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| A
little bit of retro – Video Show collection gives you sweet nostalgia |
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Strange days have found us. For years, fans’ wishes have been consistently disregarded. Now, all of a sudden a flood of interesting releases from the archives of Genesis and their surroundings sweeps over us. There’s hardly any new material from the main protagonists and whether there will ever be a new Genesis release at all is hidden in the world of dawn in a parallel universe. One more reason to take another look at feats and failures of the past. After the Genesis Songbook and the live DVDs The Way We Walk and Live At Wembley Stadium we are now presented with a collection of music videos Genesis made between 1976 and 1999, and lo and behold, it’s almost complete. To top a fine thing, EMI also releases the 3CD The Platinum Collection. Both came on sale on November 29, 2004, and both provide issues for debate.
The DVD comes in a fine digipak showcasing the covers that the original single releases had. Some of these are real rarities such as the Follow You Follow Me single cover which is twice as exotic because it is probably fake. The digipak comes in a cardboard cover that makes a simple but nice design. The menus are littered with symbols and characters of the last 34 years of Genesis. You can check out writing credits for every track. As for sound quality, you can, of course, choose between dts, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. The screen format is usually 4:3, except for more recent material such as Congo which comes in 16:9. The order of the tracks makes us frown for the first time. The DVD kicks off strongly with No Son Of Mine and ends even stronger with The Carpet Crawlers 1999, but there is no logical order in between. All albums that have videos available are worked through, beginning with the more recent progressing to older releases. So far, so good. But after the A Trick Of The Tail videos, however, we find the Calling All Stations videos. Once more we get the impression that the Wilson era is marginalized thematically and historically. The very first Genesis video ever is, sadly, not included in this collection: I Know What I Like didn’t make it past the critical eyes and ears of Peter Gabriel, so the band decided to leave it for quality reasons. The rest of the collection has a good visual quality throughout. Some gradations are, of course, to be expected. Age, however, cannot be the reason that That’s All looks a bit grainy and Ripples is a visual treat. At some time in 1983 Genesis decided to take the video genre more serious and themselves less so. While the videos for Keep It Dark and Robbery, Assault And Battery look clumsy and embarrassing (but reached cult status for it), Mama or Illegal Alien showcase new artistic energy. Some people assert that, as the quality of the videos rose, the quality of the music sunk in proportion. It cannot be denied that a big part of the success the Invisible Touch album had came from the well-made videos. The same goes for We Can’t Dance with the I Can’t Dance video in heavy rotation on MTV. Genesis truly left their mark in this genre. They were never creative in the peculiar way Peter Gabriel was, but they just did everything that was thrown at them, no matter how silly. The videos, and partly also Phil Collins, made the serious Charterhouse boys something of a comedy troupe continuously taking the mickey at themselves. Illegal Alien, Invisible Touch, Anything She Does, I Can’t Dance and Jesus He Knows Me are a real good laugh and illustrate that Phil Collins is a good and Tony Banks a less accomplished actor. But who cares? Even the died-in-the-wool fans of Genesis in the 70s must have laughed at those videos. When Ray Wilson entered the band, Genesis returned to a more serious way, but remained on an elevated level. Shipwrecked and Congo are little masterpieces of their respective directors. The Carpet Crawlers 1999 video remains a mystery. VH-1 broadcast the video a couple of years ago, but the DVD has a different version. Peter’s verse that was cut from the original video edit is back in, but Phil’s verse is left out completely. Still, this video with all its images from 30 years of band history is the perfect ending for this DVD, regardless of chronology. At the end of the day it may even be said to be a good finale for the whole band if they really don’t want to get together again
What is a
music video without sound? Now this is a completely different story.
Land Of Confusion, one of the masterpieces for which the band
received their only (!) Grammy, is very pale in 5.1. Worse still, those
background sound effects that are essential for the video cannot be
heard at all on any of the three audio tracks. Other songs such as No
Son Of Mine have a more three-dimensional and clearer sound and
Keep It Dark delights with its sound effects. Nick Davis didn’t
overdo it, but we would have wished for a bit more, most of all with
the too-soft The Carpet Crawlers 1999. The brass instruments
surprise you from the rear in No Reply At All, as does the
drum sound in Tonight Tonight Tonight. If you didn’t
know there was a piano in Not About Us, you can find out here.
Note the funky keyboard sounds in the final verse of Jesus He Knows
Me. This video, however has the only big mess-up in the sound department.
As usual, the main vocals come through the center speaker. That makes
sense and is authentic, for who can sing in two voices at one time?
But Phil’s ‘tv preacher’ announcement comes through
the center speaker as well and messes up the cue for the vocals, which
only come through with the second to third word. discuss The
Video Show in our international
FORUMS |
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| Finally released in North America - order online: 
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