[SPOILERS] GENESIS 2021 setlist discussion

    Quote from Mozo

    Yes. It's pretty clunky. I can't believe they couldn't have come up with something a little more imaginative.

    I totally get why some here aren't keen on it. But I kind of like it. At the show, because I'd mainly avoided setlist spoilers it was completely unexpected and I quite liked the sudden jarring nature of it. They're usually good at carefully worked-out transitions so this relatively 'unsophisticated' one sort of made a nice change. They're so conservative with their sets, I appreciate such surprises.

    Abandon all reason

    Quote from Backdrifter

    Where I think it didn't work so well was eg the 92 medley. It was a striking diversion from the established Cage sequence but ultimately frustrating to not even get a whole Lamb or the "whole" usual Volcano segment. The band later said the snippets during the IKWIL segment were a mistake. From what I know of them the Mama tour non-Cage medleys, while interesting on paper, didn't work too well. Playing just the intro to Mar before going into something else is just going to raise fans' hopes then piss them off. And it's a bit Vegas/cocktail-lounge.

    I thought the 92 medley was perfect. The best part of some classic songs, and brought us through the beginning notes of Volcano to IKWIL. It is my favorite medley they have ever done, as I'm not keen on In the Cage too much.

    Quote from Methos

    I thought the 92 medley was perfect. The best part of some classic songs, and brought us through the beginning notes of Volcano to IKWIL. It is my favorite medley they have ever done, as I'm not keen on In the Cage too much.

    This is one of those "to each their own" sort of situations. For me, '92 has been my least favorite medley over the years. Not because of the big things they played. I really liked Volcano, Lamb, tMB, Firth, and IKWIL. I thought those worked well, and if they had just done those things, it would have been a perfectly lovely medley. What ruined it for me was the 8 bars of this, 8 bars of that, and 8 bars of the other thing that they shoehorned into it. I didn't need mini-snippets of Illegal Alien, Your Own Special Way, FYFM, or whatever else they crammed in there.


    I still really like the Turn it On Again medley from the Mama tour. Same idea, where they did 8 bars of this, and 8 bars of that. But I think what made that work well was that it wasn't their songs. They were little bonuses of fun. I don't know how many times I've seen the video of that show, but I still love it, and I still feel the excitement build as they get closer and closer to getting back into TIOA.


    But doing the same thing for their own songs, for me at least, didn't work at all.

    Quote from MoonlitKnight

    I'll take what I can get. My view is I'd rather hear 3 minutes of Cinema Show than all of In Too Deep or Hold on My Heart.

    I just want to hear about erogenous zones, flies on windshields, yellow plastic shooby doobs, promising daddies, uni fauns, chocolate surprises, a lizard shedding its tail, hermaphroditus, riding majestic, and chambers with at least 32 doors.

    I remember the first time hearing the 92 old medley. When they started to play Dance on a Volcano, I just about $hit myself thinking they are going to play the entire song, and then they went directly into TLLDOB after a few verses and I thought, what the heck is this?! Man they sounded great playing DOAV in 92. I just wish they would have played the entire thing. It could have been the highlight of the show!

    Quote from Healy52003

    I wonder is it the case of 'Jesus' simply not working out vocally and its been scrapped entirely from the setlists


    Shame it's such a great song

    The lyrics come pretty fast in that song and Phil perhaps felt he wasn't up to it. He has stumbled over lyrics a few times on the tour and I guess they want it to be as near-perfect as they can on this their last tour. Personally, I'd rather hear an imperfect version of one of their other tracks than just the same setlist every night. Jesus he knows me would be good, or Abacab, or even Squonk. However, I'm not holding my breath.


    Even though they don't want to tour any more, maybe they could go into the studio after the tour and record some new versions of old tracks. Phil would then have the time to get the vocals right. I would so love to hear them do songs like Heat-haze, Man of our times, etc - stuff they've never done live or haven't done for ages.

    I'll always look at 92 medley fondly, because I was a 16 year old at my first Genesis concert, MTV generation you know. I really liked this new music coming at me I never heard. The screens illuminating DOAV were vivid, the 13 string was sharp, Chester kicked in, and a thrilling vocal from Phil, and from that moment on, I was an all eras fan. It was fun going to these things pre internet called record stores and finding Selling England, because it had 2 songs from the medley on it.

    Very fun times starting to dig into PG Genesis and loving what I found.

    Quote from Foxtrot

    I'll always look at 92 medley fondly, because I was a 16 year old at my first Genesis concert, MTV generation you know. I really liked this new music coming at me I never heard. The screens illuminating DOAV were vivid, the 13 string was sharp, Chester kicked in, and a thrilling vocal from Phil, and from that moment on, I was an all eras fan. It was fun going to these things pre internet called record stores and finding Selling England, because it had 2 songs from the medley on it.

    Very fun times starting to dig into PG Genesis and loving what I found.

    MTV - What killed so many incredible bands form the '70s. It all became about "look" and "visuals" and not music.

    Quote from Foxtrot

    I'll always look at 92 medley fondly, because I was a 16 year old at my first Genesis concert, MTV generation you know. I really liked this new music coming at me I never heard. The screens illuminating DOAV were vivid, the 13 string was sharp, Chester kicked in, and a thrilling vocal from Phil, and from that moment on, I was an all eras fan. It was fun going to these things pre internet called record stores and finding Selling England, because it had 2 songs from the medley on it.

    Very fun times starting to dig into PG Genesis and loving what I found.

    You nailed it. I had NO idea what the old melody was, even HBTS, Mama, etc. All I knew was IT, WCD, and TIOA. We had NO way of knowing what they played, or where to find it.

    Quote from Backdrifter

    Exactly which 70s bands were "killed" and became completely about visuals and not music?!

    I have to agree on BassAnd12Man.... here... Not sure about the 70s era but certainly the 80s transformed glammer music more so, then the 70s.....Records labels stopped artists writing music. :( From what I can see, modern pop bands do seem to play a lot of their instruments now and that's what I like. Punk killed progressive music back in their day. It was bands such as ELP, King Crimson, Genesis, Camel, Caravan, Strawbs and Yes. These bands are still around today and performing from the 70s.;)

    Quote from Methos

    You nailed it. I had NO idea what the old melody was, even HBTS, Mama, etc. All I knew was IT, WCD, and TIOA. We had NO way of knowing what they played, or where to find it.

    Right, me too. I knew about the 70s stuff, but you would never hear it on the radio. Even Mama never got played in the states. From the Shapes album it was that's all, and occasionally Taking It All Too Hard. When I heard the Medley, it was sharp and vivid, and as a musician, it blew my mind listening to FOF and trying to replicate it, btw failing!

    So I get why people may not look fondly on the 80s stuff, but it was an opportunity for kids like me dig deeper by the medley.

    Lol, now all the songs are the old medley.

    Quote from Noni

    Records labels stopped artists writing music.


    Punk killed progressive music back in their day.

    Neither of these things is true. It's a common myth that "punk killed progressive music" but it didn't. But anyway, there are one or two older threads where this has been discussed that'd be better than this thread!

    Abandon all reason

    Like 1
    Quote from HomeByTheSea

    I remember the first time hearing the 92 old medley. When they started to play Dance on a Volcano, I just about $hit myself thinking they are going to play the entire song, and then they went directly into TLLDOB after a few verses and I thought, what the heck is this?! Man they sounded great playing DOAV in 92. I just wish they would have played the entire thing. It could have been the highlight of the show!

    I remember hearing the first notes of the Old Medley at Three Rivers Stadium and I was so surprised. I had just gotten into Genesis big time in 1991 just as We Can't Dance came out. I was already familiar with a lot of their music growing up because my parents loved them. I was 16 and finally could go to a concert (my second, Yes Union was first). My parents had told me that they really weren't playing much older material anymore and that the only thing they really play is the In The Cage Medley so I wasn't expecting a new medley. I loved it at the time and ever since as the performances of each of the songs sounded so fresh. I was very disappointed that they only played half of DOV and half of the Lamb. The rest didn't really bother me because I felt that The Musical Box ending into Firth into IKWIL flowed really well. I actually think that DOV may be the best or near the best they ever played it as the tempo and Mike and Daryl's guitars sound so good.


    I just read Mario's The Phil Collins Years book and I must say I really enjoyed it. Between that book and the new unfiltered John Edington 2014 Interviews, I've learned a lot about the band that I didn't know and I've been a pretty hard core fan for over 30 years. One thing that I came to better understand is the reason for their use of medleys in later tours. Now obviously, as they more albums and had hits there wasn't going to be time for much of the longer songs from the past. They weren't really into that type of music as much at that time, especially it seemed in 1992 so hence the one 20 minutes medley and the rest of the show from the last three albums (not counting the encore TIOA). More than that though, I think that their self-criticism of their compositions really had more to do with it. Reading Mario's book and other interviews, each of them would say that they liked certain bits in certain songs but not other bits. Tony actually said that as time past they would take each opportunity to lose the bits within a song that they didn't feel was as strong. In addition, Phil didn't like singing many of the lyrics to the older material as he couldn't connect with it anymore and felt self-conscious. That, I think is what made them choose to do medleys instead of one or two whole songs. I mean, they even did it to Tonight, Tonight, Tonight. They didn't think the second half was nearly as good so they dropped it. They have said in a few interviews that they didn't think the second half of DOV was as strong as well. There are many examples of this which has been frustrating as a fan. Most of us generally love 90% of their output but it seems that it is difficult for the three of them to agree about the which older material to play.


    I am so happy to see them playing as it really is a bonus and a way to wallow in nostalgia. I did hope that they would have been a little more adventurous with the older material this time, but I'm not surprised the setlist is what it is.

    I thought I would do a tally of the songs from the setlist to see how the Genesis catalogue was represented:


    FGTR - 0 songs

    Trespass- 1 song: Stagnation (snippet in IKWIL jam section)

    Nursery Cryme - 0 songs

    Foxtrot - 0 songs

    SEBTP - 4 songs: DWTMK (snippet), IKWIL, Firth of Fifth (instrumental only), The Cinema Show (part of instrumental)

    TLDDOB - 3 songs: TLDDOB (first two verses), The Carpet Crawlers (minus intro), Riding the Scree (snippet in The Cinema Show)

    ATOTT - 0 songs

    W&W - 2 songs: Eleventh Earl of Mar/In That Quiet Earth (snippet linking The Cinema Show to Afterglow), Afterglow

    ATTWT - 1 song: Follow You, Follow Me

    Duke - 5 songs: Behind the Lines (portion of intro), Duchess, Misunderstanding (once), Turn It On Again, Duke's End

    Abacab - 0 songs

    Genesis - 4 songs: Mama, That's All, Home By the Sea, 2nd Home By the Sea

    IT - 5 songs: Invisible Touch, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (short version), Land of Confusion, Domino, Throwing It All Away

    WCD - 3 songs: No Son of Mine, I Can't Dance, Fading Lights (2 verses)

    CAS - 0 songs


    The surprise for me was the realization that there was nothing from ATOTT. I wonder if this is perhaps the only tour (with Phil) where this happened. The 2007 tour had both Ripples and Los Endos. The WCD tour had a couple of verses of Dance On a Volcano. Every tour before that had at least Los Endos I think.

    A few years ago, when I heard Phil was getting out of retirement and starting a new solo tour, I remember hoping for a Genesis reunion... and trying to do a setlist.

    Knowing this would probably be Genesis last tour, everyone was invited, and Peter, as always, refused to join.

    The line-up was...


    Phil Collins, voice, percussions

    Ray Wilson, voice, guitar

    Tony Banks, keys

    Steve Hackett, lead guitar

    Mike Rutherford, bass, guitar

    Ray Wilson, voice, guitar

    Nic Collins, drums


    The set list I hoped was :


    Behind The Lines intro/Duke's End 3:40 > Abacab 8:30

    Calling All Stations 5:44

    Mama 7:30

    The Musical Box 10:30

    Land of Confusion 4:45

    Horizons / Blood On The Rooftops 07:05

    Snowbound 4:30

    Supper’s Ready 25:00

    Dreaming While You Sleep 7:30

    Firth of Fifth / I Know What i Like 13:00

    Dance On A Volcano / The Cinema Show / Afterglow 16:05
    Wot Gorilla ? 3:20 / Los Endos 6:00

    Invisible Touch 5:21

    I Can't Dance 6:00

    *********

    Carpet Crawl 5:20

    ***************

    The Knife (short) 4:00

    ***************


    Probably much too long, because I didn't take into account all the chat between the songs...


    Coming back to the real thing, I was just thinking that A trick of The Tail would be doable in an acoustic form.