Posts by Thelawnmower

Quote from PaulM80

Less than 2 months until opening night I'm now expecting it to be a Storytellers-style show with Phil doing more crowd work between songs. At least one track from every album from Trespass to WCD. Dreaming While You Sleep or Many Too Many could be alternates, I just don't know where to put them.

opening video during walk-on

1. Dance on a Volcano

2. Abacab

"Good evening. We're going to be playing a lot of our big hit singles that you know and love. (cheers) And we're also going to be playing some songs that we haven't played in a VERY long time (huge cheers). At least one of which was written before I had even joined the band. But first, this is from our 1980 album, Duke.

3. Behind the Lines

4. Duchess

5. Misunderstanding

6. Hold On My Heart

7. Follow You Follow Me

"OK, some of our newer fans in the audience might not remember, but back in the 1970's, we had a guitarist named Steve Hackett (cheers) and a vocalist named Peter Gabriel. (more cheers) Unfortunately, they could not be with us tonight (awwwww). It's alright. Everybody's doing fine and we're still good friends. They're just rather busy at the moment. And now we would like to play some of the songs we wrote together. This is for Peter and Steve.

8. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

9. Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) / Carpet Crawlers

10. In The Cage / Watcher of the Skies (outro)

11. I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) / Stagnation (outro)

12. White Mountain

"As you may have guessed, when Peter and Steve left the group they left some very big shoes to fill. I had to learn how to sing lead (laughs) and we needed a new guitarist. Thankfully, we found a good one. Ladies and gentlemen...Mr Daryl Stuermer! (cheers)

13. Blood on the Rooftops

14. Land of Confusion

15. Home By The Sea

(long intro about how crazy a year it's been for all of us and how good it is to be able to get together at a big rock show again)

16. Domino

17. Phil and Nic drum duet / In That Quiet Earth / Apocalypse in 9/8

18. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (short version) / Invisible Touch

encore

19. Mama

(I dunno if he'll give Grandmaster Flash a salute with "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under" during the breakdown, but my fingers are crossed)

"OK. If we're gonna do this one I'm gonna need everybody to sing the really high notes with me, alright?"

20. I Can't Dance

2nd encore

21. For Absent Friends

22. Fading Lights

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that is really well thought through and the kind of thing I’d love to see them do and perhaps they should do. But they probably won’t! There has to be a lot of playing safe with Phil’s voice but maybe they will take the chance to highlight the playing of Mike and Tony. I do expect the backing vocalists to open up possibilities for great great harmonies, eg Afterglow

I think quite a few of the quieter songs or more likely bits of all sorts of songs could have done because on the early albums all sorts of writing combinations happened to produce bits that were then stitched together. But the Banks/Gabriel partnership had gone and the realignment meant that one bedrock of early writing had gone - just as the Phillips/Rutherford went before and then the rehearsing/arranging/polishing stages became different, until eventually most things came out of jams. So lots of bits but perhaps not many whole songs?

Welcome and enjoy whatever you listen to. I’d say A curious feeling, feels like a darker track from Wind and Wuthering extended over a concept album. Steve’s first three are all superb. Voyage like a lost Genesis album a little like Selling England but definitely Steve. Please Don’t Touch is a wonderful and very varied album. Spectral Mornings is probably his best all round album and his favourite j think of his early ones. I’d also strongly recommend Ant Phillips’ first The Geese and the Ghost, very pastoral with lots written and performed with Mike Rutherford and Phil on vocals for a couple. Have a great time!

Quote from FeelItComing

I assume you heard the last album Under A Mediterranean Sky?

I did and really like it as an acoustic,

travelogue sort of album. I think those acoustic albums are great, in the way that Ant’s Private Parts series are great. I’m a huge Steve fan but I am wearying of the sameness of the last flurry of albums. There’s no denying his sincerity, work rate and talent but I just wish he’d vary things a bit. His early albums, like Genesis, had variety within and between albums. The last three or four rock albums sound like one big album. Hopefully, as Christian has hinted, that may be about to change, but this track doesn’t show it yet. I’m really hoping for something memorable this time.

It’s a latter day classic. A stunning piece of work musically and lyrically. It’s one of the best examples of their later, more economical, writing, whereby the song lasts just as long as it needs to and the music is straightforward but complex enough to carry the emotion of a deep story. It also benefits in reflecting the fact that in some life situations, things do not resolve. It feels like a like a long song in a short format.

Quote from Christian

Funny, out of all tracks, Wingbeats was the only one I would NOT have chosen to be a video single (apart from the first and last track, which are short instrumentals). It's also the track on the record that sounds most like previous Hackett. The album has far more to offer.

I’m glad you said that Christian because I watched it and thought ‘ here we go again, another painting by numbers track, same harmonies, same guitar sound and an off the shelf world theme, this time ‘African’ . So I braced myself for another album of the same. Hopefully it won’t be like that this time, much as I like Steve and admire his work ethic. I long for some simple stuff and a bit of variety. A ballad, a straight ahead rocker, an ‘English’ world track if he must think in those terms. I wish he’d dust off the twelve strings from

time to time. Then, he could put these tracks in and they would stand out more.

I’ve seen several of the tributes in England multiple times, always a great night out. The Musical Box do what they do better than anyone else ever could. But I’ve probably had even better nights out at Regenesis and G2 gigs. Looking forward to seeing G2 again and would love Regenesis to have another go. Now I’ve retired I intend to try as many as possible.

Good spot, there are more similarities than I thought. I prefer Epping because of the Reverend section but both good tracks. I suppose from Nursery Cryme to Wind and Wuthering and probably beyond, there was always a story track with a bit of humour, and lots of characters - Harold the Barrel, Get ‘em out by Friday, Epping Forest, perhaps Counting out Time (arguably the whole of the Lamb), Robbery, Mouse’s night. But Epping and Robbery do have a lot of overlaps.

Quote from Christian

some sounds familar, some sounds different. Overall, it's stunning what Steve plays (fast playing) and his vocals are really great on some of the tracks. So in a nutshell, while it is of course a Hackett album with some typical Hackett stuff, he also explores new ground and the sound is also quite powerful on several tracks.

I will need more time to evaluate the album, but it was indeed a pleasant surprise.

Thanks Christian, sounds promising!

That’s interesting Christian- without breaking any confidences would you say it is similar to the last few albums or is there more of the light and shade a lot of us would like to see?

Surely one of the points of joining a forum is to chew the fat over Genesis nonsense that others would be baffled by. Like when football fans sit in the pub and pontificate for hours about things they have no control over. The bizarre views and controversial arguments are what it’s all about, or am I missing something?

Whether we like it or not vaccines work by percentages and numbers. There’s our individual feelings and stats and there are communal stats. They are linked but not the same. Many people in the UK and other places are vaccinated, so, many things have loosened up. But until a critical mass have been jabbed, we are a bit stuck. If we hadn’t worked though these issues in the past we would still be losing our loved ones to preventable disease. The NHS system adds a particular flavour to this. With pandemics the big stats rule and the individual ones are useful to a point, for individuals. Until a large majority in the UK have been jabbed, large scale indoor events run the risk of pushing up the rates and overwhelming the NHS, at a time when they have huge backlogs to clear. That’s why they may not happen when we wish. Of course, these are very much first world problems. Other parts of the globe would love to be wondering if they could go to a gig.

It seems to me to be quite simple- if horrific. The virus is real. The only real way out is by vaccination. Vaccinations require most people to have them to work. I count my blessings I live in a country where I can get hold of a vaccine and I am the envy of my friends and acquaintances in countries where vaccines are a distant hope. Anything else is secondary for now and whilst I am sure politics will be being played along the way, and freedoms curtailed, possible unnecessarily at times, that can wait until we are all (across the globe) as safe as we can be

It’ll be a great show, no doubt about that. Yes it will be different, better in some ways, not so good in others but well worth going to. It will be a great light show, great material to choose from and a lot of talent on stage with an enthusiastic crowd. I suspect it will start in the US and get to us in the UK next spring with maybe a couple of tweaks to the setlist and a DVD to follow. Phil’s voice will be up and down and on and off but the backing singers will cover that and the drums are in good hands. Be interesting to see what time has done to Tony’s dexterity and I don’t think Mike will push himself unnecessarily but Darryl and Nic will be top flight. What’s not to like?

Afterglow would be amazing with proper backing vocals, there are probably other tracks where it would be beneficial to reproduce the backing vocals from the albums, or even add some backing vocal arrangements

I am afraid I expect it to disappoint. Like so many solo artists, without the cut and thrust of a band to edit and improve, Steve seems to have hit a formula which produces polished and competent albums with superb playing but not much light and shade. They all seem to me to be over complicated by winging in bits from mates all over the world and I’d love to hear a simple band album with some rock tracks and some ballads. I think that would really enhance his reputation. That said, I have all his stuff and will support him, but don’t expect to play it more than half a dozen times. But I think it’s his right to do what he wants and what sells well and I think his tours work well and good luck to him- even though I’d rather see more solo stuff. Whatever he does is likely to be better than the rest of the band these days.

That’s a great question and very hard to answer. In terms of studio work I’d go for the spell that produced Selling, The Lamb and Trick. Here you have a band so full of composers and arrangers at the peak of their powers in a particular style that they were straining to stay together and so one had to go. But the collective efforts produced sublime music in that prog style that never lost its humour, drama, sense of melody and purpose. For live work, Daryl and Chester brought with them an edge that complimented the improvements in technology and available resources to produce a stunning live show. So that early 80s period is probably the peak for live stuff. I was thinking recently that in the 1979-81 period when I discovered the Genesis family of music they managed to turn out Duke, A Curious Feeling, Smallcreep’s Day, PG3, Face Value and Spectral Mornings, Ant also produced Sides, Back to the Pavillion and 1984. That’s a lot of very good music to produce in the period between the studio and live peaks I’ve highlighted. What a band!

Thanks Christian, nice though it must be to interview Steve, I’ve done a bit of transcription and I know how much work went into that. Well done and thanks again

I’m sure they won’t do Supper’s Ready, but I’m

confident that will do an Instrumental extract, possibly with vocals at the end, heavily echoed and backed up. As for an opener, my money would be some version of Behind the lines, or maybe Lane of Confusion, but

Dance in a Volcano would be my choice

Not sure this is on track but for what it’s worth I think Congo is typical of the CAS period. It’s not bad, quite interesting and dark but not exciting or dramatic enough. The whole album seems to take itself too seriously. But Congo also hints at what might have been, an indicator that a second album was worth a try. On the subject of solo albums I like most of them, especially the first ones by each member, probably because they don’t stray too far from the mothership as it was at that time. I love ACF and I like the fact that Tony took one mood and theme and explored it further, I prefer it to ATTWT because I find that album a bit too safe, although FYFM is one of their best and the first two tracks also stand out. Yet again another example of there being something for anyone in the Genesis canon.