Ed Sullivan's Rock 'n' Roll Classics Boxed Set

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DVD Reviews of Ed Sullivan's Rock 'n' Roll Classics Boxed Set

DVD Review: A DREAM COME TRUE! WORTH EVERY PENNY!
Summary: 5 Stars

In a rebuttal to a couple of the other reviews on this page, all of the performances are included in their entirety as they originally aired. These shows are from the original series that were aired on the VH1 cable TV network. Nothing has been cut from these shows, as far as I can tell. A couple songs were not performed in their entirety by the artists themselves, but that's how they were originally broadcasted. For example, on disc 1, Sonny & Cher sing "I Got You Babe", but watch Sonny Bono as he ends the song half way through (perhaps shortened to save time??; only Ed Sullivan or his producers would know why). On another song, the Mamas & the Papas sing "Monday, Monday", and the song seems to miss the last verse or two, but the group ended the song at that point, as was broadcast. All songs are complete as the artists chose to perform them on the show.

As for the high price of the set, one must consider that for each and every song on this set, Rhino Video has to pay the producers of the program, who in turn had to pay copyright royalties to the owners of the Ed Sullivan Show; also, music royalties had to be paid for each and every song. And this adds up to be a lot when you've got mostly hit songs on this set. With 144 performances, you've got 144 different music publishing royalties and copyrights to pay. This is much different than simply releasing an entire season of a TV series (for example, a box set of "Friends", "The Sopranos", etc.), which is less costly to release because you don't have so many artist royalties and music publishing songwriter's royalties to pay as you do on the Sullivan set.
As for some artists not appearing on the set, for example, the Dave Clark Five, sometimes the owners of the Dave Clark Five's music publishing will not grant the rights for the clip to be used, or the cost was too high, or somehow the rights to include the clip couldn't be obtained from the copyright owners.
(A good example of this is the current DVD release of Elvis Presley's "Aloha From Hawaii" concert whereby three songs were deleted from that edition because music publishing clearance rights were up for renewal and an agreement couldn't be reached, so we, the public, are denied viewing these songs because of that legal technicality.)

This is a dream set that's worth every penny for the excellent video and audio transfers to DVD and of course, all the hit songs included with complete Ed Sullivan introductions of the artists. Your eyes will pop out and you'll think to yourself, I never knew these performances could look and sound so great! Hopefully, there will be another box set forthcoming in the future.

Classic Rock Music CDs

• Music > Styles
• R&B
• Rock