Wednesday 24 September 2008

Greenbelt Legends (4): Petra





Bit of a controversial choice this one, I suppose. Petra only played Greenbelt once, at Knebworth in 1983 at the GB 10 year special. I had heard of them somehow before going to my first GB in 1983, and this was the band I was looking forward to seeing the most. The two albums seen left, 'More Power To Ya' and 'Not of this World'  to me are absolute early 80's AOR classics. At the time I loved the very uplifting Christian lyrics and insanely catchy tunes. I played each album many times in a row at each listening. I cant remember much about that live set at Greenbelt now, I think the excitement must have put paid to remembering too much though I do remember enjoying their set immensely. They released another album, 'Beat the System' which carried on in a similar vain, but a lot more eighties in style, and after that, their vocalist Greg X Volz left, and they never seemed the same to me. They finally called it a day in 2006, and thus passed one of the more important and earliest Christian rock groups into history.

1 comment:

AnneDroid said...

Petra (on cassette tape, in the late eighties) were part of the backdrop to the early days of my romance with my (now) husband. I had to be honest completely forgotten all about them until I saw a best-of CD advertised recently. It arrived the other day and it's been fun to listen and remember...