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About those lost demo tapes - when was the last time Ant combed through his attic?
That would have been in around 2009 just prior to the attic being cleared to make way for a loft conversion. He gave me the all the remaining tapes that had been stored up there and I went through everything - there was no sign of any Genesis recordings.
Thanks for the kind comments about the feature.
Quotebeing released officially for the first time.[4]
There's no actual footnote #4. There's not even a "[3]" anywhere in the text. Oh well.
There were footnotes 3 & 4 but I decided to take them out. I'll remove the [4] from the text which was left in by mistake - thanks for spotting it.
What was Rock Around The Clock?
Rock Around The Clock was an all-night themed broadcast of music programmes (concerts, documentaries, interviews, music videos etc) shown annually between 1984 and 1986 on BBC2. It would start on a Saturday afternoon/evening and run for around 15 hours until early the next morning, hence the title. The programme with Genesis for example was shown at 2:15 am.
The original transmission date was 21st September 1986.
Part 1: https://www.genesis-news.com/c…art-1-1966-1976-s827.html
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The correct titles for the September 1969 demos listed there:
Ballad of Doubt/Trust is the subtitle for What Is The Meaning
Win Old Friend should be Wise Old Friend, which in turn is a working title for Beside The Waters Edge
Devicly Shure should be Darkly Shone, a.k.a. Darkly Shone The Night
Two other tracks mentioned there are on the list of possible songs to record but Ant and Mike ultimately didn't record them:
Morning Meal - should be Morning Mist
Leaving for Eye - should be Leamington Spa
The correct titles for the September 1969 demos listed there:
Ballad of Doubt/Trust is the subtitle for What Is The Meaning
Win Old Friend should be Wise Old Friend, which in turn is a working title for Beside The Waters Edge
Devicly Shure should be Darkly Shone, a.k.a. Darkly Shone The Night
Two other tracks mentioned there are on the list of possible songs to record but Ant and Mike ultimately didn't record them:
Morning Meal - should be Morning Mist
Leaving for Eye - should be Leamington Spa
The news that Hit and Run intended to start going through existing audio and visual material to identify recordings that might be suitable for release was first mentioned when the Genesis site was re-launched in August 2001. Here's the exact wording posted at the time:
But what will excite the thousands of Genesis fans the world over is that Hit & Run are planning a major trawl through their Sound and Video Archives in order to identify historic live recordings that may be suitable for special release. We know there is huge demand for this - we've already identified over 200 concert bootlegs of the band and the solo projects available on the Internet - and, if they are of suitable quality, we are hopeful that we can develop a release schedule in the coming months
A check back via the Internet Archive site has located this page on the former site which listed all the recordings found by 2002: Soundboard tape list
Another item from the site from around the same was a video interview with Geoff Callingham (filmed by a friend of Nick Davis) where he talked about the soundboard cassettes and some of the technical issues involved with getting them transferred. The video has been uploaded on YouTube here; the quality is not great but it gives an idea of what was happening with the tapes.
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/pr…2-5cd-remastered-box-set/
Excited to see this latest addition to the series of Ant Phillips box sets, especially with even more previously unreleased early 70s recordings. The inclusion of Pennsylvania Flickhouse is interesting as well. Do we know if this the same version that was released about 10 years ago now for the Genesis fan club anniversary, or some recently re-discovered demo version?
It's the same version that was previously released in 2011
Jonathan Dann - just want to thank you for providing first hand info on some questions every now and then. Much appreciated!
Thanks - that's very kind of you.
Thanks! I must have got it confused with the Jupiter 8.
Still, he must have used some synths there he never used elsewhere? The sound is quite distinctive. I think I read somewhere Ant borrowed synths for this album.
I believe what you may be thinking of is this: in the summer of 1983 the library company Atmosphere rented a Jupiter 8 for Ant to use for the first time for a library music project. He was inspired by the different sounds from the Jupiter 8 and used it to recorded a large amount of new material. Some of the pieces were used for the library project and can be heard on the first volume of Missing Links including Evening Ascent, Streamer and Sad Fish. Other pieces recorded at the same time didn't quite fit the library music brief but Ant returned to them for Slow Waves, Soft Stars adding new parts in places to the original recordings such as the different sections of Ice Flight.
Ant subsequently bought the Jupiter 8 from the hire company - it was used on numerous recordings from late 1983 onwards, including Slow Dance and he still has it to this day. The only synth he bought after that which is used on PP7 was the Casio CZ5000, which amongst other things is played on Vanishing Streets and the title track of the album. I think it's more a case of Ant using synth sounds that he never used elsewhere rather than different instruments.
QuoteI just love the sounds of the Prophet V Ant used on this album
Ant has never actually owned or used a Prophet V - the synths he played on Slow Waves, Soft Stars are the Roland Jupiter 8, Casio CZ5000, ARP 2600 and the Polymoog.
When I saw that label in the article I knew that I had seen it somewhere before and then recalled that you had created it 
Here's the inner gatefold sleeve for the vinyl release of Trespass - the image used on the original CD release of the tree with the knife is on the left hand side.
From my notes for Ant's Harvest of the Heart release:
With these preparations completed, the recording of the album commenced at Polar Studios in Stockholm, with David Hentschel undertaking both production and engineering duties, assisted by David Bascombe. The choice of Noel McCalla as lead vocalist for the album had yet to be made so during the sessions at Polar the tracks for the album were only recorded in instrumental form. In order to ensure that the singer would have a point of reference when recording the lead vocals, it was decided that Mike would put down some rough guide vocals for most of the tracks. With Ant and Mike knowing each other very well and both possessing a similar sense of humour, it was almost predictable that this would be the source of some amusing moments in the studio. Almost inevitably, as Mike sang the first line of Between The Tick & The Tock (“It’s so very dark in here”) the studio lights were promptly switched off....
Anybody else been listening to this new set? I must say I don't notice much difference from the remastering of the four original albums but the fifth disk of bonus material is, as always, excellent.
Hat Tip to Jonathan Dann for raiding Ant's archive once again!
Hat Tip much appreciated!
Ok, here's the next question. When Genesis played at Oxford Town Hall in 1972, Richard Macphail inadvertently left something belonging to a band member behind when they were packing up after the gig. What were the item(s) in question?
One of the people in question would be Paul Samwell-Smith formerly of The Yardbirds who produced the Genesis Plays Jackson demos.
The other would be Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues, who arranged for Genesis to record a demo of Looking For Someone when there was the possibility of Genesis being signed to the Moody Blues label Threshold Records. The production on that recording was done by the Moody Blues producer Tony Clarke.
Hm, Tony Hill-Smith and Barry Johnston recorded with them. Johnston was with the band Design, it seems, but which band Hill-Smith may have been with eludes me at the moment ...
They were both members of Design.
Good to see such thought and care going into a reissue program.
That's very kind of you to say so - although we do have the advantage of there being a good amount of previously unreleased material to draw upon when it comes to extra tracks.
I believe that the N.O.R. / S.O.R. reference for the two sides of the vinyl release of Back To The Pavilion is indeed a joke based on AOR - this being so that Side One is the Northern Orientated Rock side, to tie in with Scottish Suite.
In a similar vein, there are other references to the different sides of vinyl releases on Ant's albums in a sporting context with the 'First Half' and 'Second Half' used on the UK vinyl release of Sides and the Home / Away sides on the first Private Parts and Pieces album.
The sessions section of Ant's discography only includes those tracks where he is officially credited as having played on and/or produced one or more of the tracks and where they were actually issued on a commercially released LP, CD or download. I'm afraid that the Swinging Blue Jeans session does not count in this respect for a number of reasons.
Whilst there is no doubt that Ant and Rivers attended the Swinging Blue Jeans session at Abbey Road - Ant still has the photo that the band members signed for him that day - and got to do the handclaps on a recording of the song, there is no definite proof that the take(s) of the song on which they clapped was actually released on record.
As Ant mentions in the video, the Swinging Blue Jeans were performing later the same day at the NME Poll Winners Concert, which took place at the Empire Pool Wembley. That would date the session at Abbey Road to a Sunday in April 1964 - but Hippy Hippy Shake was released as a single (and became a chart hit) in the UK in December 1963 and there are no handclaps to be heard on it.
Given this, it seems likely that the version of Hippy Hippy Shake recorded at the session that Ant and Rivers attended was a re-recording, which if it did see the light of day came out on a 1964 release. There was a 7" EP ('Shake with the Swinging Blue Jeans') which includes the song and seems to match in terms of the date it was released and there appears to be a different recording of the song (with a count-in at the start) which if you listen closely does appear to have some handclaps on it at one point - but all of this is too tenuous in my view to include it as an actual session appearance. It's a great story though!
