STRAWBS LIVE IN TOKYO '75 / GRAVE NEW WORLD THE MOVIE

I had set out to write a review that would do justice to this variegated video, but I was only halfway through when it began resembling a graduate thesis, so I perhaps subconsciously hit whatever key combination I tend to hit every so often that makes everything I typed irreversibly disappear and sends me to another page. Why do they make keys like that...never mind.

So instead you get the Coles Notes version. This release is made up of 5 distinct parts, 2 of which form the basis for a DVD, 2 of which had obviously been kicking around for while waiting for a release to which they could be added, and one of which was to promote a new (at the time) album.

Chronologically, the features are...

A Granada Television spot from 1970 that was one of the group's last appearances as a trio, except it wasn't a trio because soon to be group member Rick Wakeman was guesting on keys in his first ever TV credit. This was probably not long before the band pulled up its folk by the roots and dropped them in acid just to make extra sure. They perform "Till The Sun Comes Shining Through" from "Dragonfly" and do it well, other than I have to wonder if the late Tony Hooper was always this wooden. I mean, he had been on stage for years by then.

Grave New World the movie. This early music video featuring Strawbs breakthrough album is riddled with flaws, is laughably lo tech, and is a weird synthesis of prog rock earnestness and Godspell psalms. The footage during "New World" is more over the top than the song, which takes some doing, "Ah Me Ah My" soft shoes directly into the music hall years before QUEEN attempted it. The young lady miming the non human protagonist in "The Flower and the Young Man" is certainly flexible and as mesmerizing as that old lava lamp in your dentist's office, but I'm guessing that, unless the last 50 years have been uneventful, she hasn't included this performance on even the long form version of her resume for at least 49 years. But in spite of all these and many more "what?" moments, it captures the historical context of the time better than the album or even a live performance could do. The ensemble performances of "Benedictus and "Tomorrow" mesh well with the touching scenes and flashbacks in "On Growing Older", and "Journey's End".

Just before "Ghosts" was released, the A&M issued "Grace Darling" as a Christmas single in England and ventured to the lighthouse where the real heroine of that name lived. The video captures bracing footage of the trip by sea and I got a chill just watching it. Shame the song did not chart as well as the lighthouse.

In a modest way, Strawbs had conquered North America, particularly Canada, by 1975, but they made a trip to Japan to promote themselves and "Ghosts". The live performance was apparently the first to be simulcast to all the major Japanese islands. It's only 40 minutes and a few are ill-spent on the drum solo that introduced "Hero and Heroine", thankfully in a blistering version, but it captures the spirit of the band's stage act at the time, with a pleasing mix of ballads like "You and I", epics like "Down by the Sea", and rockers like "Just Love".

Having resided in the 1970-1975 time frame for its first 4 acts, the finale is a video shot in 2002 at Rick Wakeman's studio during the recording of his collaboration with Dave Cousins called "Hummingbird". The duo and mad fiddling guest Ric Sanders look to be having fun and the song "The Young Pretender" is a winner which apparently went back decades but had never appeared on a Strawbs related album until then.

This multifaceted DVD would be worth the acquisition simply because it includes the only concert footage from Strawbs during their peak period, but the Grave New World video just adds to the enticements, and the extras are all as valuable both historically and musically as the group itself.