Verminator. The Hamsters

The Hamsters

The Hamsters are a band from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England.They performed their first live show at the Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, on 1 April 1987. They initially played in local pubs with no ambitions to take themselves seriously or to turn professional...

 are well known on the UK band circuit for their tributes to Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

 and ZZ Top

ZZ Top

ZZ Top is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "That Little Ol' Band from Texas". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based boogie rock, has come to incorporate elements of arena, southern, and boogie rock. The band, from Houston Texas, formed in 1969...

 but up until 1996 they had released two CDs and one DVD solely containing Hendrix covers, so far they had released nothing paying homage

Homage

Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic....

 to ZZ Top. It was decided that they would do a ZZ Top tour and during one of the shows would record a live video. Verminator! is the result. It's their third video release and was released originally mid-way through 1997 on VHS

VHS

The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....

 in "HiFi Stereo".

Verminator! was re-released (along with the rest of The Hamsters

The Hamsters

The Hamsters are a band from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England.They performed their first live show at the Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, on 1 April 1987. They initially played in local pubs with no ambitions to take themselves seriously or to turn professional...

' video back catalogue) in 2005 when it was re-edited and re-mastered into the DVD format (MPEG2 with Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital

Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...

 2.0 stereo).

Track listing

1. "I Thank You"
2. "Arrested For Driving While Blind"
3. "I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide"
4. "T.V. Dinners"
5. "She's Just Killing Me "
6. "Waiting For The Bus"
7. "Jesus Just Left Chicago"
8. "I Got The Six"
9. "Fool For Your Stockings"
10. "Can't Stop Rockin'"
11. "My Head's In Mississippi"
12. "Pincushion"
13. "Got Me Under Pressure"
14. "Rough Boy"
15. "Legs"
16. "Tubesnake Boogie"
17. "La Grange"
18. "Tush"
19. "Gimme All Your Lovin'"
20. "Sharp-Dressed Man "

Personnel

• Snail's-Pace Slim – guitars
  Electric guitar
  An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
  
  , lead vocals.
• Rev Otis Elevator – drums
  Drum kit
  A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
  
  , vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  .
• Ms Zsa Zsa Poltergeist – bass
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  , vocals
  Singing
  Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
  
  .

Production

• Recorded sound – Chris Fallon
• Concert sound – Nick Foote
• Camera
  Video camera
  A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
  
   – John Sellings
• Vision mixing – Simon Travis
• Video editing
  Video editing
  The term video editing can refer to:* Linear video editing, using video tape* Non-linear editing system , using computers with video editing software* Offline editing* Online editing...
  
   – Kurt Adkins.
• Post-production audio editing – Kurt Adkins
• DVD authoring
  DVD authoring
  DVD authoring is the process of creating a DVD video capable of playing on a DVD player. DVD authoring software must conform to the specifications set by the DVD Forum group in 1995...
  
  , DVD mastering
  MPEG encoding
  MPEG encoding is the process of capturing or converting video and/or audio to one of several MPEG video and/or audio standards for distribution or for archiving to optical disc...
  
  , Video digitising – Kurt Adkins.
• Cover layout – Kurt Adkins.
• 'Jimi Hamster' design – Des Penny

Recording error

• When the video was first released an accident occurred during the original recording the result of which was that there was a 30 second gap in the audio during the final track. This occurred due to a mistake being made by the original audio engineer (there is no record of his name) whereby the audio feed had been routed through a DAT
  DAT
  DAT or Dat may refer to:Biology:* Direct agglutination test, any test that uses whole organisms as a means of looking for serum antibody* Direct antiglobulin test, one of two Coombs tests...
  
   tape deck (presumably to make a bootleg
  Bootleg recording
  A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance that was not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. The process of making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging...
  
   recording) before it reached the vision mixing desk (which was also handling the audio feed to the S-VHS video deck making the recording). During the finale the DAT tape ran out and accordingly no longer passed any audio through to the video deck. This wasn't noticed until several weeks later during the post-production video editing. As it wasn't possible to go back and redo it, it was decided to release the video along with an abject apology. It remained this way for 8 years until the remastering to DVD took place where, thanks to modern digital editing tools (Adobe Premiere Pro
  Adobe Premiere Pro
  Adobe Premiere Pro is a timeline-based video editing software application. It is part of the Adobe Creative Suite, a suite of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications developed by Adobe Systems, though it can also be purchased separately. When purchased separately, it comes...
  
   and Adobe Audition
  Adobe Audition
  Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation from Adobe Systems featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view.-Origins:...
  
  ), it was decided to take a section of another show (recorded 18 months after the original ZZ Top show) and insert it into the gap. Although the edit isn't seamless it's close. As a result the band have received many thanks from fans who have been irritated by the gap.