IN LONDON

The status of this release is a bit strange: is it a legit release or not? Sold in legit record shops in my city and in well-known websites dedicated to sell CDs and DVDs around the world- I bought it in a legit record shop in my city five months ago. I asked then in the Forums in this website about to include this DVD the Prog Archives database. Finally, after a brief discussion with other Collaborators I didn`t include it. But what happened? For my surprise, it has been added to the Prog Archives database, so I`m going to write a review about it.

GENESIS was a very important band for me when I was a teenager. In fact, in 1980 I was becoming a big fan of the band. After buying for the very first time in 1979 their album called "...and then there were three...", by 1982 I had all their albums released until then. I also read in a Mexican Rock Magazine (now defunct) a review from a "Duke Tour" concert from the Hammesrmith Odeon in London. I hoped to one day to see a video from this tour. In December last year, I visited several of the legit websites dedicated to sell CDs and DVDs, Mexican and from foreign countries, and I was surprised to find at last a concert video from their 1980 tour. I didn`t buy it online because the price was higher due to the transportation to my house, and I couldn`t go to buy it then due to a second episode of sciatica (the first was in late 2004, when I joined Prog Archives as a Prog Reviewer) which didn`t let me walk long distances and even to stand up for more than 15 minutes! So, it was until late January this year that I could go to a record shop and buy this DVD.

Now, writing about this video, I`m going to write some commentaries:

"Deep in the Motherlode": as I wrote before, this song in this DVD has bad mixing, because the drums and the bass guitar are louder than the other instruments, and the keyboards are almost lost in the mixing.

"Dancing with the Moonlit Knight": a fragment from this song only.

"Carpet Crawl": a good version.

"Squonk": Rutherford has some problems to play the bass pedals during the first part of the song, but finally he resolves this problem for the rest of the song.

"One for the Vine": good electric piano playing from Banks, good drums too by Thompson and Collins.

The "Duke Medley" ("Behind the Lines", "Duchess", "Guide Vocal", "Turn it on Again", "Duke`s Travels", "Duke`s End"): each songis played in its entirety one after the other with little time passing between them. Collins`"Story of Albert" told before the Medley starts is funny, but weird, bizarre!

"Say It`s Alright Joe": with Phil acting the character of a sad drunk in a Bar. Very good interpretation, but this acting makes the song longer than the studio version, and a bit boring at the end.

"The Lady Lies": with Phil again acting characters of the Lady who tells lies and her villain friend. Very good guitar solo by Daryl Stuermer, great drums by Chester Thompson and very good synth solo by Tony Banks.

"Ripples": it is a shame that a very good song like this was cut due to a cameras` power failure. In this video, only the last part of the song is shown, while Mike Rutherford plays a guitar synth and Stuermer plays a very good guitar solo. It seems that Collins also played a bit on a little keyboard, because he can be seen briefly doing it.

"In the Cage" / "Slippermen" / "Afterglow": vey good versions, but with the "Slippermen" medley is shorter than in other tours.

"Follow You, Follow Me": good version similar as the one released in the "Three Sides Live" album.

"Dance in a Volcano" and "Los Endos": good versions too, but a bit different to other live versions.

"I Know What I Like": a good version, too.

In conclusion, this is a very good concert DVD, despite the quality of the images and sound is not as similar as in other concert DVDs from this band. It seems that it was recorded and filmed for a TV Broadcast, but I could be wrong.

The Duke of London

Long had I lived under the false impression that Genesis became a commercial pop band straight after (my favorite Genesis member) Steve Hackett left the band in 1977. I now know that I was very wrong about that! This excellent 1980 concert proved it to me. The only songs here that might be considered commercial pop songs are Follow You, Follow Me and possibly Turn It On Again. However, both of these are really good songs anyway! (and nowhere near the blatant commerciality of later things like Invisible Touch).

However, the sound and picture quality is not as good as the actual concert. If it was I would have been happy to give this five stars! Considering my low expectations and the low prize I paid for this, watching it was a true revelation for me (from Genesis to revelation?!) I had heard about half the tracks before and there are several songs here from my favorite Genesis albums A Trick Of The Tale and Wind And Wuthering as well as some Gabriel- era tracks. This led me to check this out.

The biggest positive surprise for me was in the (then) new tracks, especielly the ones from the And Then There Were Three album. The opener Deep In The Motherlode (misspelled on the box as Deep In The Motherlodge) is a great song and I have since bought the studio album from where it originally came - the underrated And Then There Were Three. One For the Vine from Wind And Wuthering is fantastic as are most of the other tracks here! One portion of the concert is devoted to material from the then brand new Duke album. This is another, but sadly the last, very good Genesis album.

Maybe this concert can be made better if it is given an upgrade in terms of picture and sound quality in the future. Until then, this version is recommended! Genesis is currently re-releasing all their studio albums on hybrid SACD/DVD-Audio. On the DVD-Audio version of Duke there is, as an extra feature, a selection of live tracks from this very show in London in 1980. Compared to this DVD, the bonus feature on the Duke DVD-Audio is presented in much better sound and picture quality. Too bad it isn't the whole show!

However, this means that it would be possible to upgrade the Live In London DVD and give it the same sound and picture quality as the selection on the Duke feature. We can only hope that it happens! Until then, this is recommended.

I have seen this DVD on the Japanese edition few years ago and was disappointed with the picture quality and the technical problems that was create because of a bad video transfer. Here the problems have been fixed and there is also a nice 5.1 mix that is not mind-blowing because of the original source of the sound. For those who want a great picture quality will have to pass on this one because it's dark and lacking of clarity. But for a Genesis fan, this is a must have, especially if you want the last really good album by the band, Duke. So the set list is very enjoyable with the songs from that album, with 4 songs of "And Then They were three", mix with some old favorites as well for a complete 2 hours and 10 minutes., concert. The performance is excellent from the band and give you a nice document of where Genesis was 30 years ago.

#8 Review

This is a different one, for a DVD this time, and it's a really weird one.

First i want to adress and say, Happy New Year, it's 2:42am here while i'm writing this and because of that i wanted to do something a little bit different, i'm going talk about the DVD on it's general aspects and not by song this time.

This DVD has a pretty weird release, i never thought of it being considered here, i mean as a real item for Genesis collectors, i have read the back of the box and it says that it was made in Argentina by 3rd party publisher called "masterplan", and under the license of "RECORDS VERTRIEBSGES" wich is considered as a company that releases only bootlegs or as unofficial releases, and that's one of the reasons that makes it for me not as a collectable item... but, this DVD is pretty cheap and probably one of the only ones from that old era that you can get now... or atleast back 4 years ago when i got it, so counting the previous antecedents, even tho it's a bootleg, it's still an item that could well sit on your collection if you're being a begginer with a Genesis collection like me. As a weird fact, this DVD still has trademarks for Virgin and One World Music inc., wich are probably the ones that holded the property but never released, the curious think about it is that they're credited on a really small font.

That was about the release, but what about the product itself? Well, it is certainly lacking in quality, is just like a normal bootleg DVD, it includes nothing in the inside aside from the disc, and that one has the same picture as the one on the box, and the design is pretty basic and the box itself is made of a pretty cheap plastic. Wich i find really interesting is that the list on the back of the box it's incredibly inacurate, just as the menu on the DVD (wich is also pretty basic), where they say that Mike Rutherford only played Bass, when he clearly played Guitar also, the same for Daryl Stuermer who played bass also, that's the least tho, because the songs... oh god, it says "Motherlodge" wich curiously enough changed on the title of the song when they were playing to the real title "Motherlode", also they made a mistake that has happened in other DVDs and albums as well, calling the song "Carpet Crawlers" as "Carpet Crawl" and calling "The Colony of Slippermen" just as "Slippermen".

Inside the DVD you'll find that the quality is not very good, even for a CRT TV, it's to dark and has a lot of noise on the image, and also the audio quality isn't very good, it has some moments but then it fails incredibly, even at some point one song is heard with a different sound quality than the rest (i think that it was One for the Vine, i don't remember, but it was before Behind the Lines). And to add insult to injury, the DVD chops the concert when it passes from "The Lady Lies" to "Ripples (PT. 2)" wich is sad, i wanted to listen to all that song.

Now for the performance, it was pretty weird, sometimes mixed, for example, in Duke's End, they play too fast, like they were trying to just finish it, maybe show how talented they were at the moment, and it didn't sound good. Then there's the exact opposite, Say it's alright Joe was too long, too slow, it was like 40% longer for no real reason. But then there are brilliant executions, like in the end with "I Know What i Like" where Tony Banks played the first notes from "Visions of Angels" (from the 1970 Genesis album Trespass) wich was pretty and Daryl Stuermer played some notes from "Flying on a Windshield" wich was neat.

And finally for the song selection, i'm happy with it, because of this DVD i started to enjoy Duke, and i'd later enjoy ... And then there where three..., and because of that i admire a lot more this album, it feels like the last concert before they started doing just medleys, but it still lacked a lot more of the old songs, i missed Foxtrot specially.

So in all, really nice songs, there where 21 songs in total in 2 hours with almost 10 minutes, 4 from ...and then there were three..., 2 from Selling England by the Pound, 3 (or i should say 2 1/2) from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, 4 (or i should say 3 1/2 because Ripples is cutted on the DVD) from A Trick of the Tail, 2 from Wind and Wuthering and 6 from Duke (wich is the whole Duke Suite, wich is nice).

All in all, this isn't the best Genesis product you can get, but it's still a nice welcome adition, atleast for me, it shows how brilliant Genesis still was with their later 1978 and 1980 albums, it shows the story of Duke and other curious ways that Phil Collins used to present the songs while messing with the public, but the sound and image quality aren't good, the concert is not complete and it's probably not original. While still gets the point done, i don't recommend this to hardcore Genesis collectors, and so i think that is good, but not essential, you won't feel bad if you pass this release, but you'll feel happy if you're starting a Genesis collection... after a few years ofcourse, it was slow to grow on me.

That means 3 stars, and my final score it's a 65 out of 100... and i finished this at 3:30am.