The Musical Box - Saarbrücken 2007

The Magic of Yesterday

Virtual time journeys into the 1970s and 1980s are currently very popular. Private TV stations have taken to broadcasting cheap ‘ultimate’ reviews with would-be celebrities and old stuff from the archives. Kabel 1 [a German commercial TV station] currently shows the highly original mystery series “Life On Mars” about a detective from the present going back to 1973.
1973 was the year Pablo Picasso and J.R.R.Tolkien died. The USA were shaken by the Watergate affair. Rock music was dominated by Glam and Progressive Rock: Dark Side Of The Moon, Yessongs, Brain Salad Surgery and Tubular Bells were released. David Bowie sold more than eight million records and became the most successful artist since The Beatles. January 2007 saw Nelly Furtado and Monrose top the German single and album charts respectively. No wonder that people who had not even been born back then wish it was thirty years earlier.
1973 was also the year Genesis released Selling England By The Pound. I was six years old at the time; too young to experience the band live in the Gabriel era. I got to know Genesis by Three Sides Live in the 1980s and soon worked my way back to the early albums. When I was given a flyer of The Musical Box at Peter Gabriel’s Growing Up concert in Oberhausen in 2003 I was excited like a little boy. The flyer promised the exact replication of the 1973 Genesis show. A couple of months later I sat in the Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt and felt doubly moved back in time: Into the early 80s when I would constantly play Live, Trespass, Foxtrot and the other Genesis records, and into the 70s when that music was actually performed on stage.
The gig in Saarbrücken was the sixth time I have seen The Musical Box live; it was also the third time I saw the Selling tour. I knew the set list by heart as well as the announcements. What was new was sitting in the first row. It gave me the opportunity to play closer attention to individual musicians and less attention to the stage and light show (which was impressive nevertheless). Though I knew exactly what was in store I was overwhelmed once more by the music and the theatrical central performance by Denis Gagné aka Peter Gabriel.
The British journalist David Buckley mentions the mutual influence between Peter Gabriel and David Bowie in his book “Strange Fascination”. He writes: “While the media focused on Bowie’s friendship and rivalry with Iggy Pop and Lou Reed it was the member of a progressive rock band that Bowie’s theatricality most resembled: Peter Gabriel. Gabriel, just like Bowie, developed surreal stage costumes for his performances with his art rock band Genesis. If Bryan Ferry was Bowie’s match as an agent provocateur of art rock, then Gabriel was his match as an actor.” [This quote is a re-translation; translator’s note] Why were Genesis in Peter Gabriel’s era so influential for later bands like Marillion, Pallas, Spock’s Bears &c. ? Perhaps because the managed to joind the best things of both glam and prog rock on stage. Their music was much more demanding than that of, say, Queen or T.Rex, but they still wrote songs and none of the meandering epics that Yes and ELP occasionally failed with – and they had a strong sense of humour.
The Musical Box have repoduced the Genesis shows with lots of enthusiasm, idealism and an almost obsessive perfectionism. Their versions of Firth Of Fifth, The Musical Box and Supper’s Ready have thrilled by and evidently everybody else in a venue that offered almost perfect sound – something that allegedly was not always the case with all gigs on their tour.
The biggest merit of the band lies in the fact that it was through their performances that I understood what fascinated people about Genesis and why their music still inspires other musicians to this day. It also explains why people like me still attend the bands reunion concerts: There’s always magic in the air.

Author: Marcus Pennekamp
Translated by Martin Klinkhardt

Never as intensive as 2007

Saarbrücken was my fourth TMB concert after the first Selling show in 2005 and Lamb shows in 2005 and 2006. A colleague who ordered the ticket at WIV got me good seats in the middle of row 2, which is as good as it gets. After the first Selling show I knew I had to see it again. This show and Mainz 2007 were the best one I have ever seen from TMB. They had lots of fun playing the show and the audience were in a brilliant mood, too. A brief rundown of the setlist:
Watcher Of The Skies: Is there a better opening song for a concert? No. The magic of the original show was right back.
Dancing With The Moonlit Knight: Has gripped me more this night than it had for quite a long time.
The Cinema Show: This song is always good to see live because there are no extant video recordings of this song being performed in the 70s. What a pity because it is so impressive visually.
I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe): Something easier after four big long tracks, though I have never heard this song performed with such power.
Firth Of Fifth: As with The Cinema Show, this song was never recorded [on video] on the original tour. The middle part was played with lots of verve.
The Musical Box: A highlight of the evening, it has always been one of my favourite Genesis songs. And the ending with the Old Man was just gigantic!
Horizons: After this climax some rest was needed and provided by a fine acoustic intermezzo.
The Battle Of Epping Forest: The song is very good, but it somehow fails to be “up there” with the rest. Impressive performance with lots of changing costumes nevertheless.
Supper’s Ready: What can you write about it? 22 minutes passed in a moment. The Apocalypse was a highlight with the strobe lights and the final bang. The most intense way to end a show, and I had tears in my eyes.
But that was not all, there was an encore, too:
The Knife: I have always enjoyed this song very much, but never before had I heard it rock so much. It has become my absolute favourite – the ending in particular with the strobe lights is overwhelming.
The overall sound was excellent. TMB have one of the best P.A.s I ever heard. I had seen the Selling show before, but I had not noticed how intense it was before. Perhaps it was my seat in the second row. Hence my decision to also attend the Foxtrot show in Mainz (after all, I had not seen that before).

Author: Daniel Müller
Translation by Martin Klinkhardt