Fans of Renaissance and Annie Haslam

The Holy Grail of Renaissance Videos

Take a deep breath and reach for a handkerchief: A complete high-quality live concert video of the classic lineup at their peak has finally emerged.

This is a momentous development because of the combination of:

Classic 1972-1979 lineup
Complete live performance
High production quality (video/audio as well as camerawork, direction, and editing)

Of the candidates, only one meets these "holy grail" requirements: BBC Sight and Sound 1977, an hour-long BBC television and FM radio simulcast. All but one track from this show appear on the BBC Sessions double CD. One track recently appeared on YouTube, sparking lively discussion about the rest. A second video emerged today, with the rest surely to follow quickly.

(Update: The YouTube videos are coming fast and furious now. You can find them all here.)

BBC has been rerunning a handful of episodes of other bands in the last couple years; maybe there's hope for the restoration and re-broadcast of this one, followed by a DVD release.

Comment by Sharon Brown on August 2, 2010 at 11:34am: Too bad it can't be made available commercially. I love the clips from it.

Comment by Jean-Luc on August 9, 2010 at 11:11am: Another set of videos, complete and claimed HD, by Ljerk.

Update 21st september 2011.

Ljerk's account has been deleted earlier this year. He came back recently as LjerkDiamondHeart. So far he uploaded one song from the show, Can You Hear Me ?

Comment by Esa on August 9, 2010 at 11:20am: The titles suggest that these are from the PAL version of the footage which has higher vertical resolution (576 visible scan lines) than the NTSC conversion (480 visible scan lines) that the first set of videos came from, upconverted to HD resolution. Probably some noise cleanup and digital enhancement as well -- looks great!

Comment by Esa on August 15, 2010 at 12:42pm: Information about the venue:

http://www.btinternet.com/~roger.beckwith/bh/hippodrome/hippodrome.htm

On the video you can see in shots from behind the drumkit and keyboard rig that the audience sat upstairs and floor level was dedicated to cameras (the big old kind that rolled on wheels) and recording equipment. Jon Camp alludes to this at the end of Carpet of the Sun where he greets the audience "in the upper regions there."

Comment by Jean-Luc on August 16, 2010 at 9:55am: I have added Ljerk's videos in the comments of all videos tagged bbc-1977.
Ljerk has also made a complete playlist of the show:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C2E6FA605F92B6F8

and here is an embedded player of the whole thing:

You can see my collection of screen captures in two albums (would you believe, would say Jon Camp), one on facebook, the other here at Renaissance Fanfare:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19059&id=100000329190731&...

http://prologue.ning.com/photo/albums/bbc-sight-sound

Comment by Esa on October 12, 2010 at 7:22pm: According to Dave Owen,

"The only problem with this series was that the audience didn't know who they were buying tickets for, so there were probably not many of the bands fans there. I found this out from a Gentle Giant commentry track from a DVD of their Sight and Sound. As a result most bands only got polite applause."

Comment by Jean-Luc on February 13, 2011 at 12:19am: Complete show in one video

Comment by Jean-Luc on February 26, 2011 at 4:21am: While Ljerk's YouTube account has been deleted, the complete show can still be seen as a playlist, thanks to 2old2rock:

http://prologue.be/videos/bbcsightandsound.htm

Comment by Graham Tarry on July 17, 2011 at 4:10pm: So want this on DVD! Saw them 9 months later at the Palace Theatre in Manchester with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Holy Grail of Renaissance Videos

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