Music fans flip for these discs

Music DVDs have become so critical to the record business that it’s almost a surprise now to see a CD released without an accompanying DVD.

Those discs often include some live performances and/or music videos, and perhaps a brief interview with the musician or band.

That leaves the more expansive exploration of artists’ careers to the DVD-only music titles, and the ante continues to rise as technology gets better and content gets beefier.

Elton John

“Dream Ticket” (Best Buy Inc./Universal) $29.99

For now, this four-disc boxed set is an exclusive to Best Buy stores, but it should be available in wider release next year, a la last year’s Rolling Stones “40 Licks” DVD box.

This set, with each DVD running 2 to 2 1/2 hours, sounds like an awful lot of Elton for all but the most devoted fans. In truth, watching it all at once would be demanding, even repetitive, especially given four separate performances of his first hit, “Your Song,” and three each of “Rocket Man,” “Philadelphia Freedom,” “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” and “I’m Still Standing.”

But the way the box is organized does present the casual fan with a reason to get it. The first three discs feature the British musician in three concerts in three cities over three years (2000 to 2002). The fourth disc hop-scotches across the four decades of his recording career with a trio of songs each from the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s that put his evolving sartorial and musical evolution in high relief.

The first disc covers 27 songs recorded at Madison Square Garden on his 2000 “One Night Only” greatest-hits tour and features performances of most of his Top 10 hits, occasionally with the help of a guest singer. This disc provides the best overview of his remarkable repertoire. The audio quality is terrific -- near-studio clean most of the time -- but the film footage often is grainy and hazy, giving this performance the look of one much older.

Disc 2 finds him accompanied by a full orchestra for a 2002 concert at London’s Royal Opera House, which allows him to tackle songs such as “Sixty Years On,” “Take Me to the Pilot” and “Burn Down the Mission” with the full arrangements by Paul Buckmaster that enhanced the original recordings. The video is refreshingly crisp, as it is on Disc 3, where it’s simply Elton and his piano at the Great Amphitheatre in Ephesus, Turkey, in 2001.

It’s a sign of his mastery as an entertainer that even without the punch of guitar, bass and drums he makes an extended performance of “Honky Cat” absolutely rollicking, and “I’m Still Standing” comes across as pulsating and danceable as in the full-band arrangement.

The final disc is a nostalgic treat for anyone who has followed John from the beginning, and possibly a revelation for the generation that knows him only as the guy who did “The Lion King.”

Even longtime fans, however, may forget that John charted more hits in the 1970s than any other act, and that he played a significant role in bringing showmanship back to rock. Arriving at a time when the wardrobe du jour was T-shirt and jeans and singer-songwriters sensitively strummed acoustic guitars, John attacked his piano with the pyrotechnics of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and dressed in increasingly outrageous and flamboyant costumes each time out.

Disc 4 also gives viewers a close look at many of those outfits, and includes interviews with writer-turned-director Cameron Crowe, ( producer Thom Bell and John himself.

There’s still a whole lotta Elton goin’ on here, but packaged in manageable and eminently enjoyable portions.

Various artists

“The American Folk Blues Festival, 1962-1969, Vol. 3”

(Hip-O Records) $19.98

It should be both a source of joy and chagrin for American roots music fans that it took a couple of German blues lovers to preserve for posterity so many performances by this country’s seminal blues artists.

For some this was the first time they were filmed; for others, the only time. Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau brought blues-thirsty European fans a steady stream of American musicians who were typically underpaid and underappreciated at home. The third volume of this outstanding series offers 18 performances, mostly from 1965 to ’68.

Son House, a contemporary of Robert Johnson, unleashes a harrowing solo rendition of “Death Letter Blues,” and Muddy Waters gets backing from piano great Otis Spann and harmonica player Paul Oscher among his band on “Long Distance Call” and his signature “Got My Mojo Working.” It all gets started with Big Mama Thornton providing a deliciously haughty, slightly funky version of her song that gave Elvis Presley a big hit, “Hound Dog.”

Various artists

“Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival” (Warner Strategic Marketing, two discs) $29.99

The rock guitar god invited dozens of his string-bending pals to Dallas for a three-day guitar blowout last June, and the double DVD does a sterling job of bringing the highlights of that event into the living room.

Bound neither by chronological order of performances nor by the relative marquee power of the performers, the set hip-hops from intimate indoor performances on small stages by old-timers Robert Lockwood Jr. and Honeyboy Edwards to the climactic stadium concert in Dallas’ Cotton Bowl headlined and hosted by Clapton. Big names in rock, pop, country, jazz and blues, such as B.B. King, ZZ Top, Santana, Vince Gill, John Mayer and Larry Carlton, take part.

The visuals are stunning and the sound crystalline, a first-rate record of a first-rate event, whose proceeds go to Clapton’s Crossroads Centre drug and alcohol treatment center. There are 34 performances in all, interspersed with taut interviews of the participants about the day and the cause.

Alicia Keys

“The Diary of Alicia Keys”

(MBK Entertainment) $14.98

This single disc is billed as “a documentary film” rather than a concert movie, an important distinction for those more interested in Keys’ seductively soulful music than the ups and downs of her life on the road.

The 83-minute disc gives the strikingly beautiful singer-songwriter lots of face time; she often leans into the camera and whispers, as if confiding secrets to a girlfriend. For the most part, there’s not a lot of insight into how she’s gone about making her music, but a lot of backstage activity such as getting her hair, makeup and wardrobe ready for an evening performance, and water skiing and parasailing over emerald waters. It follows her on several European tour stops with predictably scenic locales: Monte Carlo, Monaco, Italy, Africa and Dubai.

It’s nice to see how pumped up she gets to go onstage, but it would have been nicer to explore more of what separates her artistically from countless other similarly photogenic pop musicians.

Peter Gabriel

“Peter Gabriel: Play”

(Real World/Warner Strategic Marketing) $19.99

Gabriel’s flair for the theatrical and the visual, which contributed to his 1976 departure from progressive-rock group Genesis for a solo career, also made him a perfect candidate for early MTV stardom.

The 23 music videos collected here demonstrate a restless imagination reaching out for something more than the literal word or the stock image. There’s the dizzying barrage of images in stop-motion animation for “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” from the mid-’80s, the nearly endless hug of reassurance between Gabriel and singer Kate Bush for “Don’t Give Up” and the poignant footage of the singer strolling with his aged father in “Father, Son” from his latest studio album, “OVO,” in 2000.

It’s a reminder of the promise music video once held, a promise that’s been subsequently squandered for the most part. As Gabriel writes in his introductory note, “Many music videos are now made to a tried and true formula. I was lucky to start early and have been able to continue working with people more interested in innovation than churning out more of the same.”

Extras include a recent concert performance of “Games Without Frontiers,” a 1977 promotional video of “Modern Love” from his first solo album and an impressionistic video for the song “The Nest That Sailed the Sky” from “OVO,” commentary from producer Daniel Lanois and new multichannel sound mixes for those with home theater setups.