Search - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Playback on DVD

Larry N. from BEALETON, VA
Reviewed on 4/7/2018...

This is a compilation of music videos of most of Tom's best songs. Seventeen videos in all for a running time of about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Unfortunately, they are all in standard 4:3 format, no widescreen videos, and just standard stereo sound.

2 of 2 member(s) found this review helpful.

Great DVD, Great Videos

Andy Saunders | Houston, Texas USA | 12/28/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a compiliation of Tom Petty's music videos, I have rated it at 4 stars instead of 5 because I thought they could have included 5.1 mix instead of only stereo. The Menu's weren't much just a black and white screen that said "Playback". The Songs on the DVD are "Here Comes My Girl" "Refugee" "The Waiting" "A Woman In Love(It's Not Me)" "Insider" "You Got Lucky" "Change Of Heart" "Don't Come Around Here No More" "Jammin' Me" "I Won't Back Down" "Runnin' Down A Dream" "Free Fallin'" "A Face In The Crowd" "Yer So Bad" "Learning To Fly" "Into The Great Wide Open" "Mary Jane's Last Dance" If you have seen Any of Tom's Videos then you know his weird, artistic way of doing music videos. After I was done watching thid DVD I said out Loud "Wow, that was great!""

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Playback"

John Amback | Louisville, KY USA | 02/15/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

""Video Killed the Radio Star" was the name of the first video ever played on MTV.
Twenty years later we know that this bold prediction is not true. Music videos, which
took the recording industry by storm and created a whole new entertainment medium are
today, slowly sinking into obscurity.Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Playback" is a case in point. Few would argue with the
quality of the music. Opening with a 1979 cut of "Here Comes My Girl" and closing with
1993's "Mary Janes's Last Dance", this DVD evolves chronologically through some of
the great pop songs of the past twenty-five years.As a big Tom Petty fan, It's hard to be unbiased. I like every cut on the DVD. In fact, I
love most of them! After a single viewing of this disk, anyone born after 1950 will
appreciate the way that this southern rocker from the 70's grows into one of the great
songwriters and performers of the 80's and 90's.The videos themselves are a different story. They range in quality from the genius,
"Don't Come Around Here No More", to the atrocious, "Runnin' Down A Dream".
Perhaps I'm getting old, but in seems that visual stimulation does nothing to enhance the
music.What these videos do however, is tell the story of why MTV and the music video industry
are in decline. The early offerings from the disk are from the late `70's and early `80's
and they are great! They include concert style cuts and simple visuals. ...Then this new
art form got ahead of itself. The mid `80's had great Petty songs, but the video producers
seemed to be in a race to see who could be the most abstract and absurd. They attempt to
tell stories that have nothing to do with the music. In a mater of four or five years the great MTV phenomenon evolved into a series of two
or three second visual bytes that are hard on the senses and distract from the very song
that they are meant to enhance. ...Darwin was wrong. At least when it comes to music
videos, evolution is not always for the better.If you like Tom Petty, buy this DVD! But of course, you already knew that. If on the
other hand, you are wondering what ever happened to music videos, rent this DVD and
see how poor visual effects can hurt great music and be a real Heartbreaker.John Amback
February 14, 2003"

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'

Brooser Bear | City of New York | 12/29/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If there is any artist who should be nominated the poet laureate of California, Tom Petty would be it... I didn't know until I picked up this video that MTV had made a Video Vanguard Award just for him, because he invented the music video and the MTV! Perhaps in a successful attempt to promote his band (as any fans of Heartbreakers would know he did relentlessely), he took what was then a promotional format for musicians to advertise their music and turned it into an new art form. It was on the strength of his vison and talent as an artist that he was able to attract the best and the brightest, film directors, supermodels and artists to participate in his videos. Whether its' Johnny Depp or Kim Basinger in a dedidedly non-traditional role, or whether its film directors and video animation special effects people, they all worked together to create this incredible collection of videos.The tape covers a variety of styles, from stage perfomances to animation, to mini films, which was how he conceptualized his videos. What unites most of his work, however, is that it was inspird by the California experience. You can see it in many incarnations. Whether it's the sixties in Learning to fly, and he gets it right, going back all the way to the engineers that flocked to California to work on militray aircraft design and their children, who turned to hippies or whther its the vagaries of being a present day celebrity or the malls, or the politics and power of the ranchers of old in his Insider song, Tom Petty celebrates much and misses little of what is California, while sidestepping the usual cliches of surfers and new age glitter that one usually associates with California."