Jim Skafish, front man for defunct Chicago art-punk outfit Skafish, appears in Urgh! toward the end, leading his band through a campily sacrilegious performance of their frantic signature number, “Sign of the Cross.” A few weeks ago he got an e-mail from someone who’d noticed that the film had been released in early August via Warner Archive—a service that burns DVD-Rs on demand, to save the label the up-front costs of a proper pressing.
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A common television edit of Urgh!, shown on both the Sundance Channel and VH1, cuts out almost half an hour of music, including “Sign of the Cross” and the Cramps’ crotch-rubbing, mike-sucking rendition of “Tear It Up,” but the Warner DVD is relatively intact—it includes 36 of the original’s 37 performance clips, minus only Splodgenessabounds’ “Two Little Boys.” (This is consistent with Warner’s note that the DVD was mastered from video—earlier VHS releases omitted the same track.) Warner used what they claim to be the best copy they had available, but that just raises the question of what they mean by “available.” Skafish says Copeland still has the original film, along with enough unused footage to assemble two more two-hour movies. He recorded three songs by each act, but almost all the performers had only one in the final cut. (Copeland was traveling and didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
Even if that someone is Warner Brothers?
