 | |
List Price: $9.99 | | Label: Kultur White Star
Salesrank: 95946
Released: October 30, 2007 |
| Our Price: $4.46 |
| Used Price: $3.99 |
|
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Each program in the Impact! series puts the spotlight on the songs that have left an indelible mark on the world. Certain songs have come to define the times in which they appeared as they proved to be the catalyst for the transformation of the cultural and political landscape. Most set trends in music, fashion and dance while flouting convention and testing the boundaries of society's accepted moral values.
Besides setting the scene for the release of the song, the programs feature the songs creator(s) and explore its cultural impact and the ways that it changed the course of history. Guests include recording artists, music industry executives, cultural and political pundits and the music fans themselves for whom these songs became their life's soundtrack.
Heartbreak Hotel was not Elvis Presley's first single -- songs like That's Alright Mama, Mystery Train and I Forgot To Remember To Forget, his first national chart-topping hit, predated it by a year -- but it was destined in many ways to define the Elvis persona and arguably become the first rock 'n' roll record. It was a song of teenage angst. Not the puppy love hand-wringing of later songs of the era but the real end-of-the-line, so-lonely-I-could-die variety that in those early days only Elvis and his rebel stance could make ring with authenticity. It established rock 'n' roll as an attitude -- brash, rebellious and sexually- charged -- as much as a musical style and gave it life as the soundtrack for alienated youth even during American boom times in the '50s. John Lennon once commented that if there had been no Elvis, there would have been no Beatles.
With song clips, archive interviews with Levon Helm, Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Daniels, Engelbert Humperdinck
Impact! Songs That Changed the World / Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel Reviews:
fair 
2008-09-27 - I have seen a lot better DVD's of Elvis. This was not a favorite of mine. It was some of the same things that have done over & over & over. Not something I would recommend to an Elvis fan. I would not suggest that Impact! Songs That Changed The World / Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel to be something that I would watch over again.
Not too short, not too long and Priced right! 
2007-09-12 - This is one of a series of 12 reasonably priced ($9.99 list) DVDs released in the US by SRO (Part of Kultur International) under the umbrella "Impact: Songs That Changed The World". Each runs about 24 minutes as it was co-produced by Canadain TV and broadcast on the cable CMT network in the US in 2002 and 2003.
I could cell from the quality of the editing - even before I saw the end credits - that this was produced by Gregory Hall. Hall - who also makes music documentaries under his own Hallmark Productions banner - has been cranking these out for about 20 years years now. I first saw his Country Music bios. They've always been well edited and usually contain great interview "sound bites". The four volumes in this series that I;ve watched so far are no exception. Some of the interviews were recent at the time of the show's production while some go back to the 80s and 90s and have appeared in other Hall productions. (You can tell by the locations where they were taped.)
Most of the Impact series DVDs cover more than the single records that are the topics. They also cover the impact that artist - at that point in time - had on our culture from style of dress to style of music.
In the case of the "Heartbreak Hotel" volume, the focus is on the hard rock sound of Elvis' big hit. Little Richard said that Elvis was "the door that white kids walked through to discover black music". And that's what we learn from video sound bites - many from earlier Hall produced interviews - from Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Sam Phillips, and more. Members of Elvis' band are here too as well as Levon Helm of The Band. There are a few rock historians and music critics and - like the Madonna volume - we get Jeanne Baker of Fashion TV taking about how Elvis influenced fashion in the late 1950s.
Like the others in this series the DVD does a really nice job of presenting a sociological study of how one single pop record can affect a whole culture, without belaboring the point. These DVDS will leave a legacy to the next generation and can be very useful in, not only music history classes but in the study of late 20th century "pop culture"
Steve Ramm
"Anything Phonographic"
