DVD Review: Tim Buckley – My Fleeting House

June 22, 2007 by Editor

Tim Buckley
My Fleeting House

Released: May 15, 2007
Label: Mvd Visual

Review:

This is a collection of videos from Tim Buckley‘s live performances, including thirteen full-length songs. The footage spans his entire career, from 1967 to 1974, and includes previously unreleased video of Buckley on The Steve Allen Show (1969) and on WITF’s The Show (1970). This DVD also features interviews with Larry Beckett (co-writer of many songs with Buckley), Lee Underwood (Buckley’s guitarist) and David Browne (author of “Dream Brother: The Lives of Jeff and Tim Buckley”).

The footage of Tim Buckley’s performances is stunning. It’s hard to imagine that the footage is 30 to 40 years old. An impressive job was done restoring the footage to look and sound great.

The commentary on the DVD provides detailed insight into Buckley’s life a musician. However there’s not a great deal of biographical detail about Buckley’s non-musical life. It also would have been nice to hear commentary from more band members and others who knew Buckley, but there’s already so much information and music to digest, adding more would have been too much for one release.

The DVD extras include an album by album commentary by Lee Underwood and Larry Beckett. Their views on Buckley’s music and career are at times surprisingly disparate. And, Larry Beckett’s candor can be quite amusing (though probably not intentionally so).

It should go without saying that the best thing about this DVD is being able to watch Tim Buckley perform. It’s very interesting to witness Buckley’s growth as a musician and song-writer over time. This is a great presentation of Buckley’s work for both those just discovering his music and long time fans.

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