Pantera 3:
Watch It Go
EastWest
Debuting at #1 on the Billboard music video charts back in November, Watch It Go is the follow-up to Pantera’s two top-selling home videos Vulgar Videos and Cowboys From Hell, only this time, they’ve brought the roadies (and fans) from hell with them.
Shot over a two-year span with guitarist Dimebag Darrell’s camcorder during Pantera’s tour, Go is a montage of over two hours of mayhem and music. Set to such bonecrunching Pantera faves as “Becoming,” “War Nerve,” and “I Can’t Hide,” the first hour is so fast-paced it’s dizzying to watch. If the Sex Pistols caused anarchy in the U.K., Pantera beats them out tenfold, covering the U.S., Japan, Australia, and South America, leaving a trail of beer cans, trashed hotel rooms, and smashed up guitars.
There’s tons of sex, drugs, rock and roll. Literally, there is one brief sex scene with a couple (who I can only guess are two Pantera fans willing to fully express their die-hardness) engaged in intercourse behind singer Phil Anselmo as he grins slyly into the camera, taking obvious delight in his voyeurism. And if that isn’t enough, aside from video clips (“I’m Broken” and “5 Minutes Alone”), live concert footage, and interviews, we get to see Phil in drag, Phil peeing in the waters of a tropical rain forest, Dimebag taking a dump in that same rain forest and wiping his bum with a leaf, Dimebag playing guitar in high-heeled boots and shorts (I guess there’s still a little glam left in him.), Rex shooting up his hotel room with a BB gun, and Vinnie getting his nose pierced.
Once we get through the band’s shenanigans, we’re on to the roadies, who are constantly trying to outdo the band with toujours de l’audace. At that point, Pantera 3 becomes Watch It Go On Too Long. The first hour with the band made its point, yet as I hung in there it was fun to watch more cameos by Black Sabbath, Kiss, White Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and Kato (???).
The fans get to put their two cents in, too. One fan seemingly in a shamanistic trance danced himself naked on-stage at a Pantera concert in Tokyo. Another fan in Brazil is so overwhelmed at accidentally meeting Pantera in a parking lot all he can verbalize is “Yeah… Pantera!!!” At an in-store in Chicago, girls lined up for hours to have their naked breasts signed by the band. (Besides being a cheesy way to get a famous person to touch them provocatively, what’s the purpose of that?)
For obvious reasons, the video carries a “Parental Advisory: Explicit Content” sticker on it. The video also stresses that Go is “intended for mature audiences only.” I’d never thought I’d see the day when the words “mature” and “Pantera” would be used in the same sentence…
