Genesis Live

some that I don't like too

At least some of the Phil Collins-era stuff worked on an earcandy/stadium rock level.

Genesis in the early '70s may have seemed like the poor cousins of Yes and ELP to some degree, but I think that has more to do with being an indie band with no recording budget: their first three records suffer sonically. On the other hand, unlike Yes and ELP, Genesis didn't fall into the solo-wanking for wank's sake trap. Hackett, Banks and Rutherford were songwriters first, not virtuoso soloists to the same degree of Howe, Wakeman, Emerson et al. Taste over technique is not necessarily a bad thing.

Who was it that said (paraphrasing) progressive rock was a rebellion against three-minute songs about love by writing twelve-minute songs about nothing?

Surely this is a joke?

Or as Edward Macan put it, "If ELP were the Richard Wagner of progressive rock, Genesis were the movement's Mozarts".

iii No You can listen to this one again and again. I don't actualy like England or Lamb Lies Down much. Tresspass is mainly poorly recorded and the songs week. The studio versions of Nursery and Foxtrot both have weak tracks where Genesis go all mideval and dull.

ii Are there other albums that bear sequential play? Well many prog albums,esp ones by Yes, ELP and Pink Floyd need to be listened to in context, with the listener willing to engage (and even welcome) the stereotypical Progisms and I dont always do this. Fragile and Relayer are fine albums, but I wouldn't think they can suit all moods. Topographic Oceans can't, maybe Close to the Edge can. The first three VDGG albums (pawn, least, h to he) are pretty close to Genesis anyway, the three mid 70s KC albums (larks, starless, red) can (obv). I can do this with Hawkwind's DoRemi FaSo LaTido - but that may be just me.

Outwith Progrock (but still in modern popular idiom) Only really Closer (but not Unknown Pleasures) can bear whatever the mood listening - its no comment on how good they are.

i I think there are lots of albums as fantastic as this, from all sorts of genres. Its the lack of some of Progs worst excesses that makes Live special. There is a widely available bootleg video of 74 era Genesis live (ie slightly but not much later) which really brings home how out of the loop they were (The albums were minor hits only). Somebody above says "DIY" and thats spot on.

Got an advance of the forthcoming Live 1973-2007 Rhino box in today's mail. It includes the 1973 Live album, as well as Live at the Rainbow, also from 1973 and with two previously unreleased tracks ("Cinema Show" and "The Battle of Epping Forest"), five tracks from L.A. circa 1975, Seconds Out, Three Sides Live and The Way We Walk.

that set is a bewildering fuck off considering they didn't put on Suppers Ready that was cut from Live, and included crap from the archive box they already released.

If it is any consolation, "the crap from the archive box" has fewer Gabriel overdubs this time around.

We need a v-chip on here that edits out every time I moan about "Epping Forest".

those didn't bother me that much, it's just lame that they have better stuff, in great quality, that they didn't put on here. why?

for instance: what's known as "musica", a show from the Duke tour that they have in soundboard quality. sure you can get it in unofficial circles but if you're compliling your live stuff, just put it on there! They finally located the masters for Genesis Live and skipped Suppers Ready, a track whose intended inclusion on this album was all hushed up for a long time until test pressings with it on there appeared? It's not the best version ofthe song but they may as well put it out.

Genesis were fantastic back then, but I don't care about live albums at all.

I don't care about live albums at all.

Yeah, I'm a little thrown by that. Three Sides Live is pretty weak, and I loathe the studio albums post-Genesis (and all but two or three songs from that one), but I listen to Genesis Live more than any of the contemporaneous studio discs.

The drumming on the live "Musical Box." The cymbal shit is next level.

unaccompanied bass pedal solo imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FBcz3tBH74

Musically it's great, but I wish I hadn't looked this up & seen Peter Gabriel in Genesis now :-/

Some of you are going to die ;_;

What IS it with this album? Tried to get into the studio albums but completely failed to - dated and pretentious, bah. But this, this mesmerising masterpiece, I can listen to this once or twice a day for weeks on end (even during new Burial EP or Arcade Fire times).

listening to Seconds Out now - this is probably my favorite of their live records. perhaps heresy but I love Phil Collins taking on "Suppers Ready"!!

So do I. That was the album and song that made me a Genesis freak.

I still like that version more than the ones on Foxtrot and Genesis Archive. Phil's smoothness fits the song better than Gabriel's bark.

yeah - I just wrote a bit on Wind & Wuthering here in which I kinda realize that Phil wasn't really a downgrade
http://critterjams.wordpress.com/2013/12/18/genesis-wind-and-wuthering-1976/

the incredible second half of "Cinema Show" is also ace

Great piece. It's impressive that in 1976, they could still make a record as totally confident and casual as Wind & Wuthering. There's not a trace of strain over the prog-rock crisis on that album.

Phil I see as being a lateral move. Somehow I don't think that he could pull off "The Battle of Epping Forest" (not sure if he ever attempted it).

during my brief all-prog phase in high school I ran with a crowd that considered no-Gabriel era The Beginning Of The End - really enjoyed reading a clear-eyed take on Wind and Wuthering even if every time I try to revisit Genesis I feel like my departure from them was permanent and I can't ever really get back inside

That "Daddy, you promised!" bit sours me on the album every time.

They did "White Mountain" on the '76 tour. Phil's thin melodic voice made it sound especially silly — there was some combination of Gabriel's rasp and his aura of lunacy that made the words he sang seem almost meaningful.

Somehow I don't think that he could pull off "The Battle of Epping Forest" (not sure if he ever attempted it).

I don't think he did and you're probably right, but I would've said that about "Supper's Ready" too. Never heard the '76 band do "White Mountain", but that's kind of a ridiculous song anyway, isn't it?

Re-listening to some of this I'm astounded by how much of both W&W and Spot the Pigeon draw off the second disc of The Lamb, in particular the bits that I was always bored by. I wonder if they would've included any of that stuff had the storyline not been so long.

"All in a Mouse's Night" a bit of a let-down on W&W, "Epping Forest" no great loss in any situation. kinda feel like if they'd made a W&W a couple of years later it wd've been perfect

the gloss and distance they're on the way to acquiring on W&W might as well be a different band to the sludgey doom of Genesis Live tho

"All in a Mouse's Night" was my favorite song on it the first time I listened to it. That's the one that everyone seems to say would work better with Peter but I love the way Phil sings the main melody line ("come on baby, let the poor thing go"). Also the story itself isn't very interesting. My main point through all that is that even if Peter does some pretty amazing things (especially on The Lamb) I feel like Phil serves the actual songs a bit better. W&W having three instrumental tracks really says a lot about the direction the band was going (and pulled back on)

W&W is mainly let down by cloudy mix and production (the only case where I think the remix/remasters bettered the original), always felt like there was a veil over the music or a blanket on the speakers. The second side of the album is tremendous.

That Ylvis song is basically just a Genesis rip-off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tYyqf0KJWY

Could be bullshit but I heard a radio DJ last week say that Collins and Gabriel are in talks for a real Genesis reunion...

They're always in talks. Genesis may be the only huge act constantly breaking up and reuniting where every member old and new is still friends.

I thought Phil could not play drums?

I have heard Phil can't drum from a whole bunch of people. Didn't know Genesis were all still friends though, doesn't Gabriel routinely refuse to sign off on reissue extras & stuff?

Money talks.

Gabriel recently acknowledged recently that them all being still alive might be good reason to consider playing together once more

collins recently returned to drumming.

I don't get it - not one of the yes-men on this cynical money grabbing exercise had the balls to say "Look, Philip, you've been great and everything, but this doesn't work. We're taking (think Adam Lambert & Queen, someone great like that) on tour with us." ? I hope they're proud of their profits, at least.

Still wish they'd add an LA date

yeah I will go if this comes to the west coast. I wasn't about to travel for it, but if it's in CA, I'm absolutely going. I managed to miss every tour they have ever done.

Phil is clearly limited but the show in Glasgow was fantastic - I was pleasantly surprised at how well he carried it compared to the rehearsal clip that came out previously

What did you think of his son's drumming? I think he sounds fine but Phil's playing has so much character and his son ... not so much.

This is the clip I saw, btw. Maybe it sounded better there, but this is some weak sauce, imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYPaUdSXLFw

If someone makes it a point to see them every time they tour, go for it. If someone has always wanted to see them (like, bucket list item) and hasn't yet, well, I guess now's the time.

I am in neither camp and will pass on seeing this, for all the reasons discussed.

I never noticed anything lacking about Nic's drumming really... was impressed how well he replicated the superior live arrangement of Afterglow

There's something odd about how Phil is singing consistently behind the beat, I wonder if it's a result of pain medication, of some sort.

If you look at clips from 2019, Phil already sounds noticeably worst, imo.

I don't think Nic Collins is bad at all, he just lacks a certain spark. Like Jason Bonham vs. John. But, for example, I think Zak Starkey is a pretty good son-of drummer.

(Worse, not worst. No matter how decrepit, Phil Collins is still far from the worst.)

Purportedly the last ever Genesis concert at the O2 last night. Gabriel was in the audience and really should have joined them onstage at some point, the fact that he didn't leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. Obviously I don't know if consideration was given to inviting him onstage or not. If he wasn't invited, he should have been. If he was invited, he should have accepted.

yeah that's a bummer.

Maybe because it would have required rehearsal & planning, Tony Banks doesn't seem the type to spontaneously busk through the hits. Or anything else, come to that.

Disappointing for fans, but they're amicably fine with it. At least it looked that way judging from this photo:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FO0k0sIWYAEaoGA?format=jpg&name=900x900

Reportedly someone in the crowd called for "Supper's Ready," and Collins mentioned that Gabriel was in the crowd, although he wasn’t sure where he was sitting. After that got a big round of applause, Collins joked that maybe Gabriel was the one calling out for "Supper's Ready."

More photos someone took of that final show - I guess they had a front row seat and a really good camera.

As a fan, the whole idea of this tour is a bummer to me, Collins is singing very poorly, his voice has changed and sounds unattractive, like some cartoonish goblin. His presence, sitting, sometimes half-slumped in a chair is jarring, the idea that he's possibly in pain and/or medicated, also.

I feel bad for everyone involved, it's a troubling way to end things. I've watched a multitude of clips and listened to boots and, imho, the whole thing is just a fucking horrorshow.

Yeah I’ve seen Gordon Lightfoot somewhat recently and got the same feeling. Appreciate the man but didn’t like seeing him like that. Every clip of this tour I’ve seen I always cringe at what Phils voice sounds like. Had they not planned this before the pandemic I don’t think it would’ve happened at all.

I was never going to see the tour myself, but it brought to mind a lot of debate over some bad tours with elderly musicians in recent years - it's hard to tell them to stay put when they're the ones demanding to be out there, in some cases because they know it may be the last time they get to experience what it's like to be on stage and surrounded by adoring fans. Yeah, there's the money obviously, but even if there was none to be made, I'd do the same in their shoes, pain be damned. If they dedicated and sacrificed so much of their life to get that, it's no surprise they'd want to hold on to it for as long as they can.

I guess the reality is we've never been in a situation where musical legends are still playing to arenas in their 80s or thereabouts before. Like, most of the blues and jazz all-timers were gone before that age and their appeal had become more selective. Whereas artists like Genesis and The Who and the Stones could keep selling out the big halls on their rep alone for the rest of their lives. I can't say I don't understand someone wanting to say they'd seen a band that they loved, but I had no desire to catch these shows (and they weren't even that great when I saw them at Knebworth in 92 or whenever).

Which is thirty years ago. Fucking hell, I'm old too.

(Saw the Who in 2019 and they were pretty great tbh)

Collins is only 71, younger than my parents, it's kind of shocking to me to see him looking like that.

When I was a teenager my Dad took me to see a few older jazz/blues musicians at the Glasgow Jazz festival, he wanted to see them at least once before the possibility of them not touring became a reality, which I totally understand and I can see why devoted fans would feel the need to go see Genesis, despite the current presentation.

But I'm sure none of those people had such debilitating health issues and the tickets were probably like £30 (in today's money) not £100++

I just grabbed a recording of the last night to hear it, he doesn't sound *too* bad maybe, idk, certainly his timing is better than the earlier shows I heard, pitching is still pretty wild tho, but I'm listening to the last tune (Carpet Crawlers), and feeling a little sad that the music that I've listened to since I was a young 'un won't ever be rendered live again.

They ended with Carpet Crawlers? That's a bit of a heart-breaker.

Wonder which music means the most to Phil overall, Genesis or his solo stuff?

I saw them in November and again last night and Phil has improved massively since back then.

If they dedicated and sacrificed so much of their life to get that, it's no surprise they'd want to hold on to it for as long as they can.

The first concert I ever saw was Count Basie And His Orchestra in early 1983. Count was 78.

I’m seeing the Who at MSG in May. Roger Daltrey is 78.

I mean if we're talking age as a factor, having seen Sparks twice recently, Ron's 76 and Russell's 73; they have the advantage that their backing band is all younger by some decades, and I did note that there's been a second keyboardist added. But Ron didn't seem any different at all, steadily playing away looking nonplussed as he always does, occasional vocal moments aside (and he still does the Ron dance). Russell was all over the stage, singing away as he always does. Maybe it's all that comfortable SoCal living.

And Russell works out regularly, based on a clip from the Sparks Brothers

The record for me is 7 or 8 weeks shy of 90 years. That was Lee Konitz on August 26, 2017, who kept on performing until COVID hit, and sadly he died from it on April 15, 2020. (Besides his age, he had health issues that made him especially vulnerable.) He was great though, as soon as he played, there was no mistaking who it was. At one point during his set, this very old couple got up and danced together, and they even seemed to move slowly from age. It made me think of something Greil Marcus's wife said when she listened to Dylan's Sinatra albums - it's sad when you realize the mass audience this music once reached was now mostly gone. Such is life, it'll happen to everything, and just further reason to catch these people while you still can. It blows my mind when I meet someone who went to Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman concerts back in the day, like BEFORE rock 'n' roll.

It's a big thing for me watching the rock generation move so rapidly towards fragility and mortality - seems to me that from 1989 on a lot of those bigger groups settled back into their "classic" sound - which has helped band and audience to perpetuate a kind of time bubble of cheerful denial where everything was fine and these guys would soldier on forever. But it's just not sustainable any more, and watching these groups accept their limitations and mourn their losses is quite profound.

Like, I don't Believe In Rock or anything, but the aftershocks of the 1960s beat boom (and I guess 50s rock, and punk, etc) - still shaped my life, and gave me a way out of suburban small-mindedness, and eventually pointed to areas of music that were more interesting - and I guess I never totally stopped believing in the power these guys accessed as teenagers, and have always sought ways to keep connected to my own teenage self. But we are clearly none of us teenagers anymore - and seeing the old ones shuffle offstage does make me think about the ephemeral nature of the value system I still kinda sort of hang onto. Like, definitely already get a sense that the Beatles or the Germs or the Blue Nile are indistinguishable from James Last to my kids which is fine and even good, but still...).

It's also tied into the mortality of my parents, who are boomers of this kind of age.

(Also really respect Bowie for going there with his songwriting in a way that I wish more people of this generation had done)

Anyway, I think a lot about Mick and Keith holding hands at the front of the stage when they introduced their first show after Charlie died. It was so vulnerable and beautiful, and unlike anything you'd associate with the Stones.

Uh sorry about the lack of Genesis-specific content in that post.

watching these groups accept their limitations and mourn their losses is quite profound.

This. For a generation of us, this is literally watching our forbears crumble away. My dad's been gone twenty years this week, but he was entirely of his geenration - did tonnes of drugs, free love, saw Hendrix, The Who, Cream, etc - and it's hard not to feel especially maudlin as the rock generation slow drifts on to the next realm.

In the wake of the death of Charlie Watts, I revived this thread with a post about a 1970 rock magazine cover story wondering about the life expectancy of 20 musicians, half of whom are still around 52 years later. Of course, they were talking about musicians dying young rather than aging per se; and in February 1970, maybe Brian Jones was the only big name rock star of that era to have already gone.
I feel like the death of George Harrison in 2001 was the "watershed" for attitudes about the loss of musicians of that generation. 58 is not old but the manner of his death and perhaps his retreat from public life beforehand made it seem more "natural". For instance, I never heard anyone say of George, as they did of Lennon, "what would he have done if he had lived"?
For so many years, there was this small canon of dead rock stars, appearing in airbrushed paintings - now those paintings would be too crowded.

I guess everyone has their notebook with their own personal favourites that will be devastating when they finally go, Ivor Cutler was the first big one for me, as odd as that sounds, we went to his last gig at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and he was so frail.

At the end he came out to the front of the stage, fingers in his ears, then after the applause died down he quietly said something along the lines of 'you all have such beautiful bright faces' and I realised at that point I wouldn't be seeing him again, it was so sad.

yeah its getting to the point where there's a "now or never" feeling to seeing your favorite bands especially given the unpredictability of Covid. I missed a King Crimson show due to my daughter getting sick (thought it was appendicitis, turned out to be a relatively harmless infection) and right after they announced that was the end. couldn't make seeing Sparks in Chicago work and now I think I'll probably never get the chance for them. Gary Numan just played Milwaukee - last show before they all tested positive for Covid - and I couldnt go because it was Spring Break and shit was too complicated with the kids. I guess I should stop making excuses b/c yeah for the first time in my life "they'll be around again" is very much not a given

Was just telling someone how frustrating it was to hardly be able to hear Ivor at that last show, although I suppose that is what he probably wanted

It was filmed by the BBC, I think I have it somewhere.

Here it is, apologies for the derailing, folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS0-vN8E3FU

COVID has definitely made things brutal. Besides Konitz, I also saw Toots & the Maytals in 2019. I was front and center holding the edge of the stage and Toots even gave me fist bump. What a wonderful man and full of life, I can't believe that was the last time he played in NY because I left thinking I was definitely seeing the next one.

And I never saw John Prine. Really sad about that.

you're not missin' much by not seeing gary numan in 2022

yeah he's been goth industrial for quite some time. I know people who are still very very into him though. Anyway, I'm still sad that I never went and saw Genesis; they toured so infrequently and the times I was passionate about them never lined up with times when they were touring. I really assumed they'd hit the west coast on this one, and it wasn't to be. At least I've seen Gabriel half a dozen times. I do make it a point now to try to see people; had I not seen Bowie on his last tour when he played right down the street from me I would have really hated myself. I'll be going to Roxy this year as well. I see McCartney every time he comes to town and each time I've assumed it was the last opportunity; guy will probably still be touring 15 years from now.

Reminds me of someone I knew who decided to see B. B. King over Stevie Ray Vaughn, thinking "I'll be able to see Stevie anytime, this might be my last chance to see B. B."... and King outlived Vaughn by 25 years.

idk I like Numan's recent stuff

xp apologies, dying young is terrible, but with the way that joke was phrased, LMAO.

Reminds me of someone I knew who decided to see B. B. King over Stevie Ray Vaughn, thinking "I'll be able to see Stevie anytime, this might be my last chance to see B. B."... and King outlived Vaughn by 25 years.

I saw Stevie Ray Vaughn and I'd give anything to take that directionless, opiated show back for a solid BB King show.

The couple of years where Bowie, prince, Mark Hollis and Scott Walker all passed away kind of ushered in a new era for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLdFLl6iMek