Posts by Micklemus

  • We Can't Dance Tour 1992

    What a fantastic story! I was there that day - for the gig only, no VIP passes here - and remember it well. The crowd were really up for it, like “it’s been a while since Wembley but we’re all back together again.”

    I was right of centre between control tower and stage. Had a great view and those moving jumbotrons made a big impression at the time.

    Funny you didn’t recognise Tony Smith!

    Thank you for posting the story and welcome to Genesis Geekville! 👍

  • Favourite Tony Banks keyboard moments in Genesis

    Extremely difficult to choose when there have been so many great moments but Tony parts I enjoy:


    The Musical Box (chord changes at the end really build the atmosphere).

    Watcher of the Skies (beginning and end, obviously. If only that track didn't have the vocal part in the middle...)

    Can Utility and the Coastliners (another that would have been better without the vocal, or less vocal)

    Supper's Ready - Apocalypse in 9/8 (probably his greatest moment)

    Supper's Ready - Sure as Eggs (those chords are so uplifting)

    Firth of Fifth

    Cinema Show

    Fly on a Windshield (great chord choices again)

    Silent Sorrow (I love the atmosphere)

    Entangled ( I really love the atmosphere, really dreamy)

    Undertow

    Many too Many

    Duchess (intro is great, the chords in the song itself are perfect - and more obvious on the last tour)

    Me and Sarah Jane

    Second Home

    The Brazilian

  • TotW 04/08/2024 - 04/14/2024: GENESIS - Abacab

    When I first played the album, the title track's immediacy and power were striking compared with the sound of Duke; it was like they were reaching out of the speakers to slap you round the face. Hugh Padgham had made a massive difference to the production. The song had space too, with four distinct areas, drums, guitar, keyboard and vocals, rather than keyboards washing over everything, and they had avoided jumbling everything together with the greater use of compression.


    The song part is very good. Neat, direct and catchy. As for the instrumental part, there is a vast difference between studio and live. The studio version is very spacious, almost ambient in places, like they were making a conscious effort to avoid overplaying, and it works quite well except for the fade out which leaves me feeling like it never quite got where it needed to go. The live version is a different animal, much ballsier, rockier, and on the occasions when Mike didn't fluff the guitar solo (which I think Daryl would have smashed and taken to a different level) it made quite a statement. Like Trick of the Wuthering, I like the 3SL and IT versions. I didn't so much care for the Mama Tour version, which for me is let down by the live sound production and Mike's thin sounding guitar.


    It's one of the "pop era" tracks that I continue to enjoy and I think it should have appeared on one of the last two tours. It's a high energy track though and quite long so I can understand why they didn't bring it out of mothballs.

  • Genesis Tour Setlists - Reimagined

    Those last two (which are ace) have got me off the fence now. And again this is stressing that this is fantasy land, a world where Phil is fine and it doesn't matter that they might not have tried some of what follows.


    Watcher of The Skies intro + closing section / Dukes Intro / Dukes End / Duchess

    Mama

    Land of Confusion

    Fading Lights / Fly On A Windshield / Broadway Melody / Second Home By The Sea

    Blood On The Rooftops

    Abacab

    Firth of Fifth / I Know What I Like [I'd prefer the full FoF but I'm compromising]

    Down and Out

    Tonight Tonight Tonight [not really my choice but it would work a treat]

    The Cinema Show (full version) / Afterglow

    Carpet Crawlers

    In The Cage / In That Quiet Earth / Apocalypse in 9/8 / As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs

    Invisible Touch (definitely not my choice but it's expected)

    Turn It On Again

    Dance on A Volcano

    Los Endos


    Dancing With The Moonlit Knight / Musical Box (closing section) [like Chicago 1978]

    The Knife

  • Which five bands?

    Judas Priest. Never was a fan but the new album is a a great example of a late bloomer and Rob's vocal prowess, now well into his 70s, is astounding.


    Elbow. New album out and they've broken new ground. Besides I'm seeing them in a few weeks.


    Rush. Listening to the later albums at the moment and particularly liking The Garden on Clockwork Angels. And Neil Peart was a genius drummer.


    World Party. For no other reason than the thought entered my head of "I haven't listened to World Party in years". Some good stuff, some not so good.


    Marvin Gaye. The critics are right, What's Going On was a ground-breaking album.


    Oh, and lots of house music - usually mixes by David Penn (feelgood soulful house) and Carl Cox (total DJ legend and still smashing it in the house and techno arenas).

  • Genesis Tour Setlists - Reimagined

    I like that. :thumbup: I'd delete I Can't Dance and grudgingly accept that TTT and IT have to be there as hits, but your choices are very close to what I would have loved to hear on the farewell tour - obviously with the ideal world assumption that Phil was fit enough to carry them off.

  • Tony's keyboard sounds on We Can't Dance

    Phew, I'm not in a minority of one here.


    I'll be brief because (a) what I was going to say has been covered already and (b) I don't want to sound like I'm having a downer on Tony. However...


    The long and short for me is I feel he lost his way in terms of sound choices, and with some of his writing, from WCD onwards. Many of the keyboards sounds on that album put my teeth on edge and I'm very much in line with Backdrifter on the details. It got worse on Destroying All Credibility (aka CAS) and his sound choices on that tour, the 2007 tour and The Last Domino tour left something to be desired for me, in places anyway (usually when it came to 'older' material). I'm not 'dissing' Tony though because he's a legend as far as I am concerned, but when I think this is someone who eked every last possibility out of his keyboards in the 70s, it felt to me like he either picked easy options in later years or possibly that he was daunted by the options available with modern kit. Whatever the reasons, he just stopped hitting the spot from about WCD onwards.


    I'll give an example from WCD which won't go down well here, but it's my opinion so I'll express it. His solo on Fading Lights. That one really troubles me. I can't stand the thin keyboard sounds on his solo, nor can I stand it that a strong guitar contribution is desperately needed (oops, off topic) and thirdly I think the solo itself is unimaginative. I enjoy the beginning and end of Fading Lights, I quite like the keyboard stabs that get the solo going, but once he's into the full-on noodling part my enjoyment evaporates.


    I'm maybe too biased to comment. I loved what he came up with in his earlier years so he was always going to struggle to clear that bar on later albums.


    Sorry, not very brief after all.

  • TONY BANKS - Seven

    I have it and I like it more than any of his non-classical solo work (except maybe his first album) but his later classical releases are better. I agree with the review, that Seven sounds a bit like a film score at times. It was an excellent first effort at a vastly different discipline though and I think Tony is more suited to classical music, or music arranged with classical principles in mind (e.g. many of his best Genesis 'prog' era tunes) than he is to poppier material. The latter invariably sounds clumsy and/or dated to me, whereas his classic and prog work, or the best bits of them anyway, are timeless.


    Spring Tide and Black Down would be my choices, although here again I agree with the review in that Spring Tide sounds Vaughan Williams influenced - which would not be my first choice in the classical arena.


    However, Seven was a brave and pretty decent effort at classical music and a solid platform for his subsequent work to build upon.

  • TotW 03/25/2024 - 03/31/2024: GENESIS - On The Shoreline

    Very similar to previous comments. I think it's stronger than at least a couple of the chosen tracks on WCD and it's one of their stronger B-sides, but it's far from perfect. I'm not a huge fan of Tony's keyboards on this, I don't like the doubling up of Phil's vocals (I realise something was needed; I just don't like what they settled upon), I don't like the bridge and the lyrics are clunky in places. But apart from all that, there is a grain of something that could have been really polished up if they had the inclination. To me it's in the guitar chords at the beginning and on the chorus - that's the hook for me and I would have much preferred more guitar and no "plinky tinky" keyboard noodles from Tony over the top; or alternatively something simpler / less intrusive. Just a couple of chords to build the atmosphere even, but of course Tony never retreats to the background and this is both the good and the bad of his work.


    So, I like this track but with conditions. It's not strong enough in its current form for me to dig it out unprompted, but when I listen to it I find myself thinking, "blimey this could have been really special if...".


    10

  • NIC COLLINS: New band project THE EFFECT with well--known colleagues

    Worth checking out as far as I am concerned. They sound very West Coast, Toto-esque even - which is hardly surprising given the Toto genes, but I quite like bit of that on occasion.


    Speaking of Toto, WHAT a live band they were back in the day. I saw them at Hammersmith in the 80s and they blew the roof off; the crowd went absolutely berserk that night. The late Jeff Porcaro threw me his towel at the end of the show - extremely sodden it was too! It still resides in a box in the loft. Perhaps one day they will be able to recreate him from the genetic material that must still be in the fibres. He was a great drummer, not sufficiently recognised despite being the backbone to some of the most popular tracks in history.


    Anyway, I digress. Shame they're not doing any dates in the UK. Shame Toto aren't come to that, but then again I'd probably prefer to remember them at their peak.

  • Genesis - "Calling All Stations" album presentation in Berlin 1997

    What might have been. I still look at that brief period and think "right voice, wrong material" and a second album with better writing and a stronger influence from Ray (and others if really brave) could have been special. Rather like Marillion needed a little time to find a new groove after Fish's departure, Genesis needed to work on this and treat it as an entirely new beginning.

    Interesting performance just the same.

  • TotW 03/18/2024 - 03/24/2024: ANTHONY PHILLIPS & HARRY WILLIAMSON - The Anthem From Tarka

    Similar here. You can tell he understands classical music and how to arrange it, but the track is let down by the writing. It's not far off being one loop repeated with increasing intensity for 6 minutes. Perhaps fine if a snippet is taken to score a montage section of a B-movie (I assume it was used in the Tarka The Otter but wasn't 100% sure from Christian's description) but not strong enough as a standalone piece.


    Definitely less annoying than Battle of Epping Forest! I'll also add points because (a) a short section is OK and (b) I'm sure Ant can do more in the classical arena (and probably has but I just don't know about it) . It's a 5 from me.

  • TotW 03/11/2024 - 03/17/2024: GENESIS - Calling All Stations

    Quote from foxfeeder

    Drifting in an SD1? Certainly easier than drifting an Allegro! :)


    As for this, best track Genesis had done since Mama, not potentially much of a compliment, but it is, cos it's a great song. I quite like most of the album as it happens, the best since Duke IMO. 14.

    I think I can continue my metaphor here.


    190HP out of a v8, what a joke. It still had something but wasn't patch on what could have been. Rather like Calling All Stations. Mama in contrast saw them in a V8 with buckets of power and tons of class to boot, more of an Aston Martin.