Audio-Visuals

SWEET: GLITZ, BLITZ & HITS
Directed by Stuart O'Donnell
(Creem/Wienerworld/MVD)
In America, the 70s band Sweet is remembered mostly by glam rock cognoscenti (what few there are) and those who remember "Fox On the Run" and "Ballroom Blitz" on the radio. In the band's home country of Great Britain, however, it was a major hitmaker for almost half a dozen years and thus a worthy subject of a 90-minute documentary instead of an episode of VH1's Bands Reunited. Bolstered by candid interviews with guitarist Andy Scott, manager/producer Phi Wainman and writer/manager Nicky Chinn (half of the Chinn/Chapman team that wrote most of the band's singles), Sweet: Glitz, Blitz & Hits is a straightforward chronicle of the quartet's rise and fall, from the early days as a bubblegum act without a care in the world except making hit singles to the later years as a more self-consciously creative outfit with an alcohol-impaired singer. The story itself is nothing new to rock & roll, with all the power chords, success stories and glitter needed to paint the saga silver; the real attraction here is the music. The career path is punctuated by performances of classic Sweet songs, mostly taken from lip-synced TV shows, from the well-known (in the US, anyway) like "Ballroom Blitz," "Fox On the Run" and "Blockbuster!" to British hits (but American obscurities) like "The Six Teens," "Teenage Rampage" "Hell Raiser" (an ultra-catchy glam rock anthem that may be the great lost Sweet tune) and the bizarre, Caribbean-flavored early tunes "Co-Co" and "Poppa Joe." Not everything about this doc is gold, however. Important tunes like "Funny Funny," the band's first British hit, and (inexcusably) "Little Willy," the blueprint for the band's best music, aren't represented as anything other than music playing inaudibly in the background. "Wig Wam Bam" and "Love is Like Oxygen," both great songs important to the group's development, are cut off halfway through. And the only live song is the pedestrian hard rocker "Turn It Down," hardly a jewel in the band's crown. Still, Sweet has been relegated to footnote status in rock history, despite anticipating everyone from Queen to Kiss to Cheap Trick, and there's enough killer footage and music on this DVD to make the case for Sweet as more than just glam rock flashes in the pan. Michael Toland [buy it]