PROGRESSIVE ROCK ANTHOLOGY

It is challenging to review a video/DVD, especially if it contains your favourite artists or music genre. Reviewing visual material should avoid or at least not put forefront the music itself, but rather the purpose and quality of video material. It is of course, tricky. "Progressive Rock Anthology" is a catchy and extremely misleading title because we can't call "anthology" any collection that lacks giants of the genre like GENESIS, YES, KING CRIMSON, to name a few. On the other hand, this collection is interesting because it features the famous "second league" prog stars (except ELP and Wakeman), those who never reached big commercial success or popularity like the above.

ELP's "Take a Pebble" is only an excerpt from a gig in 1971 and apart from being interesting for the fans, nothing special to see. CARAVAN's "For Richard" is an excellent performance of the reformed original line-up, with mostly static camera giving you a feel you are there in the audience. CURVED AIR's "Vivaldi" is a dissapointment. Camera is focused too much on Darryl Way during his lengthy violin exhibition, you don't see much of the band and Sonja is present only for few seconds. Of course there is that irritating aquarium fish sequences. Blah, the director was stoned or something... FAMILY shot was nothing special, I expected more interesting stuff. FOCUS are portrayed performing "Hocus Pocus" live in a studio, and Van Leer exposed his showmanship extravanganza with organ/flute/vocals, while Akkerman bursting out in laugh when looking at him during the yodeling part. Nice and funny to see. NEKTAR performs a composition not familiar to me, with interesting "overlapping" edit between an old 1975 and newer 199? performances of the same song. During the Wakeman's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" I fell asleep due to his boring "look at me surrounded by ten thousand keyboards" performance, as usual. Finally, BJH did a nice retrospective to their famous hit "Mockingbird", performed in recent years. As a bonus, two songs by a "new generation" of prog rockers are included: MOSTLY AUTUMN and KARNATAKA, and they are both interesting, featuring female vocals, but again they can hardly break any new grounds. At least IMO based on this watching and not hearing them before.

I cannot recommend this DVD as an essential or obligatory watching to average prog fans. Only glimpses of what these artists can or could do are present, so it is more suited for collectors of rare video shots. Still, those novices who never got a clear picture of what that "progressive rock" represents, can get a decent "background information" on this often disputed genre.