Feature DVD - Culture Club Live at the Royal Albert Hall By Michael Dwyer The Age (newspaper), Melbourne, Australia 28 May 2004 The anniversary phenomenon has become a cornerstone of pop marketing and analysis. Dead or alive, bands need to factor crow-eating phone calls into their superannuation plans, just as critics need hindsight to clarify first impressions. A slightly misleading question is whether the band can still wriggle unconvincingly as desiccated bugs stuck in the unforgiving resin of pop history. Only the most sentimental Culture Club fan could sit through this 20th-anniversary reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall without wincing. Boy George's voice has gone the way of his once exotic looks and he appears, both on stage and in candid interview footage, grateful for his role as an evolving style exhibit rather than anything fundamentally musical. Only Church of the Poison Mind and victims are ripe for rediscovery among the limp-reggae shockers of the Spandau era. The first song, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?, is a highlight of tragic proportions: the well-preserved vocalist in classic '82 Boy George regalia is not our heroine at all, but Euan Morton from George's self-mythologising stage show, Taboo. When the real dame appears in frumpy chequerboard Statue of LIberty ensemble, the joke is definitely on us. The surreal pantomime peaks with an inexplicable guest appearance from New Seekers vocalist Lyn Paul. Tellingly, the most exciting sequence is the pre-concert fan vox-pops. Here we get to relive Culture Club in an emotional context, where their legacy shines a more favourable light. In terms of social impact and attitude, a gal like George O'Dowd is well worth celebrating in the Nipplegate era. His "Eminem Screws Gays" T-Shirt is a symbol of the fiesty rebel conspicuously absent from the modern Grammy Awards ceremony. His written Culture Club history in the bonus menu is amusingly frank and justly proud about helping "a trillion homosexuals out of their closets". A recent, 20-minute interview finds him energised and outspoken, discussing not only the hows and whys of the band's rise and fall, but also the rare privilege of being a gay man with "a cultural bubble big enough to avoid living in fear". Twenty years after the fact, Culture Club's inherent bravery of expression makes one yearn for the genuine outrageousness and naive sense of possibility of early-80s pop culture. Their music? Um... no.