UK76’s TRAVELS: Philadelphia - Part 2
Last night’s show was even a little better than the night before, I think. Before the gig I was sitting in the AT&T Pavilion, a bar inside Wachovia Center, and the closest door leading inside the arena from where I was sitting was open. So it was easy to listen to the soundcheck. It was unspectacular as they played the standards (No Son Of Mine, Duke intro and Follow You Follow Me) but still quite nice. Again, I met a whole bunch of members from the official Genesis Forum before the show. So time passed quite fast and when I went down the stairs to get to my 2nd row seat the house lights were already being turned off.
As expected there were no changes to the set. But as I said before, replacing Hold On My Heart with In Too Deep wouldn’t have been the biggest surprise. The only special incident was Brad “Munchie” Marsh’s birthday yesterday. For about 20 years he has been Phil’s drum technician now and he’s the one who always brings out Phil’s barstool for Hold On My Heart. So when he did that again last night, Phil took his hand and pulled him back to the center of the stage. He told the audience that it was his birthday today and the whole arena sang “Happy Birthday” for him.
After the show I took the subway back to my hotel. It’s quite interesting, while in Europe they have to add train services to get all the people on subways or trams, here it was totally relaxed. In the subway everyone could sit so it was much more relaxed than fighting through the traffic when leaving one of the parking lots.
Today I had another walk through the city and again, I’m back at my hotel now slowly getting ready for my departure to the show - with an emphasis on slowly as I still have a lot of time until then.
Tomorrow evening I’ll already be flying back home from Baltimore, Maryland. Hope to put another update on the last Philly show online before my departure.
Ulli
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September 20th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I was at the Philly show last night (Wed. Sept. 19). It was my first time seeing Genesis, and I was not disappointed. It was a great show. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
As a musician, and long time Genesis fan, I carefully followed what they were playing on stage. I was only a little surprised to see that they were sequencing songs. (One of Tony’s keyboards or a computer controlling the tempo, and playing some parts.) I’m not sure if they sequenced every song or just a smattering, but certainly not every part I heard was being played live. It doesn’t bother me much, as I’ve seen bands do this before. And with these guys being the pros that they are, the music had a great live feel. I just wanted to see Tony Banks play every part live.
Non the less, he did a great job and sounded fantastic.
The music filled the auditorium. As a side note, this was also the first time I’ve seen a concert in the Wachovia Center. It sounded as I suspected: pretty good, but some details got lost in the bad acoustics of the place. This is similar I’m sure to other large arenas. It was no different than the older Spectrum (across the street from the Wachovia) in which I saw many concerts over the years. The difference being, today’s sound systems are better able to compensate for the difficult acoustic characteristics of large arenas like this one.
The stage set was great.
From beginning to end, it was a terrific show. I hope I get a chance to see them again sometime.
Regards,
Lou