The Musical Box

Well, it's time for about the only thing I can manage to do regularly on this little crappy blog, which is of course Friday Musical Poopery. Today, we're not going full random, cuz it's a Special Day!

Well, not really. A Special Day, I mean.

But a Not-So-Random, yes. But maybe we'll call this one a Friday Random Musical Box.

It's probably not a secret that I have a certain fondness for Genesis. I know it may not seem like it, but I even like the music more than I like Rush! It's a fondness that held even while I was getting my punk on.

I first really heard them back just before I started college. Duke had just come out, and I loved that album. A friend that I worked with invited me over to do something a bit illegal and loaned me the two previous albums, which I taped (One annoying habit of mine; these are longish albums, so they don't fit on one side of a 90 minute tape. So I usually just let 'em cut off. For the longest time, I HAD NEVER HEARD all of And Then There Were Three or Trick of The Tail. Used to drive my friends nutzoid)

(I realize, of course, that you kids have no idea what I'm talking about with the 'Tape' reference above. Stone knives and bearskins, my children)

A friend and I made a road trip to Madison to see them on the abacab tour and our little brains were permanently twisted.

You know the Vari-Lites that everybody used after lasers became passe? The little, intense, colorful swiveling things? Back in the 70's, as Genesis was looking for ways to maintain the theatricality of their show as they were playing larger venues, they wanted something more dynamic than the standard gel-cans. So they approached a lighting engineer, and financed the development of these little babies. Legendarily troublesome during those early days, but eventually such a success that they've become a de facto standard lighting element. I often think that their return on the investment in these lights has been at least as responsible for their wealth as the music.

By the time they were touring behind abacab, the Vari-Lites had become reliable, and the light show had been refined over several years. It was facken amazing. 150 minutes of absolutely riveting engagement between music and visuals, and Phil Collins had not yet become a crowd-stroking weenie emcee.

After that, I saw them every chance I got, through the Invisible Touch tour. Skipped that last tour, because I was not initially  impressed with We Can't Dance, but we had planned to see the Calling All Stations tour until it was cancelled. And in the interim, Genesis became a bit of a guilty pleasure. I listened often, and the music became a touchstone of warmth and solace for me. In the years since, I always counted on this stuff when things weren't going well. It gave me ....faith, I guess. Faith in art, and music, and beauty, and.... people in general. The future. A future.

Time passes, and a few who hang out here may remember that recently, Genesis got the band back together and swung by close enough to make it worthwhile. Chicago, actually. The show was largely a re-hash of the previous tour back in the 90's, but they developed a whole new set and stage show around new technologies. Unfortunately, the stage set was drastically scaled back for indoor shows, and not having been developed over time, had not grown the impact of those old shows. Still; it was good, and maybe it was just that time had put such a rosy glow on memory that expectations were impossible.

But the last few weeks have been such hard bark that I've turned the iPod back again, and looked for some solace there. Thankfully, the disappointment from the latest show has subsided, and there's still some to be found.

1. Follow You Follow Me (Live In Paris) from the album "Live Over Europe (Bonus Video Version)" by Genesis This was one of their first big hits, and made most people kind of overlook the And Then There Were Three album. Sometimes I kind of wish Rutherford had saved it for Mike And the Mechanics.

2. Wot Gorilla? from the album "Wind & Wuthering" by Genesis An instrumental that presaged abacab, from the last album that Steve Hackett played on. There was talk early on about bringing him back in for the recent tour, but it was predicated on Gabriel also participating; Gabriel was scared of the group dynamic after so long solo, and ultimately declined. What a lost opportunity.

3. There Must Be Some Other Way from the album "Calling All Stations" by Genesis Much-overlooked album that I actually really liked. The absence of Collins let the group return to some of their longer form, more instrumentally-driven work, and it sounds more like a follow up to abacab. Banks and Rutherford use their lifetime of playing together to bob and weave around each other like Astaire and Rogers. I can hear a lot of similarities to and Then There Were Three. This tune builds up to a longish instrumental bridge that combines the best stuff from the previous four albums.

4. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (Excerpt) [Live In Rome] from the album "Live Over Europe (Bonus Video Version)" by Genesis From the European leg of the recent tour. Not much to say about this. Not from my favorite era, but still a pretty good song. The recent tour pushed the electronic drum sound into the background a bit, which would have pleased Nick I believe.

5. Dukes Intro (Live In Manchester) from the album "Live Over Europe (Bonus Video Version)" by Genesis
A lot of stuff from this live recording coming up. I read somewhere that for several shows back in 1980, they played the "Duke Suite" as a medley. I sure would have liked to see that.

6. Domino from the album "Live/The Way We Walk" by Genesis Disturbed did a metal version of this song that's ... umm, interesting. Collins said they were thinking of that version when they rehearsed the recent tour, stripping the song a bit and making it more lean and aggressive, bringing the guitars forward in the mix. Worked really well.

7. Carpet Crawlers from the album "Live Lamb" by Genesis Finally a Gabriel song. One of the really fine moments on the Lamb album, they resurrected this song as the encore closer on the recent tour. Great choice; lousy decision to lead into it with "We Can't Dance" which is a completely disposable tune.

8. Do The Neurotic from the album "1983-1998 Bonus Disc" by Genesis A tossed off instrumental from the 80's. Sounds like an instrumental break in search of a song.

Come ON, iTunes!! Throw some red meat out here!!!

9. Broadway Melody Of 1974 from the album "Live Lamb" by Genesis They released a live tape of Gabriel's last tour, when they performed the Lamb in it's entirety. Pretty good, and you can hear him miss the vocals a couple of times.

Toronto's The Musical Box has developed reproduction stage shows of early Genesis, and they came through a couple of years back doing the Lamb. Amazing, simply surreal; especially when you think that it was performed in 1974!!

10. Mama (Work In Progress) from the album "Archive 1976 - 1992" by Genesis missing a few vocals, but this is even more minimalist than the released version, and much longer. Played live, there's one moment where the lights all die, and Collin's face is lit from below while he cackles 'hah -hah, hah!' The visual is a direct reference to the way they staged The Musical Box when Gabriel was singing. (check out the end, about 9:30) Such a nice touch.

11. Evidence Of Autumn from the album "1976-1982 Bonus Disc" by Genesis Extra song from Duke. Would have made a fine addition, it would fit into the album perfectly. They could, I suppose, have made Duke a double album.

12. More Fool Me from the album "Selling England by the Pound" by Genesis First one sung by Collins.

13. Behind The Lines from the album "Three Sides Live" by Genesis Nice ending , lucky 13 on Friday the 13th.



That's all.

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