I was warned before viewing the third volume of the 'Pink Floyd Video Anthology' series that the 8mm-source film footage most of it was sourced from -- perhaps the first footage to ever circulate on video from Pink Floyd tours in 1972, 1975 and (most enticingly) 1977 -- was out of focus and had suffered additional glitches during the transferring process. However, the sound would be dubbed in from a separate source (ostensibly the same concerts) and would be in very good quality. Effusively drooling in anticipation of FINALLY seeing live images and footage from the fabled mid-seventies Floyd extravaganzas, I couldn't have cared less.

Whoops.

Let's just say that I very quickly learned my lesson after popping this sucker in the VCR for the first time. You see, the "blurry image" warning was actually a bit misleading, for the first thirty minutes of 'Video Anthology 3' is beyond the shadow of a doubt the most unwatchable Floyd footage ever circulated. Period.

For starters, none of the listed live tracks from any of the 1970s tours are complete … far from it. The most you'll get from *any* of them is maybe 2 minutes worth, and if you can make out more than a tenth of the footage without the aid of high-grade psychedelics, then you have an eagle's eyes and the patience of a saint. Shaking madly about as if the venues were all being rattled by 8.5-magnitude earthquake, the included footage of these three shows more resembles a looped time-lapse photography project involving mold spores than it does a Pink Floyd concert.

Truly, to describe the effect of watching the converted super-8 footage is damn near impossible, as it's total visual chaos from one end to the other. The cameraman pans constantly from left to right and then from up to down, nearly inducing vertigo. The dubbed-in background music changes songs every thirty seconds to a minute and hardly ever matches what seems to be happening onscreen. The band, the lights, the movies and the stage appear to the viewer as pale-white vaguely anthropomorphic blobs that form and dissolve and then reform on a field of swirling black. Once every few minutes, the image resolves to something approaching viewable -- in a split second, you'll go from watching seizure-inducing visual nonsense to suddenly staring at Roger Waters (unmistakable in his headphones and pig shirt) or occasionally David Gilmour. What may or may not be Snowy White is half-glimpsed standing next to what looks kind of like Nick Mason's drum set. You tell me.

As for the shows themselves, there is no sense of switching timeframes from 1973 to 1975 and 1977, but there seems to be a lot of humanoid figures running around a large bonfire of some sorts at one point, followed shortly by a multitude of huge flash flares and roman-candle-like fireworks exploding all over the stage and apparently rocketing into the air. The spotlights that lined the left and right edges of Mr. Screen appear once in a bit, as well as a very few tantalizing glimpses of the film to "Welcome To The Machine" (and what may or may not be film footage for "Dogs" or "Shine On You Crazy Diamond") that swim out of the soupy murk for a few precious seconds before infuriatingly de-evolving into video snot.

Following all of this eye-buggering mayhem, we leap into a brief bit of Storm Thorgerson yakking indulgently (surprise surprise) about the work that went into Pink Floyd's classic album covers (specifically the 'Wish You Were Here' and 'Animals') follows. Even the iffy quality of the picture and audio during this segment looks like a fucking HDTV broadcast in comparison to the disastrous quality live footage that precedes it.

Next up is a seriously squirmy news report from Toronto in March of 1988 concerning brisk opening day ticket sales for a 'Momentary Lapse Of Reason' tour stop. The interview footage of near-frostbitten fans waiting in line and whooping it up victoriously after purchasing their tickets should provide some measure of reassurance to poor ol' Roger Waters, for these are the fans he didn't want coming to his shows in the first place...

(Samples of fan dialog from this news footage)

"WAHHHHHRRRR!!! PINK FLOOOOOYYYDDD!!!"

"The greatest rock band in the WORLD, MAN!!" "I love 'em!! They're not like any other band out there!! They're, like, cerebral and all!!" For whatever reason, next up is a truly horrific quality clip of "Apples And Oranges" from the band's sole appearance on 'American Bandstand' in 1967 (and repeated from 'Video Anthology Volume 1'). So bad is the quality of this version that it took two viewings of this clip for me to realize that the black and white squiggle at the bottom of the screen is actually a time coding display. From there, it's back into decent-quality (and deja vu) again with more repeats from 'Volume 1' in the form of the 1968 ORTF TV live performances of "Let There Be More Light" and "Flaming." (Err, what the fuck is up with the repeats, might I ask?). Following these puzzling repeated clips, it's a disconcerting fast forward to 1994, where sprightly Laurie Hibbard from MuchMusic is filling us in on all the hoopla and hype surrounding the imminent first concert of the 'Division Bell' tour in miserable Miami. Yeah, I know. Try to contain yourselves.

A Canadian-made Roger Waters "electronic press release" for the 'Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking' is next up (supposedly titled 'Roger Waters In The Spotlight'), and, despite a botched transfer that interferes with the picture quality, it's actually quite fun to watch. While he is never shown onscreen, Waters co-narrates the segment, discussing his career in Pink Floyd throughout the years, with a truly classic bit recounting the constant struggle for control between "the architects" (being him and Nick Mason), and "the musicians" (meaning Gilmour and Wright, and referred to in a gleefully malicious hiss). Better still, the footage shown during this segment is a series of promotional and concert films, some of them played over the taped click-track to "Welcome To The Machine."

More repeats of previous 'Video Anthology' bits follow in short order in the form of a trailer for 'Pink Floyd - The Wall' and "Interstellar Overdrive" from 'Tonite Let's All Make Love In London.'

The twentieth anniversary of the release of 'Dark Side Of The Moon' is up next. This means it's interview time, and boy, what a stinker we get! Roger Waters (at his 'Amused To Death'-era ill-tempered best) mans the CBS London Bureau desk for a wince-inducing chat with a hilariously clueless U.S. anchorman about such rarely-discussed topics like the message of 'Dark Side Of The Moon,' and the possible reasons why 'Dark Side' remains popular to this day and blah blah blah blah. While this is by description boring as hell, Waters keeps things morbidly entertaining by refusing to be cut off, using some British slang to temporarily confound his interviewer, and generally being his royal Rogerness (Mr. Anchorman asks the ex-Floyd leader about "all that talk we've been hearing about a reunion between you guys," to which Waters deadpans, "I haven't heard any of this talk," while rubbing at various points on his face with a rigid index finger).

Oh, but that was only the table setting, folks! The 'Dark Side Of The Moon XX' media coverage continues after this with some local news coverage of a celebratory laser show thrown by Capitol Records in Los Angeles. This is a nice touch on it's own, but 'Video Anthology 3' goes WAAAAY beyond the call of duty here and shows nearly a dozen different news reports of the event -- all of them saying the EXACT SAME THINGS over and over and over again. Liable to induce insanity if viewed all the way through more than once (*twitch twitch*), you're treated to an unendingly looped series of yammerings about the album's anniversary, the hokey-ass laser show that was staged to commemorate the event, Corey Feldman professing his undying love for David Gilmour, a corpse-like Timothy Leary recounting that he was in jail in 1973, and the same damn clip of "A Saucerful Of Secrets" from 'Live At Pompeii' time and time again. ARRRRGGGHHH.

But wait! There's more! If you can make it through all of that (if you're smarter than I, you'll hit FFWD>> after the second or third identical news report), you come upon even MORE previously-circulated live clips from 'Video Anthology 1' in the form of "Careful With That Axe Eugene," "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun," and the "Celestial Voices" bit from "A Saucerful Of Secrets." NOW how much would you pay?!?

So there's 'Video Anthology 3' for ya -- a near-total rip-off, and a horrible disgrace to legacy of quality set by the first two volumes. The concert footage is absolute crap, and despite a few spots here and there that might be worthy of repeated viewings to some, the general picture quality of the remaining material is sub par at best.

Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.