THE VIDEO SHOW

I resisted to buy these videos when they were available in two VHS videocassettes in the `90s. I saw some of them broadcasted on TV and I even recorded some of them from those TV broadcasts in the late `80s and early `90s. Some of them were included in the "The Way We Walk - In Concert " double LaserDisc, so I wasn`t very interested to buy them. But recently I saw this DVD, and I finally bought it, more for the curiosity to see the videoclips which I never have seen before. It was a good buy. I finally have these videoclips from GENESIS with very good images, and most of all, with excellent audio quality in most of them, even with new sound mixings! I never bought agian some of their albums in the CD format because they are not among my favourite albums from them (the "Abacab", "Genesis" and "Invisible Touch" albums), but in this DVD the sound in the songs taken from those albums is very good (without really influencing me to buy those albums in the CD format!).

Yes, it is a good collection of videoclips, mainly done during their most commercial albums in the eighties-nineties. But my main interest was to see the very old videoclips from the "A Trick of the Tail" , "...and then there were three..." and "Duke" album songs. I wasn`t disappointed!

This DVD starts with five videoclips done for the "We Can`t Dance" album singles. With the exception of the "Tell Me Why" videoclip, I have the other four included in the "The Way We Walk-In Concert" LaserDisc. The videos for "No Son of Mine" and "Tell Me Why" are part of the "serious songs" of the band. Both are very good, but the video for "Tell Me Why" has images of people living in mysery and hunger. I think that one of Phil Collins`influences to the band was/is his interest in social problems. He was/is also a very good actor / comedian, a funny character who also works well in serious roles like he does in "No Son of Mine", but his funny side as an actor appears very well in the "I Can`t Dance" and "Jesus He Knows Me" videos. I think that he and the band were more mature by 1992-93 to treat social problems in the right way. But in the video done for "Illegal Alien", while their intentions could have been to treat an international social problem in a funny way, I really could say that it was their biggest mistake , musically and lyrically, and the video for this song doesn`t help it very much to be seen less offensive as the song without images sounds for me and maybe for other people. But by 1991-92 it seems that they were much better informed and really concerned about social problems, so "Illegal Alien" was an exercise in bad taste.

There is not much variety in the content of the videoclips. Many of them are based in showing them just doing playback to the pre-recorded music. The real "Star" in most of the videos is Collins, because Rutherford and Banks look more comfortable leaving Collins do his antics.

"Anything She Does" was a videoclip that I only saw once on TV, and I couldn`t remembe nothing about it. It has the special appearance of British comedian Benny Hill (whose TV shows were broadcasted here on TV in the early ninenties). It is a funny video with his appearance. "Land of Confusion" has a vey good and funny videoclip done with puppets. Among the puppets shown there are some done for Ronald Reagan and wife, Michael Jackson and the members of GENESIS` themselves. I also saw on TV once the videoclip for "Mama" . It is really a good sinister videoclip done with an edited version of the song. It seems that for the "Genesis" album they recorded the videoclips for the songs before the album was released, because in the inner sleeve of that album some images of these videos appear. The videoclip for "Home by the Sea / Second Home by the Sea" is really a playback of the studio track while the band pretends to be playing the song in concert. "Paperlate" is another playback of the audio of the song during an appearance of the band in a TV show with audience in May 1982.

The videoclip for "Misunderstanding" was filmed in one city of the U.S. (Los Angeles, I think), with the band appearing on the streets, with Collins`singing while driving a car and the other two members of the band playing their instruments on the street or in another car. They use some old cars and shirts which look from THE BEACH BOYS`s days in the 60s!

The videos which in my opinion have the best audio quality, with very good improvements are:

"Follow You Folow Me": in this video, the band appear as a trio "playing" the song on stage. Collins´lead vocals are more clear in this sound mixing.

"Many Too Many": I remember that there was another version of this video which was briefly shown in the "Genesis- A History" VHS videocassette, with the band filmed "playing" as a trio at the 1978 Knebworth Festival`s stage (I think) without audience. This DVD version is maybe a different take done in the same day.

The videoclip for the "A Trick of the Tail" single is also funny, with Collins showing since then that he really was a very good frontman for the band, and that Peter Gabriel`s departure really didn`t represent the end of the band. In this videoclip, the sound mixing is also very good, bringing to the front Steve Hackett`s guitar.

The most interesting videoclip for me in this DVD is for "Ripples", with a very good playback peformance by the band, "playing" the whole song, and again with a very good sound mixing which again brings to the front Hackett`s very good lead guitar parts.

The videoclip for "Robbery, Assault & Battery" again shows Collins`s skills as an actor, while the other members of the band play the roles of policemen trying to capture Collins` thief character. One interesting thing in this videoclip is the showing of Tony Banks` hands while he plays the keyboard solos of this song. It shows why he is considered as a very good keyboard player.

The videclip for "The Carpet Crawlers 1999"is not very interesting for me, being done with an edited version of the song.

Finally, the videoclips done for the "Calling All Stations" album singles are the less interesting for me. They are "dark", "artsy", and they obviously lack Phil Collins`presence. Without him, the band became a "dark" band without sense of humour. Ray Wilson is a good singer, but as as I wrote in my review for that album, I think that he wasn`t the right choice of lead singer for the band after Collins left. Also, these videoclips were more done with the aim to capture the attention of the young people of the late nineties, so, in my opinion, they are similar in image as the image that MARILLION has for some of their album covers since Steve Hogarth became their lead singer.

In conclusion, this is a good collection of videos, most of them of good quality, more for the GENESIS ` long time fans.