Recently, VH-1 Classic ran the movie Urgh! A Music War, which I always try to catch when it’s on television. This was a shortened version of the movie, and it cut out six acts from the original theatrical release. I wrote a review of the movie here and listed the six acts they cut out, and provided two links to videos of the missing acts.

The most curious cut by VH-1 was the absence of The Cramps, since the image of strong>Lux Interior was featured prominently on the original movie posters and the performance is a definite highlight of the movie.

The uncut versions I’ve seen on IFC and Sundance are still missing the scenes from Gary Numan and Splodgenessabounds. Numan owns the rights to his performance, and I think Splodgenessabounds was cut out because, frankly, it’s not that good. (There is a YouTube clip of that in the review).

Even with the cuts, though, it’s still a fantastic movie with great music by the well known (The Police, X, Devo, Joan Jett, the Go-Go’s), the new wave cult artists (Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, OMD, Echo And The Bunnymen) and the obscure (Toyah Wilcox, Klaus Nomi, The Au Pairs).

Right now, the movie is unavailable on DVD, and it seems that it will never be released for home viewing in that format. Miles Copeland, when negotiating the contracts, opted to give the exclusive electronic rights to the RCA “Selectavision” format, which died in 1986. To top that, the contracts can’t even be renegotiated because the originals have been lost, probably during Thomson’s purchase of RCA.

Without the original contracts, nothing can be renegotiated, and changing the contracts for over 30 acts without the originals would result in astronomical legal fees and endless negotiations with attorneys.

The music from the concert was released as a two-record soundtrack, containing 27 of the 34 songs, and later, released on CD. But the CD only had 21 of the songs, leaving some worthy music on the cutting room floor.

So what’s a rock-and-roll fan to do?

Well, music geeks, there is a site that is a great resource for all things URGH! In fact, you can purchase copies of the movie on DVD and the soundtrack, though the legality of these CDs and DVDs may be questionable at best.

I did buy the CD of the soundtrack, and the sound of the officially released CD is great. The other songs (contained on a ‘bonus’ disk) do suffer from some loss of sound quality, as the transfer to CD from the other formats caused some loss of sonic clarity.

However, thanks to the Internet, music fans can purchase the movie and the soundtrack at this time, at a reasonable price. So if you dare, go check out that site and discover the great music contained in URGH! A Music War.