Warning: Neil Turbin is not mentioned a single time on this DVD.
I found this used for a dollar, which just so happened to be the only circumstance under which I'd pay for this. It's one of those Henry Rollins-esque musician-doing-spoken-word gigs--admittedly, not really my thing, since I tend to gravitate towards musician-doing-spoken-word stuff more along the lines of vintage Venom radio station IDs or 1985 Slayer stage banter. In fairness, this is a Scott Ian DVD, not an Anthrax one, so most of the stories deal with celebrity encounters as a result of being in Anthrax rather than about the band itself. Scott is a better speaker than I expected, but he falls a bit short of being engaging or humorous enough to warrant rewatching this, at least anytime soon. There's also a decided lack of metal minutiae to excite the die-hard fan. Still, there are far worse ways to waste time than watching this once--LIKE LISTENING TO MOST POST-'80S ANTHRAX.
After some introductory stuff, the set can be roughly divided into three story arcs: a Spreading the Disease-era European promotional trip that segues into a chance encounter with Lemmy (as well as its aftermath and some general Lemmy anecdotes), an Al Jourgensen story that leads into Scott briefly speaking with Steven Spielberg, and tales of Scott and a certain pink-bearded poser pranking each other. This is followed by a Q&A session. Too bad he's shitty at impressions (which he admits), as most of the material relies heavily on quoted dialogue and could have been funnier with some proper voices. There's some interesting background art used at the beginning, including a cartoon with an unnaturally svelte looking Jon Zazula carrying Scott through an airport, as well as a great parody of the Maiden Running Free single artwork. Otherwise, unless you have an affinity for watching bald, goatee-d men give glorified PowerPoint presentations, there's not much in the way of interesting visuals. Overall, his stories would probably have had just as much impact had I read them in a book, with the added bonus of being able to get through them faster.
The Q&A yields some okay material, but there are a lot of predictable softball questions about Jeff Hanneman's then-recent death, Anthrax's Married... with Children appearance, and the biggest asshole he's dealt with in the music biz (Blackie Lawless). No questions about stagediving senior citizens in Bochum or what he thought about Belladonna's solo albums, though. Unsurprisingly, these came from a pretty dumb looking audience--the entire front row looked to be geeky casual metal "fan" detritus who never went beyond fellating the big four (or whatever the UK equivalent of the average Ozzfest attendee/Hot Topic customer is). Alas, not a Holocaust shirt to be seen.
Oddly, a prize drawing for a guitar was kept in after the Q&A. It's just useless time wasting filler for non-attendees, and should have been banished to the extras menu if it had to be included at all. When checking out the actual extras, there's a magic mushrooms story with a twist ending, which is possibly Scott's best material--so naturally, they separate it from the rest of the set.
This being a spoken-word performance DVD, it should come as no surprise that my favorite parts were two sections of music. Anthrax's cover of Rush's "Anthem" plays over the end credits (I had not heard it before), and while the crowdfunding shout-outs themselves are corny filler, Scott does a brief acoustic rendition of "I am the Law" at the beginning.
Should also add that this comes with a bonus CD...The prospect of getting two discs for a buck was mildly exciting for about 20 seconds until I realized it was just gonna be an audio version of his talk. Indeed it is, and worse yet, it's indexed as a single track so you can't skip to the good parts easily.
