Ok… I think I need to clear this up before I start the review. No, this video doesn’t actually have the word Caucasians in the title. The word is actually a spanish epithet for caucasians. It starts with a “G” ends in an “S” and the middle part is the first name of the Beatles’ second drummer. If you can’t piece that one together then you probably aren’t old enough to know it anyway. The title doesn’t particularly bother me but this website has standards and so I employed a little creative editing (AKA censorship.)

     What does bother me though, is the cover for this DVD. The picture you see here is what I saw when I rented it on Netflix. it says that it was released in 2007 and looks pretty modern right? Man, you’re in for a trip. In actuality this thing is a re-release of instructional VHS that was released in October of 94. So all of a sudden once you hit play you’re in the lowest of low budget videos from over a decade ago. I’m gonna say it straight… this video stinks out loud. It’s so bad that I’m convinced that this is the video that inspired Buck Nelson to play drums.

     Everything about this video is done horribly terribly awfully wrong. Even stuff like the chapter select feature is broken It’s so bad that it’s entertaining. This video was directed by Carmine Appice, whose own instructional video from hotlicks got the thumbs up from me. So I kinda figured that he would have done better when directing this. I kinda figured wrong.

     The video has a completely broken menu and chapter system that they broke in order to accommodate an old, outdated time stamp system that they managed to screw up when the transfered this video to DVD. The only reason for the time stamp system is so they didn’t have to change to old booklet that came with the VHS now that the video is on DVD. That won’t matter to you though because you only get the booklet if you buy the DVD which you shoulden’t because it isn’t anywhere close to being purchase worthy. All this means is that navigating the DVD for the poor sap who bought it will be all the more difficult.

Immediately after the warm up section (which is pretty bad but not as horrible as the rest of the DVD.) Instead of getting to the latin rock, he breaks down a bunch of lick from famous albums he’s played on. What this has to do with Latin Rock I don’t know. All of the groove demonstrations aren’t very well done and serve absolutely no purpose in a video that’s about latin rock. I mean did ANY thought at all go in to the making of this movie? The actual latin section of the video is waaaaaayyyy too short and very little of what he plays actually sounds latin. In fact he demonstrates only two things that actually sounds latin and the explanations are horrible.

After the tiny latin section in a video about latin rock he does a section on fills and random tricks, and then it’s over. What!? That’s it? I wasted a space on Netflix for this?

Time for the breakdown

For content it gets half a mic. Everything in the video is badly taught and you don’t get what was advertised in a video about latin rock. I’d like to give it a negative score but that’s just cruel… even if this thing does deserve it.

For presentation it gets 0 mics. It’s badly directed, the camera work sucks, it’s a has a broken menu system and should never have been brought to DVD

For extras it gets 0 mics. There is a small section of a home made video Tris made at a concert he performed at, but the drums are way to loud, you can’t hear the music, and the ride cymbal will make you want to stick ice picks in your ears.

That’s a grand total  of half a mic… it’s so low I don’t even have a mic icon to place here

I highly recommend renting this movie at least once so you can see what the worst drum instructional video ever looks like.