Genesis - The Way We Walk
I think I should probably start this review by mentioning the fact that I’m not altogether a huge fan of Genesis. Not to say that I dislike them, it’s just not the sort of music I would buy for myself. I personally don’t think that this will get in the way of the review however as I believe you have to be impartial when reviewing a music DVD and simply base your...
I think I should probably start this review by mentioning the fact that I’m not altogether a huge fan of Genesis. Not to say that I dislike them, it’s just not the sort of music I would buy for myself. I personally don’t think that this will get in the way of the review however as I believe you have to be impartial when reviewing a music DVD and simply base your review on the quality of the disk, not on how you feel about the music.
This DVD double set is basically a recording of Genesis “The way we walk” live concert filmed at London’s Earls Court in 1992. The concert is just over two hours longs and is split between the two disks with just over an hour on each one. The back of the box states over 8 hours of footage and I’ll explain why when I in just a moment. Firstly I’ll just run through the live tracks contained in each disk.
Disk 1
Land Of Confusion
No Son of Mine
Driving The Last Spike
Old Medley (A collection of 8 older Genesis songs)
Fading Lights
Jesus He Knows Me
Disk 2
Dreaming While You Sleep
Home By The Sea
Hold On My Heart
Domino
The Drum Thing
I Can’t Dance
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
Invisible Touch
Turn It On Again
Both disks have exactly the same format of menus with six main buttons on the static main page. The options are Concert, Tracks, Audio, Cameras, Extras and Info. Selecting concert will start playing the concert from beginning to end (depending which disk you are currently playing). Tracks allows you to jump to any track on that disks, there is one chapter on the disk per track. Stereo allows you to choose between, Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround or the commentary track.
Cameras allows you to choose which camera angle you wish to view the concert from (more on this later). Extras brings up the extra features menu and Info contains some more information on the various camera angles and lays out a camera map for the whole concert.
Video / Audio
All video on the disks is presented in a 4:3 full frame format. I’m not sure whether this is a pan & scan of a widescreen original or the original video format. While the picture quality is ok, it’s by no means the best I’ve ever seen. The picture can be very soft in places and I’m sure I noticed some artefact's on some darker sections of the screen.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is very good. A lot of the crowd chatter and general noise gets driven to the rear speakers. This really helps to immerse you into the concert and gives a real feeling of being there. There is also an original Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack for the stereo purists out there.
Extras
Now we come onto the explanation of why there’s 8 hours of footage included. This is all to do with camera angles. The disks utilise the seldom-used multi-angle feature of DVD to provide up to four different camera angles at any point in the concert. The Info button from the main menu gives a map of how many cameras were available during the concert and how many can be viewed during each track. Just to show one example on the video of “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” you can use any one of the four following angles.
1. Main Video
2. Phil
3. TonyCam
4. Hanheld
I think this is an excellent use for the multi-angle feature and would love to see it utilised more on this kind of DVD.
There’s an interviews section that split between the two disks. There are three separates individual interviews with Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins. Each interview is presented as a text screen showing a selection of questions and when you select the question you get the videoed response. These can vary in length from one to several minutes.
Disk 1 has the original concert programme on screen for you to read through. You can scroll through the programme images one at a time and occasionally a text icon will pop up that allows you to read the accompanying text.
Disk 2 contains a photo gallery. It contains various shots of the band and the concert and runs for just over 2 minutes. The gallery is accompanied by an instrumental music track.
Finally we come to the commentary track from the band members. I’m afraid to say that the track is rather disappointing for two particular reasons. Firstly the band don’t actually say that much, sometimes minutes can go buy and nothing will be said. When a conversation does start up several of the band members seem to be mumbling and it is difficult to hear what they are saying. This comes onto the second problem. It seemed to me that when someone does speak the original soundtrack of the concert is still too loud. This combined with the quiet voices made me miss whole sections of conversation.
Overall
Apart from the poor commentary track and less than reference quality video, I think this a nicely put together DVD package. The usage of the multi angle feature is an excellent idea and has been put together well. The audio quality is excellent, especially on the Dolby Digital 5.1 track.
If you are a fan then I don’t think there’s any question of it, this has to be one to add to your collection. As someone who isn’t a huge fan of Genesis, I still feel that the quality of the whole package rightly deserves a 4 out of 5.
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