DVD Drunken Bees GIANT SAND Marianne Dissard Calexico

********************************************   ALSO FOR SALE on EBAY   **************************************************************
* CD:     "L'Entredeux" - My debut album, produced by Joey Burns of Calexico. 2008
* CD:      "Dedicated To Your Walls" - Demo home-recordings album to "L'Entredeux". Joey Burns, Naïm Amor. 2006
*******************************   AND through MYSPACE.COM/MARIANNEDISSARD   *********************************************
* LP:      "L'Entredeux" - My debut album, produced by Joey Burns of Calexico. 12" German high quality vinyl. 2008
* Cassette:  "L'Entredeux" - My debut album, produced by Joey Burns of Calexico. Only 100 made.  2009
* EPs:     7" vinyls. Includes demo recordings, splits with Desing and Alaska in Winter. Very few left. 2006/2008
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More info at myspace.com/mariannedissard and myspace.com/drunkenbees

DRUNKEN BEES - dvd

A documentary on the Tucson, Arizona band GIANT SAND, directed by Marianne Dissard

A humorous and at times moving document of a band in process, "Drunken Bees" features HOWE GELB, Calexico's JOHN CONVERTINO and JOEY BURNS, RAINER, VICTORIA WILLIAMS, Friends of Dean Martinez' Bill Elm, Paula Jean Brown, friends and families going about their abouts in the downtown barrio and other surreal Tucson sceneries.

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Originally released in VHS only in 1996, this is the only documentary ever made on the band. A time capsule by now, it is available on DVD (Release date: summer 2005). Limited-Edition of 1000, hand-numbered and signed, with extras (extra 1/2hr documentary and a rare music video from 1989!) and optional english subtitles. DVD length: one hour.

DRUNKEN BEES: shot, edited, directed, produced etc.. by Marianne Dissard, co-produced by Jean-Michel Dissard, bankrolled by by Brad Singer (rip). All music by Howe Gelb/Giant Sand.

DVD EXTRAS: "Giant Prequel" directed by Marianne Dissard. "Searchlight" directed by Chris Wagganer with camera by Wagganer, Dissard and Gelb

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PRESS wrote about DRUNKEN BEES:

"Entirely less polished, intended to be utterly lo-fi - and succeeding on those terms quite well - is Giant Sand's Drunken Bees (www.drunkenbees.com), which amounts to a chance to hang out around Tucson with Howe Gelb, Joey Burns, John Convertino (Calexico) and their gangs circa 1994. They're not bad company at all and the title film (one of three on this disc is effective in showing how the style of the place leads to the sounds of their music" No Depression

"Drunken Bees, the Marianne Dissard film chronicling Giant Sand circa 1994 is a fascinating glimpse at a "classic" Giant Sand lineup: Howe Gelb, Joey Burns, John Convertino and Bill Elm. The title is taken from a particularly excoriating review of the band's 1994 album "Glum", which appeared in Rolling Stone; in one scene, the band dissects the review with grim humor. Clocking in at one hour, the film supplies a tantalizing glimpse of the band's creative process and their Tucson stomping grounds. Unlike many rockumentaries, some of the offstage banter is surprisingly entertaining. In a similar vein as much of the band's music, Dissard's film pieces together an overall impression from fragmentary bits of materials; she prefers vignettes linked by common themes to overarching narrative. While you might wish for lengthier portions from live performances and studio sessions, Drunken Bees is a gentle, affectionate portrayal of the witty humor and lo-fi inventiveness of Giant Sand" Signal To Noise

"Dissard made the pilgrimage all the way from France to make this documentary about her favorite band, and her video has all the unpredictable, do-it-yourself spontaneity of the music itself. Dissard manages to take the mundane details of her subjects'lives - like sitting on a stoop, fending off a drunken rambler - and transform them into a fairy tale about artistic creation." Tucson Weekly

 "Speaking of boffo, head-expanding stuff, this odd but oddly compelling, film is a brief (27minutes) history of a moment in the life of Howe Gelb and Giant Sand, a veteran Tucson outfit that plays sand-blasted punk'n'western. The movie's title is derived from a Rolling Stone dis of one of the group's recent albums, which is recited onscreen by one bandmember: "Gelb's an ardent trash picker who can't or won't cobble his scraps into form...Things buzz and bump and crash as randomly as drunken bees". In ways both bad and beautiful, this pretty much sums up both the band and the flick." Phoenix New Times

"Dissard's 27 minutes flick is a decent little rock doc. Settings move from the lonesome streets of Tucson to the legendary Club Congress to an Air Force airplane graveyard where Giant Sand leader Howe Gelb meets a military man to read aloud from The Little Prince. Drunken Bees opens with a fine instructive bit from Gelb on how to install a swamp cooler in the trunk of your car. Classic segment of the band members interacting with a carload of thick-headed drunks passing through town "looking for a little action". Suffice to say, they get no help from Gelb and co." Mesa Tribune.