The Reel Austin Vol. 2
(AMN) Lost in the music industry's death match with its consumer base over file sharing is the untapped potential of DVDs. The bonus DVD, now generally a 20-minute electronic press kit, will eventually evolve into the AVD, compatible with both "A"udio and "V"isual hardware; every album will feature its own
Behind the Music encoded into the CD. You'll be burning these, too, until the day all music is delivered to consumers via computers, but with DVDs remaining the fastest-growing entertainment market share, your favorite record store may not go the way of the Victrola just yet. The Austin Music Network is well aware that its second local DVD sampler is already a historical artifact. "With only 1,000 copies pressed this edition is already a collectors' disc," proclaims the brief note inside. No doubt a few of the 11 videos on
Reel Austin are already collectable, at least until Spoon ("Small Stakes"), Trail of Dead ("Relative Ways"), and Li'l Cap'n Travis ("The Mittens") -- one of the highlights of
Vol. 1 -- put out their own DVD comps. Pat Green's Dan Fogelberg impersonation ("Three Days") won't be missed, but Coco Candissi's Italian subtitled "Sugar Tooth" hits Raul's-era New Wave like pie to da eye. Fozlur's sampled visuals, strobe light, and Strokes-like "Magnetoscope" looks as technically crude as Bavu Blakes' flow-mowing "Bah-Voo," but both acts benefit greatly from pictures to go along with the words. Like its 2002 predecessor, which reeled off eight additional clips,
Reel Austin Vol. 2 tacks on 10 live performances. The look is pure cable access, but beginning with Bob Schneider's heartthrobisms and Trey Lopez's
samba para ti to Cadaques trying to one-up Del Castillo in the Latin flare department, some sort of live music DVD should go out with every enticement from the Austin Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Peter Rowan's "Moonlight Midnight" is long in the tooth, but the South Austin Jug Band picks up the slack, while Shawn Pittman's "Trouble Comes Around" will make out-of-towners believe the T-Birds still exert some influence here in River City. As soon as the archival DVD comes out, they might yet again.
