Genesis Appreciation/Discussion

[pg1067]

They're never going to do anything out of the ordinary or from their early early days. ...they just seem embarrassed by it. "Old material" probably means stuff from Duke/Abacab

The 2007 tour had a fair amount of Gabriel/Hackett era material.

E.g.:  https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/genesis/2007/hollywood-bowl-los-angeles-ca-63d6f66f.html

[Lupton]

Well I for one am rather fond of the "commercial" period of Genesis' output. Of course I don't like it as much as the 70s stuff, but I like the way they adjusted to the (then) current landscape and still made good music that didn't sound like they were simply trying to write hits. It all feels very natural and genuine to me. I dig Abacab/Shapes/IT and parts of WCD.

[Orbert]

I agree.  I don't think that Genesis sacrificed their artistic integrity the way they're sometimes accused of doing.  I think they're an insanely talented bunch of guys who continued to write music the way they wanted to.  Just because they managed to become hugely popular for a while doesn't mean they were sellouts.

[Polarbear]

Fingers crossed that this expands into a European Tour!

[Stadler]

I'll look, but I think it was the deluxe "When In Rome" DVD package, but I'm on board with this notion that they didn't sacrifice their artistic integrity.  There a couple of segments in the various docs that show them going through the machinations of creating and delivering their music.   I think most people forget that they STARTED as a vehicle for their songwriting, and at the heart of all their material, from Trespass to We Can't Dance, was the song.  They just, in a sense, got better at it as they went on.   I can't fault them for wanting recognition for their craft, so there's that, and there was always, on every record, at least some chops and playing, even if it wasn't wrapped in obscure nonsense like "Battle Of Epping Forest" (I hate that song). 

There's a clip of Tony going through his sounds, there's a clip of them doing an acoustic version of Ripples, there's a clip of Phil and Chester mapping out the "Two Stools" bit on a hotel chair (that is AWESOME), and a clip of the band working through one of the medleys. I'm certainly not flying to Great Britain to see this, but I have no reservations or concerns about it.  It's three guys that are musicians and have been since their teens doing what they know how to do best.  God bless them.  I'm tired at 52, and for them to want to do this at 70, 69, and (at the time of the shows) 70 is admirable to me.

[Madman Shepherd]

The When in Rome documentary is awesome! I thought it was kind of bold of them to show them practicing a song (I think In Too Deep) and Phil struggles to hit the high notes. So they end up tuning down. They still sounded great.

[jcmoorehead]

Well I got my tickets!

Cheapest tickets for the first night at the SSE Hydro, I'm at the back/top but still really excited. Genesis were one of the first bands I knew of growing up. I know it isn't considered their best album but I grew up listening to We Can't Dance and in my later teens and 20s I discovered the rest of their discography and just how wonderful and varied it all is.

I'm also seeing Steve Hackett a month before at the Edinburgh Playhouse which should be incredible too.

[Fritzinger]

Well I got my tickets!

Cheapest tickets for the first night at the SSE Hydro, I'm at the back/top but still really excited. Genesis were one of the first bands I knew of growing up. I know it isn't considered their best album but I grew up listening to We Can't Dance and in my later teens and 20s I discovered the rest of their discography and just how wonderful and varied it all is.

I'm also seeing Steve Hackett a month before at the Edinburgh Playhouse which should be incredible too.

This could be my post

I will be at that show as well, and while I didn't get the best tickets, I still got some. I was still pissed when they announced additional shows where I could have bought better tickets for the same price.

And I will be attending Hackett's concert in Dresden, in October

[ytserush]

Steve Hackett confuses me.  He was in Genesis for four years of their 40-year run, and left the band.  Since then he's had very little positive to say about his time with Genesis or the other members.  Yet for the past several years, his entire gig is based on the few years he was in Genesis.

His Genesis Revisited shows are, by all accounts, very good.  Great musicians, great music, great show.  So of course he takes a moment to congratulate the core trio, and a somewhat longer moment to pimp his own band, taking a shot at the trio disguised as a compliment.

I'd much rather see a Hackett or Gabriel show than a Genesis show. But I've felt that way for 30 years.

[RickyGervais]

Thought some of you might enjoy this. "Let's go on a little journey"...

Phil Collins: A 6 Minute Drum Chronology
https://youtu.be/ZI1cgNePd3w

[MinistroRaven]

From PC facebook page:

Introducing the Genesis Film Festival, a celebration of live footage for you to enjoy at home during lockdown! Over the coming 5 weeks, every Saturday from 8pm BST / 2pm EDT / 11am PDT a new Genesis concert film will be made available to watch on the band’s official YouTube channel for 7 days. First up this week is ‘Three Sides Live’ from 1981! Don’t miss a thing by subscribing to the channel now - smarturl.it/YouTubeGenesis

· #GenesisFilmFestival programme ·

Saturday, April 18th · Three Sides Live (1981)
Saturday, April 25th · The Mama Tour (1984)
Saturday, May 2nd · Live At Wembley Stadium (1987)
Saturday, May 9th · The Way We Walk (1992)
Saturday, May 16th · When In Rome (2007)

[emtee]

Awesome! Thanks for the heads-up.

I'll be watching those.

[Fritzinger]

Ugh, Genesis, my beloved Genesis.

Of course they'd release the concerts that every fan already has in their collection. Instead of unreleased video material. I'm sure there IS something.

I'll still take this as opportunity to re-watch them all. I hope the quality is good.

[jammindude]

Ugh, Genesis, my beloved Genesis.

Of course they'd release the concerts that every fan already has in their collection. Instead of unreleased video material. I'm sure there IS something.

I'll still take this as opportunity to re-watch them all. I hope the quality is good.

Lots of complaints on the FB page about this very point, but I guess the counter-argument is that the band doesn't have the legal rights to anything beyond what has already been released, so they're stuck with it.

Someone even said that there's a full show of the TotT (I think) show that was released in part to theaters...but the band only has the rights to the finished product, while the filmmaker still holds the rights to the original film.   And I guess the band wanted to buy it from him at one point, but he wanted an insane amount of money, so they walked away.

[Stadler]

Ugh, Genesis, my beloved Genesis.

Of course they'd release the concerts that every fan already has in their collection. Instead of unreleased video material. I'm sure there IS something.

I'll still take this as opportunity to re-watch them all. I hope the quality is good.

Lots of complaints on the FB page about this very point, but I guess the counter-argument is that the band doesn't have the legal rights to anything beyond what has already been released, so they're stuck with it.

Someone even said that there's a full show of the TotT (I think) show that was released in part to theaters...but the band only has the rights to the finished product, while the filmmaker still holds the rights to the original film.   And I guess the band wanted to buy it from him at one point, but he wanted an insane amount of money, so they walked away.

Yes; that's the "In Concert" film by Tony Mylar or Mayhem or something like that.  It's on the TotT re-release from the '07 box sets.  The film is like an hour long, and intercut with other footage (like "The Song Remains The Same") but for some reason Mayhem won't let go the full tapes.  It's actually two shows, one from Glasgow and one from England, I forget where.  The music from that film was, along with Abacab, what got me into Genesis way back in the day.  "Entangled" from Archive 2 set is from one of those shows.   

[frogprog]

Thanks for the heads up on this! I thoroughly enjoyed Three Sides Live tonight. I look forward to watching the Mama tour next week. I don't think I ever saw that film and I'm bummed I didn't see that tour live back into in the day at one of the 3 nights at the Spectrum in Philly.

[Stadler]

I don't know if this is the place or not, but I got Phil's "Going Back" this weekend, and while it's not for everyone, if you're a fan of some of those 60's Mo-town (and Mo-town-esque) tracks, this is a real find.   He does them faithfully and with love, and it's a good listen.  I think if you're a purist you might have issue, but I'm not, so...

(And it's always amazing how many songs I know that I had no idea of the title or who did them.   "Uptight (Everybody's Alright)" was the real revelation here. I've heard that song 100 times or more, and LOVE it, and had no idea that it was Stevie Wonder, or the title was "Uptight", or even that that was what was sung after the "Everybody's alright" refrain.  (The lyric is "Everybody's alright! Uptight! Outta sight!")

[HOF]

I have Going Back, but have never taken the time to listen to it (bought a cheap box set of all of his reissued solo albums a few years back). Will have to check it out some time.

[Fritzinger]

I don't know if this is the place or not, but I got Phil's "Going Back" this weekend, and while it's not for everyone, if you're a fan of some of those 60's Mo-town (and Mo-town-esque) tracks, this is a real find.   He does them faithfully and with love, and it's a good listen.  I think if you're a purist you might have issue, but I'm not, so...

(And it's always amazing how many songs I know that I had no idea of the title or who did them.   "Uptight (Everybody's Alright)" was the real revelation here. I've heard that song 100 times or more, and LOVE it, and had no idea that it was Stevie Wonder, or the title was "Uptight", or even that that was what was sung after the "Everybody's alright" refrain.  (The lyric is "Everybody's alright! Uptight! Outta sight!")

I think the keyword here is "love": this album is really done with love. And if there's one thing I like about Phil's music, it's the honesty it's made with. He does what he does, no matter what critics (and old-school Genesis fans lol) will say, and he loves doing it 

[Nel]

(And it's always amazing how many songs I know that I had no idea of the title or who did them.   "Uptight (Everybody's Alright)" was the real revelation here. I've heard that song 100 times or more, and LOVE it, and had no idea that it was Stevie Wonder, or the title was "Uptight", or even that that was what was sung after the "Everybody's alright" refrain.  (The lyric is "Everybody's alright! Uptight! Outta sight!")

Uptight and Standing In the Shadows Of Love are the highlights of that album for me. It's a fun collection of covers. Hard to believe it's already been ten years since it came out.

[Stadler]

I don't know if this is the place or not, but I got Phil's "Going Back" this weekend, and while it's not for everyone, if you're a fan of some of those 60's Mo-town (and Mo-town-esque) tracks, this is a real find.   He does them faithfully and with love, and it's a good listen.  I think if you're a purist you might have issue, but I'm not, so...

(And it's always amazing how many songs I know that I had no idea of the title or who did them.   "Uptight (Everybody's Alright)" was the real revelation here. I've heard that song 100 times or more, and LOVE it, and had no idea that it was Stevie Wonder, or the title was "Uptight", or even that that was what was sung after the "Everybody's alright" refrain.  (The lyric is "Everybody's alright! Uptight! Outta sight!")

I think the keyword here is "love": this album is really done with love. And if there's one thing I like about Phil's music, it's the honesty it's made with. He does what he does, no matter what critics (and old-school Genesis fans lol) will say, and he loves doing it 

See, I agree with that 100%; so it baffles me that one of the enduring criticisms is that his solo stuff lacks that very quality.  I think he's woefully under-rated in that way.  I know it's a sort of arbitrary thing to bring up, but for me, he is the single most egregious RnRHoF snub at this point.  Why he's not in as a solo artist/individual is a crime.

[Fritzinger]

He isn't?

I don't understand that at all. He is arguably one of the 5 biggest pop stars in music history. No one can fill a 2,5 hours concert with only songs that every normal person would recognise, even if they aren't a Collins fan (with the possible exception of Paul McCartney).

[HOF]

Yeah, I kind of thought he was, but only with Genesis it appears.

While we’re on the topic of Phil Collins’ solo career, his bassist Leland Sklar has been posting frequent videos of himself on YouTube playing along to various Collins and Genesis songs, and it’s really great.

I really like the line from Another Day in Paradise:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LRnpcTHKHqs

Here’s Throwing it All Away with a random Andy Griffith anecdote:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QUALZF1PDnY

[Stadler]

He isn't?

I don't understand that at all. He is arguably one of the 5 biggest pop stars in music history. No one can fill a 2,5 hours concert with only songs that every normal person would recognise, even if they aren't a Collins fan (with the possible exception of Paul McCartney).

I don't know if it's still current, but for a long while he was one of only three artists to have sold 100 million records as a part of a group AND as a solo artist.  The other two - McCartney and Michael Jackson - are in as both.  Peter Gabriel is in as both. 

[ytserush]

Thanks for the heads up on this! I thoroughly enjoyed Three Sides Live tonight. I look forward to watching the Mama tour next week. I don't think I ever saw that film and I'm bummed I didn't see that tour live back into in the day at one of the 3 nights at the Spectrum in Philly.

Watching Three Sides Live online for like the 5th of 6th time. Probably like the CD more because there is more music but I forgot about the incidental vignettes sprinkled throughout so that was cool to watch too, but I wish there was a version without that when I just want the music.  They were totally on fire.  Great balance of old and new. (I keep playing Abacab over and over again!)

I still may need to get the DVD.  I'll watch the Mama Tour too and then I'm out. MAYBE I'll hang around for the Invisible Touch Tour.

[Stadler]

Thanks for the heads up on this! I thoroughly enjoyed Three Sides Live tonight. I look forward to watching the Mama tour next week. I don't think I ever saw that film and I'm bummed I didn't see that tour live back into in the day at one of the 3 nights at the Spectrum in Philly.

Watching Three Sides Live online for like the 5th of 6th time. Probably like the CD more because there is more music but I forgot about the incidental vignettes sprinkled throughout so that was cool to watch too, but I wish there was a version without that when I just want the music.  They were totally on fire.  Great balance of old and new. (I keep playing Abacab over and over again!)

I still may need to get the DVD.  I'll watch the Mama Tour too and then I'm out. MAYBE I'll hang around for the Invisible Touch Tour.

The IT performance is pretty darn good.   That's the tour I actually saw live (in an arena), but that's also the phase where Phil has the mullet, so there's that.  (I always loved that almost certainly unintentional metaphor:  business in the front, i.e. stage front, when he was singing, and party in the rear, i.e. when he went back and let loose on drums.)

[ytserush]

I don't know if this is the place or not, but I got Phil's "Going Back" this weekend, and while it's not for everyone, if you're a fan of some of those 60's Mo-town (and Mo-town-esque) tracks, this is a real find.   He does them faithfully and with love, and it's a good listen.  I think if you're a purist you might have issue, but I'm not, so...

(And it's always amazing how many songs I know that I had no idea of the title or who did them.   "Uptight (Everybody's Alright)" was the real revelation here. I've heard that song 100 times or more, and LOVE it, and had no idea that it was Stevie Wonder, or the title was "Uptight", or even that that was what was sung after the "Everybody's alright" refrain.  (The lyric is "Everybody's alright! Uptight! Outta sight!")

Won't go out of my way for it, but if I see it in a used bin I'd pick it up.  Waited something like 10 years already so I guess I'm in no hurry. I bought his Big Band  album right away and it's still great listen. 

[frogprog]

Thanks for those Leland Solar videos. That guy is such a great bass player.

[Orbert]

Watching Three Sides Live online for like the 5th of 6th time. Probably like the CD more because there is more music but I forgot about the incidental vignettes sprinkled throughout so that was cool to watch too, but I wish there was a version without that when I just want the music.  They were totally on fire.  Great balance of old and new. (I keep playing Abacab over and over again!)

Those cuts drive me crazy.  This is one of my favorite videos because of the music, but the editing makes me want to hurt someone.  Nowadays, they'd probably include the interviews and other stuff as "bonus material" on the DVD or Blu-ray, but back in the VHS era, this was how they did it.  I bought the Blu-ray, hoping that there was some kind of option to just watch the concert footage, but nope.  At least you can skip to the next segment.

[Stadler]

Watching Three Sides Live online for like the 5th of 6th time. Probably like the CD more because there is more music but I forgot about the incidental vignettes sprinkled throughout so that was cool to watch too, but I wish there was a version without that when I just want the music.  They were totally on fire.  Great balance of old and new. (I keep playing Abacab over and over again!)

Those cuts drive me crazy.  This is one of my favorite videos because of the music, but the editing makes me want to hurt someone.  Nowadays, they'd probably include the interviews and other stuff as "bonus material" on the DVD or Blu-ray, but back in the VHS era, this was how they did it.  I bought the Blu-ray, hoping that there was some kind of option to just watch the concert footage, but nope.  At least you can skip to the next segment.

When Genesis released the five big box sets - in my opinion the second best remastering/remixing program by any band (behind King Crimson) - I was a regular poster at the Genesis and Phil Collins boards.  There were three abiding critiques of the sets:
- much of the bonus material used was widely available already to the trading community (VERY robust trading community, I might add) and failed to even use the best available sources;
- almost all of the holy grails were skipped:  the full "In Concert" sources (two '76 shows), the full 3SL sources (the two NY shows and the Birmingham show), ANY full Lamb footage; and
- absent all of those, a recutting of the 3SL film to get rid of the interspersed footage.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but there are distinct parallels with Led Zeppelin here.   Their concert film had the same sort of "interjections", and the corresponding album had different/alternate tracks to the film.  When the remaster of TSRTS came out, in 2007, it was the same complaint(s):  the CD was expanded to include additional songs (some from the movie, some not) but the new version of the film did not fix some of the problems with the video segments, and they did not offer the three MSG shows in their entirety.  The small concession was that the new CD and film had different versions of the tracks than the original album and film.   That's not the case as far as I can tell with Genesis (though there are remixes of some of the audio on the "Live" box).

[Orbert]

Yep, all of that sounds pretty familiar, and I agree with the complaints regarding The Song Remains the Same.  I happen to like the original CD version, but there's an obvious audio flaw during the keyboard solo in "No Quarter".  I assumed that they ("they" probably meaning Jimmy Page) would fix that, but instead they just used a different performance from a different night.  Crap.  I really like that solo; I just wanted to hear it fixed.

My two favorite Genesis periods are 1976 (the four-piece era) and early 80's (Three Sides Live).  And those are the two era almost devoid of decent video releases.

[Stadler]

I'm not suggesting you read all of this (though I did when I ripped my Zeppelin to hard drive; I now have three versions to listen to!), but just the fact that it exists is fascinating to me. 

The Garden Tapes
www.thegardentapes.co.uk

Page clearly took a lot of time and effort to assemble all four versions of TSRTS (as well as the MSG material that made it onto the Led Zeppelin DVD) but with all that, it's STILL maddening that so many instances of seemingly "poor choices" exist.  I have to believe there's a reason for what was done - and we just don't know what it is - but some of those songs were utterly butchered if you believe this.   Black Dog, Heartbreaker, Dazed And Confused, Whole Lotta Love and Moby Dick are the obvious examples.

[Orbert]

Someone turned me on to The Garden Tapes a few years back, and I read a bunch of it, including a lot of the ridiculous editing done to The Song Remains the Same.

I would always prefer a live album to be an actual, unedited recording of a live performance.  I used to think that it must be because I myself am a musician who lives for live performance.  I want to hear what they played, every note both good and bad.  But obviously Jimmy Page and many others are also musicians, and there are those who want to hear the "ideal" live performance.  If you could hear the song played live, perfectly, capturing all the excitement of a live performance, the sponaneity, the one-time moments of musical brilliance, wouldn't you want to hear that?  Well, sure.  That's what Jimmy seems to be striving for by editing two notes out of one performance and replacing them with those from another.  Completely removing a measure here or there that didn't work, and simply splicing the results together.  And so on.  I used to think that minor edits are probably okay, but at that point we're on the slippery slope.  If some edits are okay, why not others?  What is "minor"?  So okay, now I'm pretty much against any editing.  Give me the raw tapes.  Maybe that's part of what I liked about the original TSRTS recordings; that flaw in the keyboard solo reminded me that it's live and no one has messed with the recording.  Then I found out that that was edited to hell and back also.  So now I don't know what to think.  Live recordings aren't live.  Time, space, and life itself no longer have meaning.

I don't remember now what my point was going to be.

[Stadler]

Someone turned me on to The Garden Tapes a few years back, and I read a bunch of it, including a lot of the ridiculous editing done to The Song Remains the Same.

I would always prefer a live album to be an actual, unedited recording of a live performance.  I used to think that it must be because I myself am a musician who lives for live performance.  I want to hear what they played, every note both good and bad.  But obviously Jimmy Page and many others are also musicians, and there are those who want to hear the "ideal" live performance.  If you could hear the song played live, perfectly, capturing all the excitement of a live performance, the sponaneity, the one-time moments of musical brilliance, wouldn't you want to hear that?  Well, sure.  That's what Jimmy seems to be striving for by editing two notes out of one performance and replacing them with those from another.  Completely removing a measure here or there that didn't work, and simply splicing the results together.  And so on.  I used to think that minor edits are probably okay, but at that point we're on the slippery slope.  If some edits are okay, why not others?  What is "minor"?  So okay, now I'm pretty much against any editing.  Give me the raw tapes.  Maybe that's part of what I liked about the original TSRTS recordings; that flaw in the keyboard solo reminded me that it's live and no one has messed with the recording.  Then I found out that that was edited to hell and back also.  So now I don't know what to think.  Live recordings aren't live.  Time, space, and life itself no longer have meaning.

I don't remember now what my point was going to be.

I don't mean to hammer this point, but you're a musician, so maybe this will matter to you:   one of the things I love about Zeppelin was the chemistry, and particularly how certain songs breathed in time.   They were always in synch with each other, but the songs moved, breathed and had a sort of fluidity (to absolute time).  In my opinion, all that editing, taking out certain sections, bits and pieces, compromised that.  There are still moments (the original album, especially, is a much better album than it gets credit for) but I would love to have the full document of all three nights to enjoy, warts and all.   In many cases, it's the mistakes that make a performance, and it's important to know that.

[emtee]

I'll bet I'm the only Genesis fan alive with this top 4:

1) And The. There Were Three
2) Wind And Wuthering
3) Abacab
4) A Trick Of The Tail