....Afterglow....

(We'll get back to the incessant violent political outbursts soon, I promise)

(AG can go pound sand)

Phil Collins took the stage in a leap, shouting "Hey, Chicago! Didya see that big steaming pile we laid on Cleveland the other night? We've got a completely different, special show for you tonight! Let's get started!" and the opening chords of "Dodo/Lurker" blasted the arena.

errrr. well, no. Not Really. Sorry BG, couldn't resist.

The United Center was surprisingly intimate for the show; maybe a function of being on the floor. The stage was....spartan, even, at least as musical equipment goes. Banks's setup consisted of a relatively meager 3 keyboards, a big change from the days when he was nearly totally concealed behind equipment. Two drum kits, of course; I had some concern that Collins would be obscured behind Tony Banks from our vantage point, but then, do I care? But we could see fine. The stage set had an arcing backdrop across the back, an oval screen on either side, and several arcing gantry light fixtures, that never seemed to actually add anything to the performance.

[okay, before I get much farther, I've got to say I think Phil has finally found his hairstyle. He never had the hailine to pull off long hair, although he tried; his beard in the 70's made him look like an unsuccessful audition for ZZTop. His poufy tufts during the 80's were kind of laughable. But he's one of the few white guys to actually look pretty good with a shave]

But by the time the band was charging into Behind the Lines, we weren't really paying attention. Phil Collins had lost a bit of the high register, whether to age or fatigue? Doesn't matter, it suited the material well, and he saved it for more crucial moments. The lessons of an experienced touring musician.

Not to say that they were holding back or playing half speed. early on, I felt that, as Blue Girl said, the Duke suite opening was a bit lackluster, but I kind of slowly realized that they had brought the pace down just a half beat, making it a bit less....propulsive; and after a bit more I noticed that they were kind of leaning into the songs, taking the extra bit of time to really work the notes, not rushing through them. Maybe it wasn't a better version of the songs, but it served, especially considering the remainder of the show; like weathered runners, they chose to pace themselves a bit at the beginning. It wouldn't last.

One of my immediate reactions also; was that it wasn't loud at all. It was encompassing certainly; but it wasn't filling my head and rumbling the floor. Was everybody getting old? Not to worry; this, too, would be changing.

The backdrop featured an LED video screen, used on nearly every song. It was a very different aspect than the older shows. In the previous shows, they had banks of Vari-Lites arrayed above, that swiveled, swooped, rotated and angled to provide visual effects suggestive of cages, forests, underwater; 3 dimensioned constructs like this one:



I remember At one point during the old abacab, the lights would all swivel outward to the extents of the arena, then swivel inward to a single focus on Collins; it was a compelling bit, nearly forcing you to bring your attention into that point. The reliance on the LED screen to show graphics was kind of disappointingly two dimensional. And as I mentioned, the booms really added nothing: I think they could have been discarded and more Vari_Lites added to better effect.

One thing I've noted about the lighting show on this tour, is that the brunt of the lighting is focused outward, from behind the band. There's enough front lighting to see the members just fine, of course; but when things really got cooking, the lights just blasted out at us. I guess the band has gotten tired of lights shining in their tired old eyes all these years, and decided it was our turn. It was especially intense down on the floor. At times, the heat from the lighting was palpable.

Okay, now comes the rant. Hold On My Heart is a miserable song. It's got nothing to recommend it; the lyrics are trite; the music is nearly non-existent, there's no guitar of note, drums are AWOL. It couldn't be less of a Genesis song.

It makes sense in the flow of the concert. The band has roared through the opening, Land of Confusion, the Old Medley, and peaked at Afterglow. It's a good point at which to being the show down a notch or two, and let people catch their breath before heading into some other more intense material. BUT; they've got plenty of quieter songs that could serve. Ripples, coming later, has a great instrumental break and some fine piano work. Follow You, Follow Me has the pseudo-reggae guitar line loping through it. In previous times, Say It's Alright Joe provided a similar break, with an interesting take, and not losing the intensity. But HOMH is a momentum-killer, not just a pause.

I get ahead of myself.

It's not surprising, I guess, that by the time the band had turned the corner on the old Medley, I was lost. By this point, the volume had increased noticeably and the band had discarded any notion of pacing themselves; Duke's End morphed seamlessly into the opening strains of Afterglow; the arena roared back, and tears streamed down my face. The screen behind became resonant of a sunset, and the band, again, just leaned into that sucker, bringing all the dynamics that could bear; Rutherford's pedals shook the building's foundations for the first time.

The mid portion of the show kind of swung back and forth between older and newer, simpler vs. intense. I actually liked the flow of the show; in this portion, they would do a couple of more intense bits, or a really long one like Home By The Sea, and break it up with some simpler songs.

I made an illustration of the flow; you can see how the set was arranged to build to a first climax, then kind of go up and down a bit, and then build to a finale with the encores serving to, again, bring things a bit closer to earth. It works far better than when you're looking at a list of songs, wondering how in heck there can be any continuity. It also illustrates how, by the time Domino was playing,they had peaked their meters and the volume was .....well, loud enough for me, anyway. And, as always, clear as a frickin bell.



IN the Gabriel days, the song The Musical Box featured a point near the end where PG, wearing an old man's face, would hunch over the mike stand and an uplight would shine on his face as he shouted "Now...now....NOW...NOW....NOW!!" I've always appreciated the way the band has incorporated the self-referential moment into Mama, when Collins does the same trick , growling 'haha...haaaa......haha.....oooooooaaah" Last night, it went one further; it appeared that they used some digital processing, or some weird mix of lighting colors, to make the screens show Collins as if he were wearing a wrinkled old man mask.

Ripples was great; but it wasn't the epiphany I thought it would be.

And it wouldn't do to forego mentioning that when Collins and Chester began their Drum Duet, they were standing between the two drum sets, playing bar stools like they were auditioning for Stomp.

Firth of Fifth was shortened; which is always tragic. But it again, allowed Daryl Stuermer to put his stamp on that solo. He took it farther than I've seen before; but always kept bringing it back to the same themes that have always been there. Far too soon, it melded into I KNow What I Like. The best part of IKWIL was the history photomontage across the screen, with photos and video from across the years. They got clever here; Phil Collins did a flamboyant tambourine routine in tandem with a video of him doing the same thing from 30 years ago.

Just like twenty years ago, Domino was far better live than it has ever been on a recording. The spoken word audience participation intro was trite could have easily been dispensed with; the audience needed no encouragement to raise their energy level. But the song....crisp, ear shattering volume, Thompson hitting a snare that could rip your face off, the dynamics building up, then falling off....concluding in an arena-filling finale that you felt emanating up through your feet and inward through your ears, meeting someplace around your gut. Or heart, maybe.

was it perfect? Of course not. How could it be? a band with this kind of history could not possible satisfy everybody, even among themselves. I feel like they overdid the graphics technology. I'll always miss abacab. But it was a fine performance, even sublime at times, and the crowd appreciated nearly every moment; the band didn't miss a step and the material still works superbly in a live setting. It was all we could expect, and more than Genesis owed.

This is getting long, and not going anywhere really. I would quibble about the ending; Los Endos should have brought the main set to a close, Not Invisible Touch. Then the fireworks would have made sense, as part of Dance On A Volcano; especially if you're not going to use flashpots.
There's a story about one of the first times Genesis played Chicago, they had just acquired some new flashpots and deployed them during the finale of Supper's Ready. Not being familiar with the new hardware, the pots were overloaded and when they went off, the flash was visible in the concourse of the theater, through the doors and screens; the smoke filled the theater.

Last night, as we left the seating areas and milled through the concourse toward the exits, smoke and a singed smell from the concluding pyro wafted about, as if a ghost of that long-ago show had stopped by to offer a glimmer, a memory, of those days; a calling card from the past and reminder of where the band had been and how far, and long, we've all traveled since.

Was it perfect? No. But who needs perfect? It was....enough.

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