Now that Sony Music has their local DVD mastering facility properly up and running, they’ve been cheerfully putting together discs with wild abandon, both as bonus quickies packaged with audio CDs and as stand-alone DVD releases. This 20-song compilation disc, released as part of a six-DVD themed series, focuses exclusively on the Australian artists that have recorded for Sony (and the earlier CBS) over the past three decades. Sony’s Australian back catalogue isn’t especially compelling overall, largely because of the company’s relentless policy of following overseas trends and then matching them to whoever they had signed at the time. But along with the embarrassing dross (and let’s face it, every record company has a good amount of dross lurking in their archives!) there are some gems.

But have they managed to collect the essential good stuff in one place here? Well, to be blunt, no. Seemingly compiled with the aid of a dartboard and sporting some dubious choices in the track list - as well as a few New Zealanders - it’s sadly typical of most DVD music compiles we’ve seen so far. It’s unlikely that any one person will be thrilled at the track listing here, and it’s a real shame that Sony didn’t follow the method they use for their audio compilations by licensing material from other labels to try and come up with a more essential compilation of classic Australian music.

The tracks included here are, in order:

Men At Work - Who Can It Be Now?: The first big Men At Work hit was a much better song than the over-played Down Under, and still sounds great today.

Noiseworks - No Lies: The debut single for a band that would eventually spawn the Electric Hippies and a new lead singer (NZ import Jon Stevens) for INXS.

And if you think the hair is big, you should see his bicycle helmet...

Dragon - Are You Old Enough: Actually New Zealanders, but hey, they shot the clip for this one in Melbourne, so close enough. A bona fide ‘70s classic, and a clip with bona fide ‘70s big hair.

Redgum - I Was Only 19: John Schumann’s Vietnam War horror-story ballad somehow ended up getting played at school socials for all the wrong reasons and going straight to the top of the charts.

Mi-Sex - Blue Day: Another New Zealand band, Mi-Sex were at the tail end of their success when this low-key but nicely atmospheric single put them back in the charts.

"Russell Mulcahy, is that you out there?"

The Black Sorrows - Never Let Me Go: Joe Camilleri’s roots-inspired rock band was where Vika and Linda first got attention; this 1992 hit isn’t a great song, but certainly has blues cred where it’s needed.

Daryl Braithwaite - As The Days Go By: The former Sherbet frontman’s big solo hit was actually a cover version of a track from Ian Thomas’s 1985 album Add Water. This version gives the song the super-slick American MOR treatment. Daryl, meanwhile, appears to have been taking finger-snapping lessons from Mondo Rock’s Ross Wilson…

Margaret Urlich - Escaping: Yet another New Zealander; this Lisa Stansfield-like MOR semi-ballad was apparently a hit, though most people won’t remember it - possibly because it sound so relentlessly generic.

Rick Price - Not A Day Goes By: Rick started off as a session singer, then became a pop star in the by-now-obligatory MOR style so beloved of Australian mainstream record companies. This clip displays Rick’s Big Rock Hair in all its glory; he soon had to cut it short to cater for the Asian market.

Skunkhour - Up To Our Necks In It: It’s rare to hear a rap in an Australian accent, but Skunkhour weren’t afraid. One of this funk/soul/jazz band’s best moments.

Ammonia - Drugs: An early signing to the Murmur label, Perth-based Ammonia never quite reached the level of success predicted for them. This post-grunge wall’o’guitars rockfest was, though, a decent-sized hit.

Eurogliders - We Will Together: When this declaration-of-love song from the band’s second album became a massive hit in the mid-80s, it sounded embarrassingly naff. It sounds worse now. Why Heaven isn’t here instead is a mystery.

"This little piggy went to market, uh-huh, owwwwwww!"

Wa Wa Nee - Sugar Free: Influenced by Prince much? A virtual handbook on distilling someone else’s style into your own record, and a video clip that every hairdresser should use as a reason to choose another career.

Craig McLachlan - Mona: Someone had the bright idea that if they got Henry from Neighbours to cover a Bo Diddley classic the world would come running. They were wrong.

CDB - Hook Me Up: Yeah, make ‘em sound just like they’re American, that’ll sell records. Not. Generic R&B with US sounds, US accents and US arms-akimbo “attitude�. Co-written by Wa Wa Nee’s Paul Gray.

Died Pretty suffer for their art. In a fish tank.

Died Pretty - Harness Up: The best track from the band’s first album for Sony after a long, acclaimed indie career. Not a patch on anything from the Doughboy Hollow album, but still standing head and shoulders above almost everything else on this DVD.

Sharon O’Neill - Maxine: Another New Zealander, Sharon had had a long career in her home country before being claimed by Australia. This was her biggest radio hit - not bad for a song about a prostitute! The clip comes from the ABC TV archives, a fact given away by the Rock Arena logo at the start.

Things Of Stone And Wood - Happy Birthday Helen: The Melbourne (VERY Melbourne!) folk-rock band’s big hit was written as a birthday present for singer-songwriter Greg Arnold’s girlfriend (and now wife). This was the song and clip famously parodied by The D-Generation on The Late Show.

Tommy Emmanuel - Determination: One for fans of guitar virtuosos only; everyone else will gag at the cheesy synthesised horn section and the guitar-shop-demo musical style.

Monique waits for her new 8-slice toaster to deliver its payload.

Monique Brumby - Fool For You: The first single from Monique’s debut album, her only one for Sony. Big hooks abound, and the crunchy sound belies the fact that this was produced by David Bridie. Look fast in the clip for Rob Craw from the Huxton Creepers and Greg Patten from My Friend The Chocolate Cake.

Obviously the quality of what you see on the screen is going to depend on the condition of the available master tapes, and there’s certainly a lot of variation here. Australian record companies notoriously neglected their tape archives for years, and as a result there are quite a few clips here that have been transferred from old analogue tapes that are showing some signs of serious deterioration. Not surprisingly, the more recent material fares better, but visual problems crop up on most of the songs in some form or another, usually taking the form of colour instability and analogue dropouts (the Sharon O’Neill clip in particular suffers from the latter). The Men At Work and Dragon clips are both extremely grain-heavy as well, something that seems to confuse Sony’s MPEG encoder; interestingly, the encoding bitrate varies from song to song, with some - including the Dragon clip - encoded at such a high bitrate our software-based player had real problems playing it back smoothly (no problems, though, on the stand-alone Sony player). Naturally everything’s in 4:3, with some clips using fake letterboxing for stylistic effect.

As it should always be on such compilations, the audio for each song has been re-dubbed - but not always from the most ideal source, as the Dragon and Men At Work clips demonstrate. Audio sync is noticeably out on some clips as a result of the dubbing process. When the source is good, audio quality is fine, but ideally a high-quality master should have been sourced for each and every song.

There are no extras here at all - unless you count some basic menu animation as an extra! Song lyrics as a subtitle stream would have been a nice touch, but the budget obviously didn’t even extend to on-screen credits. Overall, it’s a great concept, half-heartedly done.