The Beta Band

Besides their excellent music, the Beta Band were extremely good at making videos, promotional films for their concerts, and more besides, whether on their own (John Maclean in particular directed or co-directed many) or with the help of various friends and/or directors. The Best of the Beta Band, released as a complement to the strictly audio overview of the group, pulls all of their efforts together in a welcome two-DVD collection, an often riotous experience of deft (and daft) humor that is just as memorable, if not more so, than many high-budget extravaganzas of the time and place.

The first disc is split into "Trailers" and "Promos," with the first section consisting of four fake trailers for films and Internet sites, the first two being spot-on riffs of both '70s cop dramas and the deluge of wannabe Tarantino efforts following in that vein. (Guest star Mani of Stone Roses/Primal Scream fame as a random villain in "Chalk and Cheese" adds to the merry idiocy.) Meantime, the brief "Highland Fidelity" is a brilliant self-parody of the band's memorable (audio) appearance in High Fidelity itself, though the elderly shoppers at the charity store where the song is playing are not so kindly disposed towards "Dry the Rain" as the record store shoppers were.

"Promos," meanwhile, is the heart of the set, covering many of the standalone videos and concert films the band made over time -- the majority coming from the underrated Heroes to Zeros album, which shows that even in their final days the band's spirit was far from exhausted (as something like the wonderfully weird "Lion Thief" shows, where a shifty-eyed, Godlike figure steals snails to set up unsuspecting sleepers -- and that's just the start). The sheer cleverness of the group and its collaborators is remarkable enough, as is the collective humor on display -- the bouts of whimsy exhibited have roots in everything from The Goon Show and the Beatles to Monty Python and any number of U.K. kids' programs, but all seem to perfectly suit the songs without detracting from them, and the easygoing way the band's members have in front of the camera, whether "being themselves" or acting out roles, is a definite bonus. The full film for "Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos," which runs the length of that early EP, is especially wonderful and ridiculous, detailing a supposed kidnapping of Robin Jones, first by an evil amateur dentist and then by a "big evil bird," with the rest of the band setting out to rescue him by means of interplanetary flying carpets, topped off with a celebratory banquet that also serves as a credit sequence. Other wonderful standouts include "Squares," where the band appear to be landing on the moon only for them to discover that they're in a Capricorn One scenario without their knowledge, "Assessment," a capsule history of warfare, history and time travel as set on a deserted beach, and the brilliant "Trouble," which surely must be the world's first Scottish kung fu short feature. "Out-Side" deserves special mention as well -- among its other kaleidoscopic elements, seeing the band as the lead characters in The Wizard of Oz, with Steve Mason as Dorothy, is one of those see-it-to-be-believed moments. (Meanwhile, anyone familiar with Scottish television personalities will enjoy "Weird's Way," an extended joke on the late Tom Weir and his long-running history program Weir's Way.) Not everything done by or for the group appears, though, perhaps most notably the concert film for "The Hard One," which tweaks Bonnie Tyler even more directly than the vocal and lyric reworking from "Total Eclipse of the Heart" which had to be dropped from the final released mix of the song.

The second disc is also split into two sections, the first being three documentaries about the group and its times and travails, each of which happily avoids the kind of dull standard band documentary approach (or, alternately, the self-conscious "we appreciate Spinal Tap too much" way).