WELCOME BACKSTAGE

	Welcome Backstage
	Directed by Robert Garofalo
	Released on June 26, 2007
	no chart information
	Find it at GEMM
DVD8081X cover [high resolution scan]

T here hadn’t been a Greg Lake Band in more than two decades, so the news that one was back on tour had to met with a mix of surprise and skepticism. The skepticism stems from a single glance at Lake himself, who these days looks like Bill Clinton after a bender in which he gets an ear pierced and a tattoo. The surprise comes from covering your eyes and hearing Lake nail the vocals on “Take A Pebble,” or the ace accompaniment from David Arch and showstealer Florian Opahle. Welcome Backstage is a live-in-the-studio preview of the show complete with lightcraft and one small, well-contained explosion during “Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part 2)” – here called “Welcome Back My Friends” because, hell, who remembers anymore after thirty years? As live discs go it’s a slight affair, around 60 minutes give or take. There’s some offstage shilling in which Lake compares his current band to ELP and King Crimson (my sentiment exack…ack…ack – sorry, hairball) and the promotions manager refers to the Greg Lake Band as a new product at one moment, then invokes ELP and Crimson in the next. Venial sins of the business, of course, which are absolved before the opening “Fanfare” is over. Opahle is an absolute find – maybe you already found him on the earlier Tull tours from 2003 – and Arch doesn’t shrink from the challenging material. In fact, I don’t imagine a reconstituted ELP would have sounded much better than this in 2005. If you picked up the live audio disc (titled simply Greg Lake), Welcome Backstage makes for a nice companion piece. It features a pair of tracks not covered on the live disc (“I Believe In Father Christmas” and “Watching Over You”) plus powerful versions of Karn and Fanfare. There are better ways to spend $20 or 60 minutes, though perhaps not among recent ELParaphernalia.

TRACK LISTING

FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN
TAKE A PEBBLE
FAREWELL TO ARMS
WATCHING OVER YOU
I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS
WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS

CREDITS

GREG LAKE -- vocals, guitar
DAVID ARCH -- keyboards
TREVOR BARRY -- bass
BRETT MORGAN -- drums
FLORIAN OPAHLE -- guitar
Josh Grafton -- 2nd keyboards
Bekki Carpenter -- backing vocals
Jai Ramage -- backing vocals
Lyn Beardsall -- DVD producer
Jo Garofalo -- associate producer

REGION	RELEASE DATE	LABEL	MEDIA	ID NUMBER	FEATURES
US	June 26, 2007	MVD Visual	DVD	DVD8081X

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