentioned promotional TV bits) is a short film called 'French Windows' -- an animated film by Ian Eames (whose name is helpfully misspelled in the film intro). Yes, this is the same Ian Eames who created the trippy "flying clocks" film sequence used by the band for the song "Time," and while nowhere near as visually interesting as the "Time" animation, 'French Windows' does have much in common with it's more famous descendant in terms of flow and execution (not to mention a passing resemblance to the kind of rotoscoping-esque animation seen in The Beatles' 'Yellow Submarine' movie). Instead of clocks, we see what looks like a Windows 3.1 screensaver gone berserk, overlaid with twirling ballet dancers and a couple of upright monkeys. Far more interesting to the eagle-eyed are visual precursors to *other* Floyd film classics to come, namely "Welcome To The Machine" and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond."

While the original 'Anthology' has become over the years a superfluous addition to a VOIO collection as far as age and track listing is concerned, a note of caution is in order for obsessives -- the overall picture and sound quality of 'Anthology' is, in my opinion, noticeably higher than any volume of it's descendant trilogy (most of which seems to be a generation or so removed from than this one). So, for those only looking for, say, a high quality copy of "Welcome To The Machine" or 'The Final Cut' Video EP and nothing else may want to keep this collection in mind instead of 'Video Anthology 2.' Otherwise, the original 'Anthology' is now for ultra-completists only.