Although at just 24 minutes in length this concert video is a bit short — it features only two full songs, just one of which, "The Lady Lies," is from the actual performance advertised — for the hardcore Genesis fan you could actually rate Remember Knebworth 1978 as a fairly essential live document of a band caught in transition.
No, this isn't the "holy grail" of something like the complete The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway performed live, back when Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett were part of the band.
For that, the best you'll probably be able to do are grainy snippets of footage on either bootlegs, or one of those "critical analysis" DVDs like Inside Genesis. Though many fans still believe that a pristine video document of that particular 1975 tour does exist. Somewhere, anyway...
As common as live DVD concert footage from the latter "Phil Collins era" — when Genesis transitioned into a more commercial pop act driven by MTV videos — is, live stuff from those earlier days as a more progressive rock band is far harder to find. The best of the officially released live material from this period can be found on the bonus DVDs included in the recently expanded versions of albums like Trick Of The Tail and And Then There Were Three.
So what makes this one even just a little bit special?
Well, for one thing it has a certain charm about it. This 24 minute "concert" film documents the entire lead-up to Genesis' headlining gig at the 1978 Knebworth festival in England. Genesis were already huge in Europe at the time, and about an album away from headlining arenas in the States.
The package itself has a reproduction of the original Knebworth festival programme, that includes everything from the ads, to things like prices for the concessions (a delectable concert-goers menu of things like "sausage rolls" which went for 15p). It also features unintentionally humorous descriptions of such support acts as Jefferson Starship, Devo, and a then up and coming Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (did you know Petty hates disco music?).
Article comments
1 - Tom Johnson
I wondered what this was all about. I saw that it was only 20 or so minutes long and couldn't figure out why it was even being released. $20 for 24 minutes of music . . . that's not a very good deal. They could have at least added in the audio of the concert, which I have as a very good bootleg from radio station pre-FM broadcast vinyl that I downloaded from the Genesis Movement a while back. Weird.