By J.H. Tompkins

SPIKE JONZE IS a good filmmaker, but in that world he has competition. In the world of music videos, he's in a class by himself, which was driven home by the great, just-released DVD from Palm Pictures The Work of Director Spike Jonze: A Collection of Music Videos, Short Films, Documentaries, and Rarities.

Jonze's career lifted off on the strength of his what-the-fuck skater's spirit and a live imagination. He's flourished because even after he knew what he was doing, he never forgot how he worked when he didn't. When you see the videos collected on this DVD, you'll remember how hopeful the medium once was; check out Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet" or Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice," with Christopher Walken dancing through an empty hotel lobby. Like Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk are AWOL in their own video for "Da Funk," but that's OK because once Dog Boy shows up, they'd have just been in the way. Give Jonze a camera, a song, and five minutes, and he'll build you a world.

The beauty of Jonze's videos is best felt in the context of information overload and planetary ADD – they're short and sweet. And while we're on the subject, give it up for their written doppelgängers: the consumer reviews on Amazon, late-night blog entries, digital cities, e-zines, online city crib sheets for tourists, and alternative weeklies. I understand, because I've written thousands of mini-masterpieces during the past 20 years, and I do it as well as anyone on Earth. We're living in a freebase world, and I can cook: give me a couple of albums, a Web connection, and 10 minutes, and I'll deliver aesthetic essence empathetic enough to absorb personal anecdote, cultural history, and ironic observation. I could bring the Old Testament in at 300 words, print it in Wednesday's edition, and guarantee huge crowds at your local house of worship – if God's touring that week, anyway.

Morphing mediums

Unfortunately, most directors aren't Jonze, and most music videos – like most albums – suck. In fact, in recent years, they have been little more than lousy MTV videos added on to CD releases.

That was then. A convenient place to begin now is with the sumptuous Led Zeppelin DVD box set, which clocks in at five mostly superb hours and includes a lot of concert footage as well as assorted extras. It was released in late May and generated nearly as much conversation and commercial interest as any CD released this year. To date it has sold nearly 750,000 copies.

During the first weeks of the summer, it was common to hear the Zep box talked about as a thing unto itself, rather than as an offshoot of a CD release. Once again, new technology is forcing a change in the way we receive music. As the virtual music store continues to change the marketplace, what we get as part of the music experience – film, digital video, concert footage, recorded music, bulletin boards, communities of fans, live chats – changes with it. People reared in an era of vinyl and snail mail might have trouble getting their heads around it, which is, I guess, too bad. But for a generation of kids who've never bought a CD but have thousands of songs loaded on their hard drives, it just makes sense.

"It was unprecedented," Paul DeGooyer, vice president of WSM/Rhino Home Video, told me, in a conversation loaded with the kind of enthusiasm and confidence I haven't heard since before the dot-com collapse. "It shows that the marketplace is changing. It has a lot to do with technology, with the computer and the availability of DSL and cable, and now you've even got to think beyond the DVD. There is a new generation of music fans, and they've entered music through the computer – downloading music from the Net.

"Whether it's been done legally or illegally isn't the point. What matters is that they don't think of the local record store when they shop – they think of their computers. For that reason these fans don't make a big distinction between formats – they don't say, 'This is a DVD. I watch it on my home entertainment system, while that is a CD; I listen to that on a stereo in my room.' They are used to getting what they need online. So whether in the future their needs are met with a subscription service, or online lockers, or one-night rentals, the point is that new technology is reshaping the marketplace. It adds a new, attractive dynamic – and a very dynamic one, if I can say that – to music."

New mixes

Flatworlders point to the automobile and ask for a call when the universal chauffeur is developed. They have a point – but only up to a point. First, new-model CD players, including the one in your car stereo, are increasingly built to play the audio portion of the latest DVDs. More to the matter, today's DVDs – like the Jonze material – have been mixed or remixed into state-of-the-art surround sound, and if you're saying "So what?" as you read this, you haven't been listening. If hearing a well-engineered CD is like sitting inside a pair of headphones, surround sound makes you feel like you're performing with the band, standing midway between the rhythm section and the front line.

I was going to tell the Boo Yaa Tribe's Gawtti (Vincent Devoux) that I'd been onstage with his group when he called me the other day to talk about West Koasta Nostra (Oglio). I kept my mouth shut, instead. One look at the video for the irresistible single "Bang On" and you'll know why. I did ask him how come, 15 years after the group's first album dropped, they were able to come back with an album – and DVD – that as of last week was sold out of nearly every store in L.A., where I was trying to find it.

"Kids like gangstas," he told me. "That never goes out of style." If you need more than that, watch the five-minute trailer from Tribal Scars, the down-as-dirt documentary of the Boo Yaa's tight-knit Samoan family, which will be available on DVD in February. Gawtti advised me to stay tuned. I will.

Setting the standards

A small army of powerful record company interests recently formed the DVD-Audio Council, a group designed to ensure that the industry develops uniform technological standards. Last week I received a digital press release informing me that between them, members would be releasing some 70 DVDs before the holiday season. It is, among other things, an announcement that the corporate music industry's step into the market is, at this point, a step forward for the consumer. A number of small indie outfits, like Pennsylvania's Music Video Distributors, have been active in the music marketplace for at least a few years. "We've been doing this for a long time," vice president Ed Seaman told me recently. "That gives us a real advantage. We used to have the marketplace more to ourselves, but we know that marketplace like no one else."

Companies like MVD can play a role roughly analogous to indie record labels. Certainly MVD is releasing some outstanding material – including Sublime: Stories, Tales, Lies, and Exaggerations, soon to be put out in a reworked, special edition. The death of guitarist-singer Brad Nowell in 1996 at the peak of the band's popularity, shortly before the release of their third album, left a rabid West Coast-based cult hungry for more. The DVD, featuring live footage and recent interviews, is energized by an on-the-fly energy that was the band's trademark.

Watching it doesn't bring Nowell back as much as it underscores his absence. But if you were a fan, like I was, it's as close as you're ever going to get, and it's decidedly more satisfying than the many bootlegs and posthumous releases available. The MVD catalog is full of good material, with work by bands like Dream Syndicate, the Residents, Tower of Power, Joe Cocker, and dozens of others.

In the house

Bob Feldman, president of Red House Records, wasn't sold on Hacklebarney Tunes, a documentary on his label's incredible folksinger Greg Brown, when it was completed a few years ago. "It had a few screenings," he told me recently, sounding as relaxed and happy as a man who has a star on his roster and knows where his company stands. "After that, not much happened with it." That is, until the company was putting together Essential Recordings, a Brown retrospective, and got permission to send a copy of the original cut of Hacklebarney Tunes to filmmaker Ann Ericsson. She streamlined it, and Red House included it in the Essential Recordings package, which was released a few months ago.

The DVD version of the film is friendly and fascinating and works amazingly well as a complement to Essential Recordings. As a stand-alone, it's full of music and information, and if you're new to Brown's work, as I was, it leaves you hungry for more. When I told this to Feldman, I could almost hear him smile.

Remember when CDs were a flash in the pan? Or when downloading music was just kid stuff? I remember the other night when I put "Bang On" into the DVD player, cranked it up, and 10 seconds later was in L.A. headed down the 110 toward Gawtti and his brothers. It was about as close as I could get without being there, and that's as close as I want to be.

Watch it
Favorite CD-DVD packages and DVDs

Boo Yaa Tribe, West Koasta Nostra, CD-DVD (Sarinjay) Album plus DVD featuring the video for "Bang On," the best single I've heard in months. They shot these guys – all huge, hard, talented, and from the same Samoan family – hanging around the bed of the Los Angeles River, and if that's where they're at, I'd stay away. But buy the album for sure.

50 Cent, The New Breed, CD-DVD (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope) When 50 rapped, "You're not like me," I had no idea what he meant, and I wasn't sure if he did either, until I saw him and his friends rapping over his album in Detroit, mic in one had, balls in the other, in front of a few thousand screaming white kids, a gangsta stereotype so perfect I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it. Guns, cops, yes-men, hos, homies, a bio, concerts, and 50 laughing as he reenacts a shooting, and all I'm thinking is that if he'd been crippled like my friend Eric, he wouldn't be laughing. Life is only a movie after all.

Heartworn Highway, DVD (Snappermusic) James Szalapski's wonderful documentary about the wave of country musicians in Nashville, Tenn., and Austin, Texas, in the mid '70s who – if they didn't change the country mainstream – added a welcome, still-vibrant alternative. It features, among others, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, and Guy Clark and a shitload of great music.

If I Should Fall from Grace: The Shane McGowan Story, DVD (Music Video Distributors) Shane McGowan, the legendary hard-living Pogue, has fallen from everything else, so give him time. "It was Christmas Eve / In the drunk tank, babe ..." he sings on "Fairytale in New York," as unforgettably sad and appropriate a song as could be. It hurts to watch, but it's great.

Jimi Plays Berkeley, DVD (Experience) The playing is great – Hendrix, with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, kicks ass and delivers the best "Johnny B. Goode" cover I've ever heard; "Machine Gun" has great kid-versus-cop footage shot earlier in the month, during the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

Led Zeppelin, DVD (Atlantic) This two-disc set is built around great concert footage shot over a 10-year stretch, and it's worth the hype.

Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey, DVD (Sony) Scorsese's ambitious, seven-feature-length-movie project (each with a different director) is wonderful, full of itself, tedious, and electrifying depending on who's directing and who's listening, and what drugs you're on. There should be one full set in every household.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: God Is in This House, DVD (Mute) Dark soul still alive, in France, June 2001. Cave and band in concert, along with the making of No More Shall We Part and some videos. Neva C. used to swoon over Nick C., and Kim says he's great live, which doesn't exactly come through here, but trust them, not me.

The Revenge of the Robots, DVD (Def Jux) On the road in fall 2002 with El-P, Mr. Lif, RJD2, and others – welcome to hip-hop on planet Earth, a universe way from the bling-bling, shoot-'em-up hype. From this tour doc, we learn the road's fun, boring, and tiring. There's also three songs and a bunch of videos. On sale as a DVD – a sign of the times.

Neil Young, Greendale, CD-DVD (Reprise) "Most of these songs are about people," Neil says during a break in this acoustic concert. "They live in a town called Greendale, and a lot of them are named Green," and so forth, and so on, and if you love Neil, you might love this concept performance about change in small-town America. But you might not.