The Turn It On Again tour in the press
Genesis’ European tour has ended yesterday with their Rome gig. Now that some time has passed after the two shows that I saw I have gone over a couple of concert reviews again. These are four reviews from respectable [German] daily newspapers; I have intentionally disregarded articles from the yellow press.
Genesis has been an easy target for music critics for quite a number of years. Negative reviews were not always inappropriate. Some attacks might have been less ferocious if Phil Collins had not occasionally gone over the top with his mainstream pop. But the very commercial 1992 tour and decision like releasing the Live At Wembley Stadium DVD without In The Cage / Afterglow and splitting the Way We Walk CDs in a Long Ones and a Short Ones have given much justified reason for complaint amongst fans of long standing.
Those people who like neither progrock nor the later radio pop feel their opinion confirmed. And then there is also the passage from Brett Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho [1]. Now that the reunion with Phil Collins has taken place most critics could hardly wait to reaffirm their preconceptions. I have taken a close look at two reviews from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Oliver Jungen about the Hamburg show and Christian Riethmüller about the Frankfurt gig), Jens-Christian Rabe’s review of the Linz show in Süddeutsche Zeitung and Jens Balzers review in Berliner Zeitung in order to add some criticism about their work.
Christian Riethmüller makes it very easy for me. The newspaper’s motto “There is always a clever brain behind it” is expressly targeted at the readers, not the journalists of FAZ. The progressive parts of the show are described as “fiddle-diddle songs” and “fairy-tale pomp”, the rest is styled “charts material we have heard too often”. His summary: “If the dinosaurs [of rock music; translator] want to hand out a price for the most elegant boredom, Genesis are sure to take the trophy.” Riethmüller is obviously one of those people who never liked Genesis in any stage of their musical development. That is quite okay, but I wonder why he of all people wanted (or had?) to write the concert review.
Jens-Christian Rabe’s review of the Linz gig in Süddeutsche Zeitung is as negative. He has made more effort than his FAZ colleague, though, and tries to wrap it all in irony tinged with pseudo insider knowledge. Here we reach the central problem of many reviews: What he writes is simply not true. Gabriel was not stuck “in a giant yellow froglike costume for long stretches of the [Lamb] show”, but only for one song. Rael was certainly not a “punk” in 1974 [German has adopted this word, but restricted its meaning strictly to the music and its fans; translator’s note], and Collins and Gabriel definitely were “the two heads” of the band – Genesis are all too often cut down to both their main vocalists. Rabe, too, would probably never voluntarily listen to Genesis. He finds that “it would be hard to exceed the boredom of” the older song parts, and who speaks for (or rather, against) the pop songs in Rabe’s article? Yes, it is the fictitious mass murderer Patrick Bateman. Thus Rabe announces that “everybody was free to leave at 11pm sharp after the second encore.” No mention is made of the fact that the concert is much longer than two and a half hours. Another review that disqualifies itself.
Jens Balzer of Berliner Zeitung did not like the show either, but he knows a thing or two about Genesis and has a knack for hilarious writing, e.g. when he describes the failed attempts of the Berlin audience to clap along to the 13/8 beat of Turn It On Again. Balzer apparently prefers 70s music, the songs from Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance are “quickly rusting machine pop scrap metal”. He also criticizes the “lack of interest in musical virtuosity or even a bit of variety. Everything was planned, nothing spontaneous”. Having seen the shows myself I cannot share balzer’s opinion about the lack of virtuosity – and words like spontaneous or rich in variations do not really apply to Genesis in my book; this is a characteristic of the band. One of the few moments in which Genesis deviate from the studio original, viz. Daryl Stuermer’s guitar solo for Firth Of Fifth, was a bit Mr Balzer did not like either. All in all his review was at least worth reading, though he goes a bit over the top with his sexual connotations of the stage design: “The musicians played in front of the womb; […] big oval screens had been placed in the ovaries […] When the main set had ended fireworks burst forth from the light towers after the uterus had begun bleeding and seeping pus in red and yellow.”
What remains is Oliver Jungen’s review for FAZ. I shall talk about it last, not because he actually comes to a positive verdict about the current reunion, but because he is the only one who measures Genesis by what they really did on stage in these past weeks and, not by things from the past. This is a journalist who, though he did not always like everything the band released in the last decades, has at least realized what the band was aiming for with the current series of shows: A presentation of their overall oeuvre: “Genesis – and perhaps Pink Floyd, too – have given a depth to pop rock songs that made them autonomous entities in their own right. When the reunion was announced half a year ago in London the trio made clear that this special tour was all about their heritage, about setting things fundamentally right.”
A couple of remarks that apply to all reviews I read: It is remarkable that so little simple facts were mentioned like how long the shows were, the lightshow (and that is could not be seen very well from the sides), the sound quality – research is apparently not required anymore. This also goes for the much repeated story about a reunion with Gabriel. Berliner Zeitung announces that Gabriel had not said anything about a new staging of The Lamb – “and since neither Collins nor Banks nor Rutherford, as they themselves said, have his current phone number they cannot ask him in person. Süddeutsche Zeitung on the other hand explains: “There might even have been – at Gabriel’s instigation – a re-staging of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, a prog rock concept album from 1974 considered a masterpiece by many. But the maestro felt too old to slip back into the role of the young dancing punk Rael, who is the protagonist of the album. Perhaps it is better this way. On the big tour in the 70s the two leading heads [of the band] had fallen out with each other.” Both details are wrong, as the writer could have found out by listening to the press conference from November 2006 [or reading the transcript; translator’s note]. We now have gathered even more information from the interview the German Genesis fanclub it conducted with Tony Banks and Michael Rutherford.
Why do I read a newspaper at all? I want to read about events I did not attend, I want to have the facts to form my own opinion. I neither demand nor need an utterly positive review of a Genesis show. But I have not been able to find a single newspaper article from which alone I could have formed an opinion about the shows. What remains is the insight that all topics from foreign policy to entertainment are discussed in a more or less partisan, incompetent and lacklustre way. Pity, really.
[1] Patrick Bateman: Do you like Phil Collins? I’ve been a big Genesis fan ever since the release of their 1980 album, Duke. Before that, I really didn’t understand any of their work. Too artsy, too intellectual. It was on Duke where, uh, Phil Collins’ presence became more apparent. I think Invisible Touch was the group’s undisputed masterpiece. It’s an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Christy, take off your robe. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. Sabrina, remove your dress. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Sabrina, why don’t you, uh, dance a little. Take the lyrics to Land of Confusion. In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. In Too Deep is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as, uh, anything I’ve heard in rock. Christy, get down on your knees so Sabrina can see your ass. Phil Collins’ solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way. Especially songs like In the Air Tonight and, uh, Against All Odds. Sabrina, don’t just stare at it, eat it. But I also think Phil Collins works best within the confines of the group, than as a solo artist, and I stress the word artist. This is Sussudio, a great, great song, a personal favourite.
Author: DocFeatherfield
Translation, except for the excerpt from American Psycho: Martin Klinkhardt
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