Let's Get Hackettized!

Sorry for my absence... work has been a task, tons to do. But I am back with the first of two consecutive 64th birthday posts of magnificence and splendor, beginning now with ex-Genesis guitarist, Progressive Rock torchbearer and, maybe most significantly, the father of the two-handed tapping technique... the only classic G guy I have never personally met: Steve Hackett.

In the interest of brevity I will state the obvious and say that there's only one Steve Hackett and that he's been doing this music stuff an awfully long time. Currently he is on the road with his "Genesis Revisited" project and I can't wait for them to get to the Bay Area... last time I saw Steve play was in 2005 and it's been too long. A friend of a friend is his singer now and maybe that means I'll finally get to hang out!

Please enjoy this set from England's legendary Reading Festival during Steve's first solo tour in 1979... it is meticulously remastered from the radio reels straight from the BBC archives and literally could not sound better if you sprinkled Les Paul's personal pixie dust on it. Great sound, great show, wish I'd have been there... but sadly I wasn't even 13 yet and I don't think my parents would have been willing to put me on a transatlantic flight at that tender age.

Steve Hackett

Reading Festival

Reading, UK

8.25.1979

01 BBC intro

02 Land of a Thousand Autumns

03 Please Don't Touch

04 Tigermoth

05 Every Day

06 The Optigan

07 A Tower Struck Down

08 Spectral Mornings

09 Clocks

10 I Know What I Like

11 BBC outro

Total time: 46:45

pre-FM BBC reels, fan remastered

320MB FLAC/February 2014 archive link

Enjoy this one and I'll be back tomorrow with a pretty wild sequel to this post... featuring another Prog heavyweight -- hint: he's also on the festival poster pictured above -- born precisely 24 hours after Mssr. Hackett. Stay tuned and a Happy 64th to Steve!!!! --J.