The Musical Box - Rome 2007

...we will remain truly grateful to this incredible band!

It seems that 2.300 people went to see The Musical Box in Rome. I can’t swear about the number, but I can confirm the Tendastrisce theatre was absolutely full of people. And what kind of noisy audience it was! Since the first notes of the mellotron doing Watcher Of The Skies intro, the audience started cheering and supporting this band, looking at Dennis Gagné facial mimic and his wide mantle.
Given that The Musical Box are the stunning band everyone of us know, I guess the particularity of this show was given by people reaction, indeed. Every now and then you would even hear stomping feet doing an annoying noise surrounding all the area… I guess the real Genesis felt something similar when they performed in front of 18,000 people at Rome Palasport back in 1973…
Speaking of the performance, I don’t think it would be useful for me to repeat what everyone presumably already knows.
Of course the skill of the band is well known. Once again, I was absolutely impressed by Martin Levac’s resemblance of Phil Collins’ voice. But Martin was also extraordinary on drums, pushing all his terrific power in a remarkable performance.
Not that his colleagues were less precise and strong. One of the main merits of The Musical Box is that they are able to learn something new about Genesis even to people, like myself, who follows Genesis since ages and tends to have really a few surprises nowadays.
For instance, the first time I saw this show three years ago, I was heavily impressed by the amount of stuff performed by Mike Rutherford. I have always thought Mike was the lung of Genesis, but that performance made the things even clearer: Mike did an impressing work during the whole show, and of course this happened on The Lamb tour as well, as Sebastien Lamothe stunningly demonstrated us.
Even if Mike Rutherford very often played guitar, the rhythm section he build with Phil was incredibly strong, and the pair of musicians always had a particular feeling with Tony Banks. Tony was the main soloist, and his interaction with Phil and Mike is the focus of every Genesis performance, as everyone knows now that they are still the ones who bring ahead the Genesis history.
The excellent David Myers accepted this time to wear a wig, which is in my opinion perfectly acceptable. We should remember that The Musical Box worked incredibly hard to recreate the original Genesis performances, so a bald keyboard player simply wouldn’t make justice enough to the scenery!
The lead guitarist Francois Gagnon was also excellent, although there are moments when he doesn’t play at all. That was after all also the case of Steve Hackett during the original Genesis shows. In this part of Genesis career, Steve was actually more a painter than a soloist; he used to add the odd colours to an already fixed structure. Of course Steve was absolutely perfect in this, and we all know how Genesis suffered from his absence in the post 77 albums.
What else should we say about Denis that it hasn’t be said before? Well, he really works very very hard. A vocalist has to fight with the passing years, vocal problems, colds, and so on. Even if it can seem strange knowing the current Gabriel, the original Peter was very slim, more than Denis. But the Canadian has a very strong will: not only he has incredible copies of the masks, he also uses a stunning make up, he learnt to play flute, he studied mechanically all the moves and even the expressions of Peter’s face, and all in all his part is the most difficult.
We know The Musical Box will perform again in November; what will happen to them afterwards? Will they go ahead with A Trick of The Tail tour or will they finally start to think to a serious job? (only kidding, folks!).
Whatever the answer is, I think that everyone of us will remain forever truly grateful to this incredible band and to their mentor Serge Morissette..

Author: Mario Giammetti, Italy