Various Artists – Spectacular Spectacular *** DVD Vol. 2

Drive-Thru Records are back with their second DVD, Spectacular Spectacular. With 10 music videos, 5 acoustic songs, around 12 live performances, a bunch of home videos and even more interviews, the DVD is around 4 hours long; so try not to watch it all in one sitting.

The first thing I tried to do with this DVD was watch the music videos. Right away that gave me a bad impression for this DVD. After you click the “Videos” choice in the main menu, you never see another menu show up! There is absolutely NO music video menu! Maybe it just my copy of the DVD, maybe it’ on all of them, but with no menu you have to just guess at which video you are going to watch and it is very difficult to figure out what’s wrong with it. Once you get past that little bump and finally see the video, it’s smooth flying. With 10 videos from 9 different DTR artists (you get two videos from The Movielife), you get a wide variety of musical styles. With pop-punk by New Found Glory and The Starting Line, emo by The Early November and Something Corporate, and even screamo by Finch and Senses Fail; there really is a wide spectrum of musical choices to choose from. DTR also supplies you with some rare videos likeKiss Me, Diss Me by Home Grown (which was banned from MTV) and the new Finchvideo, Words Of The Earth.

Afterwards, I moved toward the “Home Video” section. I was happy to see that they actually had a menu for this section! Here we get to see various bands just messing around, being disgusting and doing stupid stunts. The best section in here is “Carter The Cat” by far. Telling the story of Stephanie and Richard’s psychotic cat and each band’s reaction to their encounters with Carter. I find it quite amusing and would be very interested in meeting this Carter.

Next we come up to the acoustic and live portions of the DVD. The five acoustic performances feature The Movielife and Steel Train playing at the DTR offices,Ace from The Early November live at a graduation party for his cousin and finally RX Bandits and The Starting Line playing live to a crowd. We then get around 12 live performances from various bands. These are nice to watch, although it is nothing like being at the real show.

Finally we get to the Photos section and the Interviews section. The photos are just photos as stated, most of the interviews are “Making The Video” types of interviews. Here we get a inside look at the creation of the videos you just recently got the chance to watch. And it’s always nice to see that even when you are in a big band, your mom still has total control over you! *cough*BUDDY*cough*

My biggest advice to all you Drive-Thru fans is to separate the sections and never try to watch it all at once: your eyes will fall out after four hours straight! Secondly, make sure you’re parents are out of the room for all the interviews with The Early November, you don’t want them seeing the stripper. Other then that, Spectacular, Spectacular is good for all you loyal DTR fans out there.