THE EMI SINGLES COLLECTION

I'm not a fan of videos in general...I can probably count the great ones I've seen on two hands over the last 20 years or so. Having said that, this collection shows that Marillion was not served by that medium at all. Most of these videos look cheap and very cheezy. The Fish-era ones usually feature the great man, dressed in some rather weird outfits, acting out various depressing scenes from the songs, mixed with band footage. That's where his devilish charisma shines through, although the serious, serious mullets the band usually sport detract a lot from the cool! These videos are pretty good 80s fromage fun, though, even if they are unimaginative. The H-era videos, paralleling the band's search to update their sound to remain cool, try pretty hard to be artistic, although Hogarth comes across as pretty goofy in most of them, trying pretty hard to be the sexy frontman. Mark Kelly even sports a grungy plaid shirt in one video! The mullets are gone, heads are shaved, certain band members are little (or a lot) heavier...yeah, videos weren't good for this band at all! The extracts from the Brave film are the best bits, where more artistic care was taken and the budget must have been considerably higher. Nonetheless, there isn't a single video on here that I would consider a piece of art and would watch again, were it not for the comedy value of those 80s videos. I have a feeling that Marillion themselves would probably not disagree. Two stars for artistic content, one more for the mullets! This reasonably priced dvd does work well also as a greatest hits package to put on loud and leave the room without watching the visuals.