Genesis Fans.

  • Bring a newbie here this has likely been beat to death long before my little ole arrival this week, but I have to say, the “Sum of the Parts” interviews I’ve watched online, man....awkward. Tony starts up on the Lamb and Peter starts shifting in his seat looking uncomfortable....Steve mentions struggling to be heard as a songwriter and the three look put off. It was tense and odd. I do wish they could’ve made one final go of it as a group. But Pete’s voice isn’t what it was and poor Phil looks so frail. God bless him. I hope the tour isn’t too tough on him!

  • I don't know if 'value' is the right word but I know what you mean. I get the feeling they know what their catalogue is worth musically, but they naturally play more new material on a given tour and sacrifice older songs. They also have said they have to satisfy all the fans - the people who are there because of the hits and the hardcore fans who would be happy with three hours of b sides. I remember Phil specifically saying that we might be surprised by some of the songs he'd like to play, but that they don't or can't (presumably because they feel the constraints of playing what they view as a commercially viable show).


    It bugs me as it bugs you, for me because the so-called problem of having a massive back catalogue and fans of very diverse material could be addressed in some measure by playing different songs on different nights.

    Well put as ever. I think one thing that makes them stand out from other bands is that they're relatively unusual among high-profile rock bands in being pretty 'unsentimental' about their work. I do love the PG era and it could be very exciting when they performed tracks from that time but it's a minority of their recorded output and they always stated their strong preference for playing the stuff they'd most recently done as that was what most excited them. Plus as you say they have a very distinctive trajectory with a set of earlier material attuned to the sensibilities of a certain kind of rock fan, followed by later stuff with a broader appeal. Despite what many here will no doubt think, they mainly balanced those two audiences quite well, though on the IT and WCD tours the balance tipped more to the latter material and audience but that made sense as a global act whose wide-scale success was largely founded on the later material.


    I'd sometimes find it a bit frustrating as like most here I loved to see them do early stuff, but at the same time I respect bands who have conviction in their new material and emphasise that in their gigs. I've been to see bands who perform hardly any of their new stuff and that makes me look at them askance - any act worth their salt should be focusing on their new stuff rather than resting on old laurels.


    Even so, I'd sometimes be quite surprised by how ruthless Genesis could be in dropping even recent tracks from their set. They've rightly said how proud they were of Duchess - I agree, it's one of their top 10 songs in my view and they've described how excited they were having created such a singular piece of music. Yet it lasted just two tours, never to be heard again! Similarly the brilliant Behind the Lines, which at least made it through to one further tour before it disappeared, resurrected in 2007 and then only as a snippet.

    Abandon all reason

    • Official Post

    Bring a newbie here this has likely been beat to death long before my little ole arrival this week, but I have to say, the “Sum of the Parts” interviews I’ve watched online, man....awkward. Tony starts up on the Lamb and Peter starts shifting in his seat looking uncomfortable....Steve mentions struggling to be heard as a songwriter and the three look put off. It was tense and odd. I do wish they could’ve made one final go of it as a group. But Pete’s voice isn’t what it was and poor Phil looks so frail. God bless him. I hope the tour isn’t too tough on him!

    Yes, there are definitely some awkward moments in that documentary. I’m sure that stung Peter when Tony said he didn’t really like the Lamb, being as the Lamb is kind of Peter’s baby. It seems like they didn’t give Steve his proper due in the documentary with regards to him leaving. It definitely influenced their sound on ATTWT. It’s like the documentary was uneven. They talked for 20 seconds about Selling England, and skipped Wind and Wuthering entirely. The best part of the documentary was Phil’s humor, especially talking about tensions in the band and little squabbles they would have. Phil was really funny.

  • I'd sometimes find it a bit frustrating as like most here I loved to see them do early stuff, but at the same time I respect bands who have conviction in their new material and emphasise that in their gigs. I've been to see bands who perform hardly any of their new stuff and that makes me look at them askance - any act worth their salt should be focusing on their new stuff rather than resting on old laurels.

    100% this! I'd have hoped for/expected half the new album or more if I had been old enough to go to the tours in the 80s. I'd have seen them as coasting if they played one or two WCD tracks and then NC+Foxtrot back to back in 1992.


    I guess there aren't too many bands that were making music like The Lamb and then ten years later they're one of the biggest bands in the world. I can imagine it was tough to balance this in a show! It would have been nice to hear a Duchess or Counting out Time or something thrown in here or there in later tours for variety and to acknowledge the scope of their prior work.


    Very curious to see, with the vantage of 30 years or so since the last PC-era album, what they come up with this time.

  • In terms of how they choose setlists, I think there are three factors that have played in over the years as various people have noted above:


    1. They are genuinely more excited about their recent material. This makes sense. While they might have once been excited and invested in their early material at the time, this can fade over time for many artists. There are many examples of artists that admit they have grown tired of performing their older material, even though the fans love it.
    2. The newer material is more popular and thus satisfies a much greater number of concertgoers. Thus, if you are playing to 20K people, it is likely that more of them will recognize and like Land of Confusion than The Knife or even Duchess. So it makes sense to have the setlist dominated by songs that will make the majority of the audience happy.
    3. Related to point 2., playing to larger audiences is necessary if you want the tour to be profitable. With the kind of production values and crew that Genesis uses, a small theatre tour focusing on early material might not be able to break even. An arena tour or bigger might have more chance of being profitable, and even then it is often not until the last shows when it does become profitable. So targeting a broader audience with a setlist that emphasizes what the broader audience knows makes financial sense also.
  • Yes, there are definitely some awkward moments in that documentary. I’m sure that stung Peter when Tony said he didn’t really like the Lamb, being as the Lamb is kind of Peter’s baby. It seems like they didn’t give Steve his proper due in the documentary with regards to him leaving. It definitely influenced their sound on ATTWT. It’s like the documentary was uneven. They talked for 20 seconds about Selling England, and skipped Wind and Wuthering entirely. The best part of the documentary was Phil’s humor, especially talking about tensions in the band and little squabbles they would have. Phil was really funny.

  • yeah what bugged me is they didn’t show Steve playing Firth of Fifth but they showed Daryl playing it!? That’s like having a Yes documentary showing Trevor Rabin doing Steve Howes stuff while Steve is talking =O

  • Let's face it, most bands favour their recent material live, especially when there's an album to promote. We've all seen it, and it's part of the way it works usually.


    However, in this case the "newest" Phil material is nearly 30 YEARS OLD itself.


    There is no new material. There's old stuff, very old stuff, and ancient stuff.


    On the whole they seem to shy away from playing anything that some of the crowd won't know. They probably thought playing Ripples last time was "brave" for that reason.

  • Let's face it, most bands favour their recent material live, especially when there's an album to promote. We've all seen it, and it's part of the way it works usually.


    There is no new material. There's old stuff, very old stuff, and ancient stuff.

    Some may say biblical....