the best rock concert on screen?

Yessongs is one of my favorite concert films, also Pompeii which is more like anti-concert, ha ha. The last Waltz a very good concert film, also Peter Pryzygoda Free Concert film feturing the excellent German band Can. Einsturzende Neubauten's Halber Mensch film done in Japan is also riviting. Gimmie Shelter another.Like Pompeii more like an anti-concert film but there is some live concert footage. All in all a must see as the photography and the performances by all are amazing. Some more but I've got to go.

Well, to each his own. Personally, I liked those shots of the equipment as it gave me a good look at what kind of stuff the guys used then.I don't think it's an exceptional live performance film but I don't feel like kicking the guy either ha ha.The sound is good and the tunes are great. Song Remains The Same is way more annoying than Pompeii in some respects. Those corny fantasy sequences ha ha. I did like the gangster sequence though and Plant's shroom snack was amusing.

The Song Remains the Same is the WORST music movie ever
made
And Zep is my favorite band. Their fantasy scenes (including
their fat AH manager Peter Grant) was the height of the eras ego driven
culture. I loved Yes and saw them every time they came thru NY but
These self congratulatory films paved the way for punk and a desire
to get back to rock and roll.

Being a huge Grateful Dead fan myself, I would certainly agree The Grateful Dead Movie is one of the best (if not THE best) concert movie. It captures the Dead at the peak of their powers as a live band, and though some of the songs are edited, you get a general idea of what a 1974 era Dead show is like. And best of all you, don't have to sit through all the boring cover tunes they used to do to get to the "fun" stuff (ie the extended jamming numbers and improvisations). It's also got that great animated sequence at the beginning and lots of cool documentary bits. And there's virtually no out of synch footage (something that often times happens when concerts are presented on film or video) and the sound is perfect, probably both because Jerry Garcia oversaw the project.

The only concert movie I would put in the same league is The Last Waltz. Both films were made by people who absolutely wanted to "get it right the first time" rather than slap something together and rush it out to theaters (which sometimes seems to have been the case in most other concert films). In both cases, you had people who were more or less artisans working on the project. The cameramen in both films were experienced documentary style cinematographers who knew how to capture spontaneous moments. And in the case of The Last Waltz, the whole thing was overseen by Martin Scorscese, who wasn't about to let his name be put on anything that was any less than brilliant.

The problem with most concert videos these days (and it's been like since at least the mid 90's, watch Pink Floyd's Pulse for proof) is the editing, and specifically the "cut to a new shot every two seconds" thing. Supposedly, it's to make the video "more exciting", but I don't think I've ever met ANYONE who actually likes that style of editing. And if the music isn't exciting, some twitchy idiot in an editing suite isn't going to be able to change that. At this point, I'm probably never going to have the ability to make a concert film of my own music (I'm not even a professional musician, though I do write and compose music and play guitar), but if I ever did, I would stand behind the editor with a ruler and hit him every time he starts lapsing into the "fast edit" thing.