I’m going through a bit of a Steve Hackett renaissance at the moment. What with the two acoustic gigs I’ve seen and the multitude of recordings I’ve purchased over the last few months, it’s really a Hackett bean-feast at Chez Lock. This particular release I have been waiting for for nearly a decade. When we had satellite TV, I used to tune into all the German TV channels – OK, most of the time I was looking for pornography 🙂 but every weekend, some of the German channels (Bayern, was one of them) used to play old rock concerts from the 1970s. From this show, I managed to tape performances from Marillion, Peter Hammill and Steve Hackett. The only problem with the Steve Hackett concert was that I missed the first fifteen minutes of the show. This galled me because it was such a fine performance and it was never repeated again while I had the old dish.
Anyway, the self-same concert, recorded on 8 November 1978, is now available for the first time on DVD. I got my copy direct from SH’s online shop and so my copy has his signature scribbled on the cover…how dare he deface my DVD sleeve! 🙂 The performance is all here from me this time and we get to see Steve and his band (featuring his brother John) performing numbers from his first three solo albums.
The DVD opens with a pretty incendiary version of “Please Don’t Touch” and I still can’t forgive Genesis for not recording a version of this for their Wind & Wuthering album. The fools! But it doesn’t matter because Steve has done well on his own and this DVD shows just how strong he was so soon after leaving the band. Pete Hicks helps out on vocals for “Racing in A” and “Narnia”, but I’ve never been a particular fan of either song. I prefer the instrumentals. And we do get them…”Ace of Wands”, “A Tower Struck Down” and “Spectral Mornings” all get a strong outing, with Steve using his eBow for the latter track there. You also get to see/hear SH using the infamous Optigan keyboard for one number and it really is a curiosity. I am glad that they included it because it is a funny little number and one thing you always get with Hackett is a lot of dry humour. From the intros to the band (David Bailey on camera – cue applause from the unwitting German audience) to the use of filters on his voice for Carry on Up the Vicarage, you can see why all the fun stuff disappeared from Genesis after his departure.
The concert itself ends with a great medley consisting of the sublime “Shadow of the Heirophant”, complete with Dik Cadbury pulling off amazing vocal gymnastics to perform the vocals that were laid down by Sally Oldfield on the original (all together now: get yer knackers out of the vice, Dik!), which seques into an evil version of “The Angel of Mons” ending with drummer John Shearer going completely apeshit and providing the inspiration for Animal from The Muppets at the end of that track.
But it doesn’t end there… As this is DVD, you get an extra 14 minutes of unreleased stuff that wasn’t deemed fit for human consumption. So “Carry on Up The Vicarage” and “Star of Sirius” are now available to be heard. Neither is particularly strong, but it is good to hear/see them here.
The DVD itself features a 5.1 surround mix, but it didn’t really provided any extra depth to the performance. The really clever thing is that you can programme the DVD to playback the content in any order, so you can seemlessly add the cut footage back into the concert for a complete Hackett experience.
Look, I am a complete Hackett fan, so I say: BUY THIS DVD NOW! You get a great view of SH in the 1970s and it means you can throw away that crappy copy you bought for £25 off eBay, you moron! 🙂

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