Description
Greenbelt Live! is a multi-artist soundtrack recording released on the British label Marshalls in 1979. The album was recorded live at the Greenbelt Festival in Odell, Bedfordshire, England, between 24th – 27th August 1979, on the RAK Records Mobile. Engineered by Doug Hopkins and Tim Summerhayes and produced by Hopkins and Tony Tew. Mixed by Doug Hopkins at RAK Studios in London, England. The album was pressed on green vinyl and released with a gatefold cover. Also featuring a 24 page booklet and a fold-out poster of the cover artwork.
Grenville Film Productions Limited in association with Marshalls Publishing presents Greenbelt Live! Original Soundtrack Recording. The Original soundtrack recording of the Grenville Film, produced and directed by Tony Tew. [ Official website: Greenbelt Festival – Where arts, faith and justice collide ]
In 1983, a retrospective entitled Greenbelt 74-83 was released on Myrrh Records. In 1998, another retrospective entitled Greenbelt.25 (1973-1998) was released on ICC.
Cool album of live performances from Britain’s Greenbelt festival. It’s full rock-and-roll mode for many of your favorite Jesus music heavyweights, including Bryn Haworth («Working For Love»), Garth Hewitt («May You Live To Dance (On Your Own Grave)»), Cliff Richard («Yes, He Lives»), Randy Stonehill («Good News») and Larry Norman («Let The Tape Keep Rolling»), all of whom have a full band accompanying. Also rocking strong are Giantkiller with «Kingdom Come» and Swedish blues-rockers Vatten with «Dreamer». One of the more obscure bands in the lineup is the energetic rock/soul outfit Kainos with a surging rendition of «Put A Little Love In Your Heart». Also includes performances by Lamb («I’m Going To Build My World Around You») and Aleksander John («Bittersweet Song»). Deluxe packaging includes fancy green vinyl, gate-fold cover, a poster and a 24 page color booklet with commentary, bios, discographies and photos. [Ken Scott, The Archivist, 4th edition]
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. Bryn Haworth – “Working For Love”
A2. Giantkiller – “Kingdom Come”
A3. Lamb – “I’m Going To Build My World Around You”
A4. Cliff Richard – “Yes He Lives”
A5. Kainos – “Put A Little Love In Your Heart”
Side Two
B1. Garth Hewitt – “May You Live To Dance (On Your Own Grave)”
B2. Vatten – “The Dreamer”
B3. Aleksander John – “Bittersweet Song”
B4. Randy Stonehill – “Good News”
B5. Larry Norman – “Let The Tape Keep Rolling”
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and 12-inch vinyl LP by Marshalls. “Laser Love” by After the Fire was featured in the Greenbelt Live! film itself, though not included on the accompanying soundtrack release (though included in the 24 page color booklet enclosed with the vinyl edition of the album).
Gatefold Cover Artwork
Inside Gatefold Cover
The album was pressed on green vinyl.
Greenbelt Live! Original Soundtrack Recording, Enclosed Booklet
The Greenbelt 40: The Journey So Far DVD. A Blue Hippo Media and Greenbelt production in association with Christian Aid. Director: Pip Piper. Producers: Rob Taylor and Sarah Green.
A 70 minute film rich with rare archive and great music from across 4 decades including key interviews with the people who started the Greenbelt festival and those who have guided it across the years. The film honestly reflects the journey so far and takes a peek into the festivals future. If you have been you will know why Greenbelt is so special, if you haven’t this film will show you why.
Greenbelt – The Story So Far: Forty years of faith, arts and justice (DVD)
Blue Hippo Media, 70 minutes + 6 minute bonus featureGiven that the 2012 Greenbelt festival featured 39.4 days of programming, editing down four decades of the event’s history to 70 minutes requires ruthless removal of shortlisted footage, a keen ear to pick up what has been important over that time, and sympathetic discernment to make the film feel ‘right’ to festival goers.
As someone who has been to Greenbelt (with a short break in the late ’90s – our young kids weren’t too keen at that stage) since the second festival in 1975, I can testify that this is one bang-on editing job.
Greenbelt started out as a Christian arts festival and has since clarified its focus as ‘faith, art and justice’. It is probably the oldest and longest-lasting Christian festival of its type anywhere in the world, pre-dating Holland’s Flevo and outliving America’s Cornerstone. This record is no talking heads piece, as images from its history constantly flow beneath the commentators’ voices.
The early years backing music from Malcolm and Alwyn, Norman Barratt, After the Fire and Larry Norman catches the mood of those times; private setting-out-from-home footage gets inside the festival-goer’s life and a well-chosen selection of commentators reflects the leading lights of the event’s history (with the possible exception of Bishop Graham Cray, a wise speaker and former festival chairman, who makes no appearance here).
The film records Greenbelt’s formation as a Christian arts festival, begun by a strange collaboration of hippies, farmers and a wealthy benefactor, at a time when no one knew what it might become. But that evolution seamlessly progresses here, charting Greenbelt’s bravery in pushing for more, whether in addressing global issues (apartheid, Nicaragua, Palestine) or simply the place of the arts in the Church.
“When you do music or do art, it is attractive to explore the boundaries,” says former chair Dot Reid, “and therefore you encounter the walls”. So inevitably the film covers the PR disaster of ‘Year of the Witch and the Willies,” when the seminar line-up included an interview with a Wiccan and the arts programme had displays of male nudity. Though only a small part of the event, that perfect storm harmed the festival by frightening off youth groups, losing thousands of pounds and regulars, and on top of the havoc wreaked by the tail-end of Hurricane Charlie a few years earlier, Greenbelt’s very viability was threatened.
But the tone of the story changes once the event finds a new all-weather home at the present Cheltenham racecourse and numbers increase by a couple of thousand each year.
The strong appeal to Greenbelters is obvious, but will it be a satisfying view for others? Quite possibly. This movie has a story arc and those who love Cornerstone, for example, could find the parallels and differences fascinating. Like many well-made documentaries, it gets right inside the life of a community.
“Greenbelt doesn’t go for the ears, it goes for the whole person” says youth worker Pip Wilson, as the film looks at how the festival might develop. It has already begun to sire smaller events in Bethlehem, Scotland and the States, but that is for the future to reveal. Greenbelt at 40 is about the story so far and records it brilliantly. [Derek Walker, The Phantom Tollbooth, August 2013]
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