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

Originally planned as two separate DVDs ( Live In Tokyo '75 and Grave New World - the movie these were issued as a single DVD, with additional bonus tracks.

Live in Tokyo '75

In 1975, Strawbs played a televised gig in Tokyo which was the first show ever to be beamed out simultaneously across all of Japan's islands. The classic Hero And Heroi/albtrack/ghosts line-up with Cousins and Lambert plus Hawken, Cronk and Coombes really rocks on this show, and provide an opportunity for many who never saw that line-up perfom live to relive those halcyon days.

Grave New World - the movie

Strawbs' epic album Grave New World was one of the first full-length rock videos, made in 1972, long before the ground-breaking "Bohemian Rhapsody" and latterly MTV made it essential for single releases to have videos to accompany them. The film was directed by Steve Turner, was recorded at Television International's studios in London in 1972. The video made intensive use of the then new technique of colour separation overlay, or chroma-keying as it is now known. The images generated at the Whitfield Street studio were recorded at Tvi's editing facility in Windmill Street. The film was edited by Barry Stevens who later edited the promo for Bohemian Rhapsody. The edited master was then transferred via an optical printed to 35mm film stock for projection at cinemas, a hugely expensive operation even today.

I saw it as a double bill some time after its initial release, coupled with either Emerson Lake & Palmer's Pictures At An Exhibition, or Pink Floyd Live In Pompeii. The Cousins/Hooper/Ford/Hudson/Weaver line-up perform most of the tracks from GNW, against a variety of settings - gogo dancers, swirling psychedelia, and most notably - in the case of the stunning "New World" - some powerful and frankly disturbing images of riots, wars and famine, which underline the song's relevance not just to the troubles in Northern Ireland which inspired it, but to all forms of human suffering.