The McCartney Years redux

First Disc

1970 - 1983. Watched this again with Macca's commentary in subtitles. The 22-odd songs here are mainly good, with clunkers in "With a Little Luck" and "My Love", which is so saccharine it gives me cavities. Highlights are "Heart of the Country", "Band on the Run", "Mamunia" and "Coming Up" which the last still remains my fave Macca music video. "Mull of Kintyre" has two takes here, one in the eponymous location and the other in an Elstree studio. Had no idea "Band on the Run" (the song) was about the Beatles. Also has a shot of the famous Martha. Misses some crucial material like "Rockshow" and a glaring omission of "Live and Let Die" although there're live versions of them ln the 3rd disc. Bit peeved there's no video of "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey". "Wonderful Christmastime", which always annoys me during said season, sounds cool taken out of context.

Second Disc

Covers 1984 till present. Pretty good the second time watching. "Put it There", "Hope of Deliverance" and "No other Baby" are all excellent stuff. The "Press to Play" material is hardly as bad as some reviews would suggest, being inoffensive synthy poppy fluff like "Pretty Little Head" and the title track. I also enjoyed "Spies Like Us" tremendously as I've said before. Peeved that "Flowers in the Dirt" is only represented by one song "My Brave Face" and there's no "Flaming Pie" or "Driving Rain" material. Since this DVD came out in 2007, it would be nice to include "Dance Tonight" from "Memory Almost Full" . Contains a documentary "Creating Chaos in Abbey Road", which is not about the fabulous 2005 album but more about how Macca works. Boring! Has "So Bad" in the extras section, which is a nice song.

Third Disc

3 Live shows. Rockshow and Unplugged are trimmed down. Rockshow shows Wings in full-fledged Led Zep mood and is nice although I didn't really like the 16 mm film quality. Unplugged is barely going through the motions although it does have his very first song "I Left my Little Girl". The highlight of this disc is the 2004 Glastonbury headlining performance which is THE most exciting concert DVD I have ever watched. Nary a dud song, with some brilliant renditions of his Beatle songs and the Band on the Run material, with the ebullient incandescent version of "Let Me Roll It" being almost orgiastic. No surprise NME readers voted it "The Live Event of 2004". Has a Superbowl half-time performance which is a scaled-down Glastonbury (same band, around the same time) and is perfunctory.