Chaos in Los Angeles: Genesis performed at the Hollywood Bowl in LA last night (the first of two shows). They didn’t have a proper outdoor stage, there was no stage-roof that was used for the european and North American stadium shows. After half of the show, it began to rain heavily, Tony Banks was forced to perform under an umbrella (!). After Invisible Touch, Phil came back on stage and explained that the band cannot perform any more under these circumstances. The show was stopped, no Encores were performed. Although not planned, this is the first “variation” of the setlist of the whole tour…

Behind The Lines / Duke’s End
Turn It On Again
No Son Of Mine
Land Of Confusion
In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke’s Travels
Afterglow
Hold On My Heart
Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea
Follow You Follow Me
Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like
Mama
Ripples
Throwing It All Away
Domino
Drum Duet
Los Endos
Tonight Tonight Tonight (intro)
Invisible Touch

correspondent in LA: Ulli Klemt

Around noon I took the train from San Jose to Sacramento. It’s a 3.5 hrs trip up San Francisco Bay. After a very enjoyable ride in nice weather I arrived in California’s capital Sacramento. I actually liked it more than San Jose as it had more offer. It was a short walk from the train station to my hotel and after check-in I had a short walk around in the city center. As it was afternoon already I soon had to leave for ARCO Arena. From my hotel I took the bus. I can tell you it’s quite a remote place outside the city. Not too much around it and apart from a bus service that stops at around 10pm you really need a car to get there!

Doors opened as usual around 7pm and I wandered around in the building before heading to my seat for the show. This time I was on the floor about 8 rows from the back. So I had a nice total view of the stage and light show. The concert itself was great again but without anything special to mention. After the gig I took a taxi back to my hotel and went to bed.

The next morning a bus took me out to the airport for my flight to L.A. which was scheduled for 12.20pm. It departed on time and after a little more than an hour I was back in Los Angeles. Again I took a bus to my hotel in downtown. After a short walk around in downtown (including a visit to Staples Center) I was hungry for dinner but to my surprise most of the restaurants and eateries were closed. It was 7pm and with most of the offices closed now the restaurants seemed to have closed as well. So I took the metro to Hollywood and had my dinner at the Kodak Theatre. On my way there I already found Phil’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s right next to El Capitan Theatre opposite of Kodak Theatre.

Today I woke up, had a look outside the window and to my surprise it was heavily clouded! Even looking like rain. Forecast for tonight says it could rain by midnight. Hopefully that’s correct! But there are still chances of showers. Tomorrow it could rain in the morning but get better towards the afternoon. We’ll see. Genesis is in town so it might even rain in sunny Southern California…

Ulli

Business as usual in Sacramento, California

Behind The Lines / Duke’s End
Turn It On Again
No Son Of Mine
Land Of Confusion
In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke’s Travels
Afterglow
Hold On My Heart
Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea
Follow You Follow Me
Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like
Mama
Ripples
Throwing It All Away
Domino
Drum Duet
Los Endos
Tonight Tonight Tonight (intro)
Invisible Touch

I Can’t Dance
The Carpet Crawlers

Yesterday morning (Tuesday) I got up early, drove to my friends and had breakfast with them before driving up to Portland Airport again. The weather was now a bit foggy but it was still dry. After returning my rental car and the check-in for my flight to San Jose I headed straight to the gate. The flight was packed as they had to put two flights on this one. Another flight to San Jose had to return to Portland due to problems with the de-icing which can lead into really dangerous situations. But still we departed on time. Once we had climbed out of Portland we got into the clouds and didn’t leave them until we descended into San Jose. Well, I had the chance to enjoy excellent views on my flight up to Portland so I won’t complain. The weather in California was by far not as good as a few days ago when I left. Now it was pretty cloudy and not too warm.

I got to my hotel (which is right next to the HP Pavilion) by bus and tram and by the time I had checked in it was almost 5pm. There was a meet-up with other members from the official forum in the city center not far from the arena and that’s were I went then. Together with at least another 30 fans I spent some nice 2 hours in a pub before going back to the arena.

There’s not too much to say about the show. The atmosphere was great and although the audience sat during quite a few songs they really participated very well! Again, the mistakes were just minor ones (e.g. the drum triggers at the end of Turn It On Again didn’t work properly). After the show I met some of the people from the earlier meet-up again and we had another drink a different pub. When we left at around 0.30am It was raining outside! I would’ve never expected that and therefore hadn’t brought a jacket. So by the time I was back at the hotel I was glad to have a hair-dryer on my room…

Now I’m still in San Jose (a very unspectacular city) and will take the train to Sacramento in about 2 hours. Another show ahead, tonight at the ARCO Arena.

Ulli

Still no changes even in Silicon Valley:

Behind The Lines / Duke’s End
Turn It On Again
No Son Of Mine
Land Of Confusion
In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke’s Travels
Afterglow
Hold On My Heart
Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea
Follow You Follow Me
Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like
Mama
Ripples
Throwing It All Away
Domino
Drum Duet
Los Endos
Tonight Tonight Tonight (intro)
Invisible Touch

I Can’t Dance
The Carpet Crawlers

In a recent interview, that is currently being spread by Reuters, Peter Gabriel hints that Genesis (Tony, Mike & Phil with Daryl and Chester) may continue the tour with new shows in Europe next year. Gabriel says “I’m hoping to see the show because I think they’re going to do some more European dates”. Gabriel also says that a reunion with him and Steve is still not out of the question, but just a lot of work.
Meanwhile, Gabriel has continued work on his next soloalbum, that will be released “in autumn. or spring. In some year”…
The full article is available on most entertainment news site, like this one

Only four Shows left - the Genesis Tour 2007 is nearing the end. Since the beginning of June, we have provided photos from this tour in our gallery.
The original idea was to present a couple of great photos from various shows. We ended up covering EVERY show in Europe and almost every Show in North America. Click here to see our gallery overview!

No less than 2587 photos (!) are in our online-gallery right now.
Nevertheless, we still look for more!

We still need your help / contribution!
There are still no photos from these shows: Denver (CO), East Rutherford (NJ)
We are still looking for more photos from these shows: Chicago II + III (IL), Washington DC, Ottawa (ON), Montreal (QC), Albany (NY), Buffalo (NY), Toronto Dress Rehearsal (ON, London (UK), Amsterdam (NL), Chorzow (PL), Prague (CZ).

If you have good photos from any of the above mentioned shows, contact Christian to discuss file transfer options (or send them directly via E-Mail, zipped or as original jpeg files). The photos should at last have a 800px width.

Photo by Squonkman
See more photos in our online gallery here

So after a few days without internet I’m glad I can finally post an update on my travels. A lot has happened and I’m in Salem, Oregon already.

I all began Saturday morning with a very pleasant and uneventful flight to Paris. In Charles de Gaulle airport I had 3 hrs time to change planes and as my luggage wasn’t checked through all the way to Los Angeles I really needed most of that time to check in again. After security checks I could already see the Air Tahiti Nui Airbus sitting at the gate and we boarded “Bora Bora” (that’s the name of the aircraft) very much on time for this 11.5 hrs flight to Los Angeles and on to Papeete, Tahiti - but not for me. The flight was very nice. In economy they have personal screens at every seat so you can watch movies and airshow or play various games. The weather enroute was calm apart from a few chops over the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunately most of the territories we passed were overcast so you couldn’t see much. But by the time we reached the Californian airspace the clouds disappeared and it was bright and sunny when we descended into LAX. After a smooth landing we taxied to the international terminal. All passengers had to leave the plane regardless if they continued the journey to Papeete or not.

At the immigrations the officer questioned me quite a bit. Of course he had noticed that I had just been to the US 2 weeks ago and this made him curious about my job. I guess he suspected I might try to enter the US to work here. But I have to admit that 2 holidays in the US in such a short period of time are rather unusual. However, after a short ‘interview’ I got my stamp and could enter America. The complimentary shuttle brought me to my airport hotel. All this - from touchdown in L.A. to my arrival at the hotel - had only taken about 1 hour! I guess it was because about 90% of the passengers on my flight were continuing on to Papeete and they had to go to a transit lounge. Therefore the queues at the immigration were very short and all went as fast as I wrote above.

As I still had half the afternoon to spend I decided to go to a very famous place for aircraft spotting. It’s a small park right next to an In ‘n’ Out Burger restaurant in the final approach to one of LAX’s runways. The planes are just about 50 metres above your head when they pass! After 2 hours of spotting and a very good ‘double-double’ menu at In ‘n’ Out I went back to my hotel. It was about 8.30 pm already and I was knackered from 9 hrs of jetlag. So I fell asleep pretty soon and got up at 5.30 am again to catch my next flight on to Portland, Oregon.

Thanks to online check-in I just had to drop my bag at the counter and could go through security checks before finally having my breakfast. My flight was scheduled to leave at 9.05 am so I wasn’t in a hurry at all. The routing this time was a bit unusual. Most people would take a direct flight I guess. But I decided to fly with Alaka Airlines partner Horizon and do the trip a bit slower than usual. We first flew up to Eureka/Arcata north of San Francisco Bay right at the ocean. I could then just stay on the aircraft before we did a short 20 minute hop to Redding in North California. It was again a very sunny day and I could enjoy some very nice views - also thanks to the fact that our aircraft (a DeHavilland Canada Dash-8) doesn’t fly as high as jets. From Redding we passed Mount Shasta and the more we got towards Portland the more clouds there were. To my surprise it didn’t rain when we landed but it was heavily overcast.

I took my luggage and went to the rental car center to collect my car. I had booked an economy car the smallest they had was a Mitsubishi Outlander… That’s the USA! The drive down to Salem took about 45 minutes and after checking in at the hotel I headed straight to the friends I’m visiting here. We spent the evening talking and with a nice dinner. There was a lot to talk as my last visit was 14 years ago!

Today we might do a little trip to the Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow I’m off to San Jose for the concert there. So my next message might either come from there or Sacramento. It’s a pretty tight schedule really!

Ulli

Genesis move west, but no surprises, as expected…

Behind The Lines / Duke’s End
Turn It On Again
No Son Of Mine
Land Of Confusion
In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke’s Travels
Afterglow
Hold On My Heart
Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea
Follow You Follow Me
Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like
Mama
Ripples
Throwing It All Away
Domino
Drum Duet
Los Endos
Tonight Tonight Tonight (intro)
Invisible Touch

I Can’t Dance
The Carpet Crawlers

I’ve promised to be back, so here I am. It’s almost weekend and tomorrow morning (Saturday) I will be on my way to L.A. already! The final leg of my personal tour is about to begin. God, it all went so terribly fast. Can’t believe that it’s nearly 4 months since the tour kicked off in Helsinki. But I had the time of my life so far and enjoyed every minute of it!

So as I said, tomorrow I will get up very early to get to the airport. My flight to Paris (Charles de Gaulle) departs at 7.20am. In Paris I will have about 3 hours for the transfer before I leave bound for Los Angeles on Air Tahiti Nui - a pretty exotic airline. They are said to have a pretty good in-flight service - without doubt they’re better than any american airline - and I hope they won’t disappoint me. The airline serves a route from Paris to Papeete, Tahiti with a stop in Los Angeles. As I’m very much into aviation, it was a nice opportunity for me to fly on that airline. The advantage of that flight is also that it arrives in L.A. in the early afternoon already.

So in L.A. I will just spend a night at an airport hotel before I head on to Salem, Oregon on Sunday morning where I will visit some friends who I haven’t seen in ages. On Tuesday afternoon I’ll fly back to California. My destination this time it will of course be San Jose for the first of my last four concerts. Then I’ll travel on to Sacramento and finally L.A. again for the last two shows.

The weather forecast looks pretty bright. So next time I post an update I will hopefully do it from sunny California.

Ulli