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Genesis
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Date |
Venue - City, State |
Notes | Media |
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| 1. |
03/02/72 |
Paris Theatre - London,
England |
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1 shn
|
notes
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| 2. |
03/04/72 |
Watford College - Watford,
England |
|
1 shn
|
notes
|
| 3. |
04/18/72 |
Piper Club - Rome,
Italy |
|
1 shn
|
notes
|
| 4. |
01/15/73 |
Stadthalle - Heidelberg,
Germany |
|
1 shn
|
notes
|
| 5. |
01/21/73 |
Palasport - Rome,
Italy |
|
1 shn
|
notes
|
| 6. |
10/16/73 |
Colston Hall - Bristol,
England |
|
1 shn
|
notes
|
| 7. |
11/08/73 |
Massey Hall - Toronto,
ON |
|
2 shn
|
notes
|
| 8. |
??/??/73 |
SEBTP Studio Sessions Outtakes - Unknown,
England |
|
2 shn
|
notes
|
| 9. |
04/06/74 |
Student Union Auditorium, University of Toledo - Toledo,
OH |
fits on 1 shn |
2 shn
|
notes
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| 10. |
04/21/74 |
Centre Sportif - Montreal,
QC |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 11. |
05/04/74 |
Academy of Music - New York,
NY |
The Concert
This was the second last concert of the Selling England by the Pound tour. The band had been performing this music since October the previous year, some of it for much longer. What we hear is not only a finely honed rendition of some of their best music, but an exhilarating performance. And what adds interest for us was what plagued the Genesis crew at the time - equipment problems. Not only is Phil's One-handed drum solo routine given an amusing airing, but later in the concert, Phil leads an impromptu improvisation while covering for another running repair.
And their equipment woes didn't end with the gig. Phil comments at one point during the concert "even the unexpected happens tonight..." Little did he know. Later that evening all the band's guitars were stolen, to be returned the next day after a little bribery, allowing the performance of the 6th May to go ahead. On that last concert of the tour, Peter describes the incident, in typically amusing fashion - however I'm sure they didn't feel that way the day before.
From a friend who lives in New York, I have been told about the venue: "its offical name was 'Howard Stein's Academy of Music', the place where so many famous bands played, Nektar, Renaissance etc. I think it was on 14th Street. It was sold in 1976 and re-named 'The Palladium'."
In my opinion this concert may be regarded as one of the finest Selling England shows they performed, and it is a great fortune that we also have one of the best recordings of the tour to document it.
The Recording
This audience recording is absolutely superb. Clear open detailed sound, with good dynamics and very little hiss or distortion. Given this quality of sound, the matter of it being a mono recording becomes irrelevent.
The recording documents nearly the whole performance. However, there are two major gaps; the first, a minute and a half missing during from middle of the instrumental section of Cinema Show, and the other, the last third of Battle of Epping Forest. These would be sad losses from an otherwise great recording, if it wasn't for the existence of an almost comparable quality recording from the same venue on the 6th. This recording, to my knowledge, is incomplete, cutting the end of Cinema Show, and finishing with Epping Forest and so missing Supper's Ready. However by good fortune, it does cover those sections missing from the tape of the 4th. So I have spliced in the missing sections from this 6th May tape.
Hence this recording gives the complete show, to the extended applause and playing of Albinoni's Adagio that conclude the concert.
The best known version of this concert in circulation is the Highland release: 'Voices in the Academy'. Recently, a CDR 'from VHS copy of master reels' has been circulating. This new version is a huge upgrade on the Highland version, and begins to show the quality of the original recording. Highlands source by comparison is hissy, muddy and with a 'bubbly' texture (minor dropouts).
Recently I was sent a 1st generation tape from an American collector who has had his tape for a long time. Many years ago he did a trade with a Canadian collector who insisted on a VHS dub of the tape. Comparing this 1st gen tape and the 'from VHS' CDRs, I believe it is a fair bet that the new CDRs come from the VHS tape dubbed from this tape. Certainly this 1st gen tape is clearer and more open than the CDs.
The Restoration
This was a fairly straight forward recording to remaster, requiring little serious repair work. I began with a new transcription of the 1st gen tape, optimising for mono and giving a little boost to the bass harmonics.
I have chosen to denoise very slightly (-4Db) and also bring out the treble a little more cleanly. If you compare with the 'from VHS' CDs, you will hear the extra brightness in the top end, with marginally less hiss. The excerpts from the 6th May tape were spliced in, eq balancing and repitching that recording, as it was about a half tone flat.
The Academy of Music is a lovely old venue that has a rich warm acoustic. I have complimented the recording with a little reverb, matched to that of the venue, and opening up the mono soundstage with some early reflections.
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2 shn
|
notes
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| 12. |
01/10/75 |
West Palm Beach Convention Hall - West Palm Beach,
FL |
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2 shn
|
notes
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| 13. |
01/11/75 |
Lakeland Civic Center - Lakeland,
FL |
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2 shn
|
notes
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| 14. |
04/27/75 |
Palace Theatre - Manchester,
England |
The Show;
This is a recording of the complete concert from the triumphant British leg of the Lamb tour. It is a beautifully clear and undistorted recording, which I have been able to remaster from the master tapes (many thanks to Colin Dodd for providing them). As Colin points out in his essay, the concert began late, and the venue curfew meant that only Musical Box was played as an encore.
The music is immaculately played (as always), and the concert features an outstanding Waiting Room. By this stage in the tour they were stretching out a bit more on this improvisation, and both the frightening first part and the driving build up are extended, and have many different elements not heard previously. Perhaps, knowing that they had done their BBC recording of the tour (at the 15th April London concert), they felt freer to experiment a bit more in front of a very supportive home audience. Hackett seems to be refining his solos on Fly on a Windshield and Arrival. One moment of distraction; at the conclusion of Cuckoo Cocoon, Gabriel finishes his final flute phrase a bar early, and quickly repeats it. He then misses the first lyrics of 'In the Cage'.
The British audiences were some of the most enthusiastic of the Lamb tour (rivalled only by the Italians, who sadly only got that one show at Torino). Not only did the band extend their improvisations, but Gabriel responded with elaborating and humourising his stories, to which the crowd respond energetically. There are some great interactions; I love his "...a huge roar on my right" at which a few members of the crowd (presumably on his right :-) roar!
There is another noteworthy moment in Counting Out Time; during this song (as for the whole concert), slides were thrown onto 3 projection screens behind the band. Some images during this song show diagrams of female anatomy with arrows and numbers pointing out relevant parts. The audience can be heard laughing at these as Gabriel sings "...digesting every word the experts say" (about 36 secs into the track). There is also some audible amazement during 'Arrival' as Gabriel appears as the Slipperman.
The source:
This show has not been commercially bootlegged, and has only been circulating among traders either on CDRs from Colin's masters, or low generation tapes. Hence, although it is one of the better recordings and performances of the Lamb, it has not been widely known.
Colin recorded the concert on 2 Maxell C120 Low noise cassettes. He captured the entire concert, flipping the tape during the applause at the end of Chamber of 32 Doors, and again during the beginning of Arrival. I have edited some applause into the first flip, and taken a section from Colin's recording of the 28th to patch the intro of Arrival (it is interesting how similar Hackett & Colin's 'improvisation' is one night to the other). I have then chosen to place the edit between CDs at the end of Waiting Room - not only does this give 2 discs under 70 mins (preferable for duplicating), but it allows me to include the full recording of the audience calling for a second encore at the conclusion of the concert.
The restoration:
Due to this recording coming from a low noise tape, the treble was a little muted. On the CDR of this show that has been in circulation, the tops are boosted considerably, giving a rather hissy recording. So the challenge (as often the case) was to attenuate this hiss while keeping the treble detail. The result (I hope you'll agree) is an open and clear recording with considerable top end detail. There are a few moments when lack of detail in the master leads to a graininess in the treble. Sorry, but there just wasn't much there, and to smooth it off would remove what subtlety was to be heard in Phil's drumming. I've chosen to preserve as much as I could of the music, at the expense of 'textbook' audio.
The bass end of this recording is lovely and rich, showing Rutherford's bass and pedal work. If you're a Rutherford fan, this is the lamb show for you. If anything I have had to soften the bass off a little, but otherwise the equalisation balance on the master was very natural.
The recording was made on a machine with automatic record levels, so I have manually restored the true volume dynamics. For instance; if you have the original version of this, you'll notice that Tony's solo keyboard intro at the beginning of the concert gets louder, until Peter's "And the Lamb..." and Phil's first drum splash knocks the levels down again. I have reconstructed these levels to sound more natural, and the rest of the band now come in powerfully as they should do. Fortunately the response of the auto record was quite long, 10-15 secs before responding to a quieter section in the music, so the short-time dynamics, the 'punch' of the recording, are not affected.
Lastly, the tape was in mono. I have added subtle early reflections to add depth and space to the final sound. If you're listening on headphones, you may notice the effect, but the stereo field is still predominantly centralised.
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2 shn
|
notes
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| 15. |
04/13/76 |
Syria Mosque - Pittsburgh,
PA |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 16. |
04/14/76 |
Music Hall - Cleveland,
OH |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 17. |
06/11/76 |
The Hammersmith Odeon - London,
England |
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1 shn
|
notes
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| 18. |
07/09/76 |
Apollo Theatre - Glasgow,
UK |
|
1 shn
|
notes
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| 19. |
02/16/77 |
Transit Auditorium - Chicago,
IL |
|
1 shn
|
notes
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| 20. |
05/21/77 |
Ginásio Do Ibirapuera - São Paulo,
Brazil |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 21. |
06/24/77 |
Earl's Court - London,
England |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 22. |
04/03/78 |
University Assembly Hall - Bloomington,
IN |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 23. |
06/03/78 |
Palais des Sports - Dijon,
France |
A previously hidden complete soundboard from
the 1978 'And Then There Were Three' tour.
There had been two different versions of this
circulating amongst a small amount of
collectors, one with (too much) noise
reduction applied to it and another with the
beginning of 'Eleventh Earl Of Mar' cut. This
is a third version and has no cut in the
beginning and no noise reduction applied.
This set is from AV's masters BUT fixed with
Shntool as the tracks weren't properly cut.
This means that there are now at least two
different sets of this floating around but as
this one will be in the hands on hundreds
this is the best solution in order to avoid
microgap copies from entering the trading
pool. The original files were named
Dijon1978d1t01.shn to Dijon1978d2t09.shn, the
fixed files are named gen1978-06-03d1t01.shn
to gen1978-06-03d2t09.shn. Please make this
clear when passing it on to others to avoid
confusion.
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2 shn
|
notes
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| 24. |
06/06/78 |
Ishallen - Malmö,
Sweden |
|
2 shn
|
notes
|
| 25. |
10/13/78 |
Uptown Theatre - Chicago,
IL |
|
2 shn
|
notes
|
| 26. |
04/17/80 |
Sheffield City Hall - Sheffield,
England |
|
2 shn
|
notes
|
| 27. |
05/07/80 |
Lyceum Ballroom - London,
England |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 28. |
11/21/81 |
Riverfront Coliseum - Cincinnati,
OH |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 29. |
11/27/83 |
The Spectrum - Philadelphia,
PA |
|
2 shn
|
notes
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| 30. |
09/30/86 |
Madison Square Garden - New York,
NY |
|
2 shn
|
notes
|
| 31. |
10/17/86 |
The Forum - Inglewood,
CA |
shn fits on 1 cdr |
2 shn
|
notes
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