Genesis 1998 . Live in Poland. Brilliant.

  • They could have continued to make albums and tour arenas or theatres.

    You and I (probably) will never know what it's like to be that successful so it's very easy for fans such as yourself to say that they should have gone on, as though failure on the level that they experienced in the late nineties doesn't matter. Which is why I started off my reply by asking you to "think about it". Such a request seems to have offended you, hence your pissy reply, but I can't help you there. All I can say is that the intention was not to offend, only to ask you to empathise a bit.

  • it's very easy for fans such as yourself to say that they should have gone on.

    Marvelous, except what I actually said was

    they could have easily chosen to do so

    and also

    They could have continued to make albums and tour arenas or theatres.

    Should vs could :/


    Could they have continued? This seems inarguable to me unless I'm missing something. They could have. They were able bodied talented musicians working in a world free of the oppressive yoke of a pandemic.


    Should they have continued? That's much more of a judgemental question. We'll never know as we can't know what would have happened in this alternate universe. I was very disappointed they chose not to as I've already said. I gather from what I've read that at a minimum they should have resolved the situation with Ray better, although that is a somewhat separate issue.

  • Should they have continued? That's much more of a judgemental question. We'll never know as we can't know what would have happened in this alternate universe. I was very disappointed they chose not to as I've already said. I gather from what I've read that at a minimum they should have resolved the situation with Ray better, although that is a somewhat separate issue.

    I think they should have but I don't blame them for not doing so. I've been a professional performer since the mid nineties and I know how difficult it can be to build a fanbase. I seriously doubt I will know how it feels to be playing venues such as Knebworth Park, Madison Square Gardens and Wembley Stadium one minute and then lose an entire country's worth of fans. And not just any country; America is huge!


    Where did all those fans go?! I know this was a question that vexed Tony Banks at the time. Clearly the pulling power of Phil Collins was the overriding factor. It was painfully evident on the tour but it's also starkly apparent on the album (and I like the album). By this point in their career, I think the fanbase was a lot more mainstream and more casual in their listening habits. So without a charismatic frontman (who also just happened to be one of the biggest solo performers on the planet) and without the big hits, the band was left with a hardcore and significantly smaller fanbase. And, having been in that situation at the start of their career, they didn't want to go back to that.


    Now, I understand those fans feeling a bit peeved at that; they tend to be the type of people who think that Genesis make music for the fans and not themselves. There's a serious lack of empathy and anything more than a rudimentary understanding of what it's like to be a professional performer seems to escape them completely.

  • The odd thing about the US tour is it was canceled before I heard tickets had even gone on sale.


    I doubt I was the only one caught off guard by that and I've always wondered just how long tickets had been on sale before they pulled the plug.


    I think the real reason was someone had lost enthusiasm and just didn't want to go ahead with the tour and poor ticket sales was the excuse for it. Just because tickets didn't sell out in a matter of a few hours doesn't mean fans abandoned the band, only the scalpers had.

  • I think the real reason was someone had lost enthusiasm and just didn't want to go ahead with the tour

    I think you're way off on this. If "someone" had lost enthusiasm and didn't want to go ahead with the tour, then why not cancel the European leg, too?


    The tour dates and venues are decided by the management, not the band, and according to Tony Smith the indicators from America were that there was not sufficient interest to justify Genesis touring there. These decisions are not based purely on album sales - if you recall, Phil's Dance Into The Light album performed quite poorly but people still wanted to see him in concert and his Trip Into The Light tour was as successful as any other he'd performed - and Tony would have not taken the decision lightly.

  • I think you're way off on this. If "someone" had lost enthusiasm and didn't want to go ahead with the tour, then why not cancel the European leg, too?


    The tour dates and venues are decided by the management, not the band, and according to Tony Smith the indicators from America were that there was not sufficient interest to justify Genesis touring there. These decisions are not based purely on album sales - if you recall, Phil's Dance Into The Light album performed quite poorly but people still wanted to see him in concert and his Trip Into The Light tour was as successful as any other he'd performed - and Tony would have not taken the decision lightly.

    the tour was planned long before there were any album sales. and they they stripped it down to smaller venues, which didn't help. Guess it was both, bad timing and the Collins factor. America is a difficult market. Queen have made this experience as well without changing the vocalist.

  • I think the real reason was someone had lost enthusiasm and just didn't want to go ahead with the tour and poor ticket sales was the excuse for it. Just because tickets didn't sell out in a matter of a few hours doesn't mean fans abandoned the band, only the scalpers had.

    Are you suggesting any specific someone?


    Given that (as mentioned above) there were reports from at least one venue of sales not even having reached 100 tickets - and we're talking about arenas that would usually be a minimum of 8,000-10,000 capacity if not more - it wouldn't take long before becoming apparent that sales were not going to suddenly take off. The characteristic on-sale pattern with high-profile bands is that there is huge demand as soon as the ticket sales start. Arena shows don't usually sell out or get close to capacity through long-term ongoing steady sales. It can happen, but with the album not sustaining its sales it was unlikely ticket sales would suddenly undergo a surge.


    The years between WCD and CAS saw one of the greatest changes in music and other cultural preferences since the late 70s. While Genesis produced an album with a markedly different feel, it was nevertheless released into a music and cultural scene that had changed a lot in 6 years, and it didnt chime with people in the same way. Add into that the point made earlier that the pulling-power of PC was absent - and bear in mind even his own pulling power, at least in terms of album sales, had declined from pre-WCD to pre-CAS (though again, as above, as a live act he still got arses on seats).


    I think there are arguments to be made for, as you said, fans having not abandoned the band as such - I myself didn't go on that tour, or indeed the WCD tour but that didn't mean I'd stopped being a Genesis fan - but the plain fact is that in the US too few people wanted to go see them.

    Abandon all reason

  • I did go to see them on the tour. I wanted to give them a chance. A friend and I went to see them in Manchester (in fact that very same gig has recently become available to download through the Movement site) and really the only thing that grabbed us was the drumming. I thought Ray was terrible as a front man. Sorry, Ray fans!


    A few plusses about that show, though: the acoustic set was a wonderful idea and something I wish they'd done while Phil was in the band (in a parallel universe, on the We Can't Dance tour, they dropped one of the Invisible Touch songs and performed a medley of Lover's Leap, Blood On The Rooftops and Many Too Many) and the guitar "duel" between Mike Rutherford and Anthony Drennan at the start of The Dividing Line was fantastic. Oh, and Ray's harmonica playing during I Can't Dance was pretty darned good, too.

  • I've seen Genesis on all the tours since Abacab and twice on WCD. They were all fantastic . I didn't feel that CAS was any better but still good . I try to take things for what they are, not for what they're not. It was fun to see and nice that that the lead singer was as much an enthusiastic fan as I . He was clear that he had unashamedly landed his dream job . As for my enjoyment of watching the DVD the other week , I hadn't watched the live performance since 1998 ,(a few snippets here there) and just enjoyed watching it again because of its fresh approach. .Nice to see things differently. Also I watched with Mrs Farmer . We'd had small white wine each ;) . She loved it. CAS in '98 was her first Genesis show live. I doubt that there were that many in the audience in that position. Ray is her favourite Genesis singer, and CAS is her favourite Genesis album . I'm afraid Phil and Peter don't come close!


  • I have no insight into how the band operates, but it seems like most of the failures were Tony Smith-level work.


    It should have been expected that promoting the band was going to be a little harder this time around, and while Mike and Tony may not have expected the extent that was true, that's why they have representation to make those kinds of decisions.


    It's been said that Atlantic pulled Calling All Stations' advertising budget to promote Matchbox 20 as a reason for why the album had no promotion but the tour seemed to receive no promotion either. Why is that? If they couldn't find a corporate sponsor why didn't they pay for some promotion themselves?


    I don't dispute they couldn't tour if they didn't sell tickets, but no one is going to buy tickets if they don't know there is a tour or that tickets have gone on sale. I had already been going into my local record shop every week to check on a release date for Archive 1 for the better part of two years so once Calling All Stations was announced I made asking about concert dates part of my routine too.

    But even with checking Ticketmaster weekly I never did find out about any tour dates before I heard the whole tour had been cancelled.


    So again I wonder just how long tickets had been on sale before they pulled the plug? I agree concert sales are usually front-loaded but it seems like they expected rapid sales in spite of the lack of advertising.

  • Dont get me wrong . She likes them both. We both saw the TIOA tour and PG a couple of times . But yes. Words fail me too.

    My wife and I are usually in synch where music is concerned but I will be eternally perplexed at her unbridled dislike of Jon Anderson's voice. Reminds me of what Fish once said about Van der Graaf Generator, that he had a girlfriend who "refused to be in the same room as Peter Hammill's voice"!

  • My wife and I are usually in synch where music is concerned but I will be eternally perplexed at her unbridled dislike of Jon Anderson's voice. Reminds me of what Fish once said about Van der Graaf Generator, that he had a girlfriend who "refused to be in the same room as Peter Hammill's voice"!

    I like both JA and PH but understand why someone wouldn't like them. Distinctive voices, which both theirs are, can often be very divisive.

    Abandon all reason