Strawbs started out as an acoustic folk band, but developed gradually into a powerful progressive rock band - which is where we meet them in this recording. "Ghosts" was their recent album, and the band consisted of Dave Cousins, Dave Lambert, John Hawken, Chas Cronk and Rod Coombes. A lot of the material is from "Ghosts" (unfortunately not the title track), and of the other stuff we notice a not too well performed version of "New World", an energetic "Hero & Heroine" and a very powerful version of "Down By The Sea".

I never saw Strawbs live in the 70s myself, so it is difficult to say for sure if this is a good concert in a good period, but they do suffer somewhat from one of the curses of the time - unstructured jamming. We don't escape the compulsory drum solo either. But the concert definitely is fun to watch for fans of the band.

Together with the concert we get the film "Grave New World - The Movie", which presents almost all of the tracks from the album, made as one long "music video". However, it is less entertaining than the concert in spite of the technical quality being superior.

As an additional bonus we get three short cuts, the most interesting of which is a 1970 recording where the wholly acoustic and drum-less band performs "The Sun Comes Shining Through", which coincidentally was Rick Wakeman's TV debut.

Back to index