If It Ain't Stiff, It Ain't Worth A F**k!

Had seen bits and pieces of this over the years but great to see the complete package. Audio was spot on, performances are truly excellent. Drunken shenanigans are more National Express than Festival Express but you had the Dead on the train. A few cringe-worthy moments involving young female fans (I'm looking at you Attractions rhythm section), great bus banter from Wreckless Eric and Davey Payne. Costello channeling all that revenge and guilt on stage, a few 'mile-melters' from Mr. Lowe in the back of the bus and of course, Larry Wallis' hair. Buy it now while you still can

Don't look at this expecting a mind blowing rock documentary or high production value live performance. The presentation is absolutely low fi, obviously shot with whatever equipment the folks at Stiff (or who they hired) could get their hands on at the time. What you have is a time capsule filled with the spirit of a small record label and its artists as they tour Europe in a fairly skin of their teeth manner. There is no narration, only conversation. The performances are few, only six songs, but they portray the atmosphere and excitement of a small corner of the greater music scene at the end of the 70's. The performances are exciting, unique, and most importantly authentic. Seeing Wreckless Eric randomly produce plastic cutlery from his pockets during Reconnez Cherie and honestly seem confused by their very existence sums up his entire shtick perfectly. You get the feeling that these people were all friends and enjoyed performing with one another, and that feeling is cemented by the final performance of Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll in which nearly every member of the tour arrives on stage, multiple drummers beating and all.So if you're a fan of the label, fan of the musicians, or can at least get past the sub-par presentation and meandering editing, you might just enjoy this glance at something that really only existed for the brief period of time when this was filmed.

After wearing out two dubbed VHS tapes over the years, this clean print from the film's director is a godsend. A priceless glimpse at the birth of New Wave, this documentary of the 1977 "Live Stiffs" tour captures Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Wreckless Eric and Larry Wallis in all of their early glory. Historically significant and highly recommended...not to mention a hell of a fun ride! Worth every penny.

I bought this as a gift for my wife, who loves almost all the music that came out of the Stiff Studio back in the day. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT!Most of the dvd consisted of unintelligible banter and babbling by the musicians. There were a few concert vignettes, most of which were sub-par performances with poor audio and video quality. Overall it was like watching home movies of a bunch of drunken/stoned individuals doing nothing and speaking what may have been English but wasn't the least bit coherent. A waste of time and money.

This sucked. I was expecting a quality production and it looks and sounds like it was shot from a cheap camcorder. Just horrid. Waste of my time

Love seeing Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmonds,Ian Drury, & the rest of the STIFF Label consortium in those beginning days of Punk Rock. This was before it got watered down by the "New Wave" moniker.

This is a fun and entertaining video about some of the British new wave singers and bands of the early 70's.It shows you each of them both performing and behind the scenes, riding on a tour bus, and elsewhere.

I'd say, if you remember that time and perhaps like those bands, this is an awesome time capsule. I enjoyed it very much.

The copy I got from Rarewaves.USA was a homemade DVD-ROM that didn't run on either DVD-Player or PC. Pity, would have loved to watch it.

The 1977 Stiff Records roster goes out on the road as a 5-act package tour and is captured on camera for posterity.The only minor problem with this release is that it was not made available to the public after the tour. The big names from that period of the label are all on here. You get Elvis Costello, sober as a judge and very obviously marking out his territory as the biggest act Stiff would ever produce (though Madness arguably took the crown in later years). His band, The Attractions, was one of the tightest and most inventive and impressive combos on the road at that time, or probably ever - and it's a joy to be able to watch their early performances. Ian Dury and the Blockheads had a natural command of the stage, bags of personality for each member of the band and were absolutely masterly musicians and the only song that the show could finish with was their 'Sex and drugs and rock and roll'. Seeing Costello, arms folded at the front mic, very clearly hacked off and looking to be sulking not to be finishing the night is a bit disquieting, even all these years later - though he says now that the 'angry young man' persona was all a front. The competitiveness seethes from every pore of Costello.Also all present and correct were two of my all-time favourites, NIck Lowe and Dave Edmunds. Dave Edmunds appears to sink to the bottom of the bottle at various points and their band (Rockpile) famously always grabbed an early slot in the show's running order, so as to be able to hit the bar. Edmunds plays superb guitar in this film and I wish it was a lot longer. Larry Wallis gets to play his single a-side 'Police Car' along with them and it's a great song.If you have read Wreckless Eric's brilliant book 'A dysfunctional success' you will know what issues he was going through at this point in his life. His stage performances were always engaging (here you get 'Reconnez Cherie', prefaced by the famous unplugged guitar incident. "My guitar doesn't work...... (long pause). Ahh.... They forgot to plug me in. Let's play some songs now." as documented on the 'Live Stiffs' LP). Off stage, Eric appeared to be struggling slightly, mugging up for the camera with Lew Lewis to do a shambolic off-the-cuff interview. Eric is thankfully now sober.The film was poorly planned (but is still a great watch nonethless) and the offstage content is a bit fly on the wall. I would have been very happy with some more onstage footage and without seeing two of the very drunken Attractions competing to bare the breasts of one of the girls in the entourage, but hey ho, that was what there was for them to do on the road. There was a lot of sitting around on coaches, hotels and in dressing rooms.If, like me, you paid for a ticket to watch one of these shows, you will love this film. It could have been longer, but two of the main Stiff acts, Costello and Lowe were already planning their defection to the Radar Records label, which Jake Riveira was setting up and the films was an afterthought, one of the reasons it was buried at the time.

Good dvd