Genesis - Six Of The Best (Redux) (1982)

Time for another guest post from Mike Solof, and it's an upgrade to a unique album by one of the favourite bands of both of us...Genesis

This project came about because I always loved this 1982 reunion concert but was always disheartened that it was never properly recorded at the time, and that the only versions of it that exist are mostly mid, to fairly decent, audience recordings… UNTIL NOW! What a lot of people don’t know is that four days before the concert, the group gathered together at the Hammersmith Odeon concert hall and professionally recorded the rehearsal of almost the entire concert! I stumbled across these recording years after I had purchased the original bootleg of the live concert, and I was stunned. It contained beautiful, clear, stereo recordings of almost every song they played live just a few days later, with only 'Turn It On Again' and I' Know What I Like In Your Wardrobe)' missing. My friend Paul from Albums That Should Exist (I often guest post there too), recently took the original bootleg of the live concert and remastered it. He did a beautiful job, but still the source was only a fairly decent audience recording, and so there is only so much he could do to improve the sound quality. But then I had a thought. 

Let me digress for a moment. I have lots of bootlegs. And by lots I mean 14TB’s worth. And many times, when the bootleggers couldn’t make a complete concert from one source, they would use a second one (or third or fourth or in some cases even a fifth) to fill in the missing spots so that you got the entire concert with nothing left out. This meant you had the entire show, but often the sound quality varied from source to source. To hear the entire concert you just had to deal with the sound quality changes as it went along. And that’s when I had a thought - why couldn’t I take the fair sounding live concert, and mix in the phenomenal sounding rehearsal recordings to get a really cool sonic upgrade. So that was the Genesis (lol) of this project! I wanted to be as true to the live source as I could…and yet replace as much as I could with the upgraded soundboard recordings. So what you have here is my hybrid version mixing the live and soundboard rehearsal recording. What I ended up doing was first listening to the live recording and seeing which part of each song had that live feel, meaning which parts the audience participated in the most. Sometimes that was clapping out the beat. Other times it was singing along with Gabriel during the chorus’s. And others it was just applauding and cheering in between songs. I wanted to really capture the essence of those original live recordings, but as we all know (or at least hope), crowds don’t yell and scream throughout the entire songs of a concert, usually they just do it at the beginnings and endings, and occasionally other key parts too. 

That gave me my way into this project. I have taken the parts with the audience (usually the beginnings and endings)… and then mixed in the soundboard material as much as possible for the remainder of the song. So the entire concert ended up being about 25% live and 75% soundboard. And, amazingly, it turned out to be a seamless mix! Ok, that’s a lie. It actually turned out to be a semi-seamless mix most of the time. I tried my best to make the transitions between live and soundboard as smooth as I could, but the problem was thqat the live cuts were well...live, and the soundboard was in a perfectly quiet concert hall, so occasionally the transitions are glaringly apparent. I did as much as I could to smooth these spots out by overlapping parts and then fading in and out the tops and tails of the switches and they ended up being mostly successful. The most unsuccessful of these attempts unfortunately occurs during the first song, 'Back In N.Y.C.'. I had a double problem with that one. On top of trying to mix live and soundboard, the rehearsal version of this track cuts in about a third of the way into the track mid sentence, so not only did I have to include a lot more of the fair sounding live version than I would like, but the edit also comes mid sentence. There was no way to smooth this over. It just suddenly happens. BUT THAT’S THE ONLY TIME IT HAPPENS! So be forewarned. It gets much better after the first track! I’m really happy with how this turned out. I think it offers a great alternative to the commonly found live concert and puts its own unique spin on that incredible night. So please, sit back and enjoy this NEW version of 'Six Of The Best' in hopefully the best way you’ll ever hear it! It is certainly an eye and ear opening experience!!        Michael

For my part I thought that this new version deserved it's own unique cover, and so I located an article about the concert in Prog Magazine, which has a superb cover picture, and I've adapted that for the artwork to the album.       pj

Track listing

01 Intro by Jonathan King

02 Back In N.Y.C.

03 Dancing With The Moonlit Knight (Opening Section)

04 The Carpet Crawlers

05 Introduction by Peter Gabriel

06 Firth Of Fifth

07 The Musical Box

08 Solsbury Hill

09 Turn It On Again

10 The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

11 Fly On A Windshield / Broadway Melody Of 1974

12 In The Cage

13 Tube Story

14 Supper's Ready

15 I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)

16 The Knife

17 Closing Words

PS. You guys all know I love to include info packed PDF’s for each of my projects, and this one is no different. In the folder is the original PDF info as provided by Paul on his site. (Check it out… it’s an amazing sister site to this one!) He did such a great job on it that I knew I couldn’t do better, so he’s generously letting me just repost it here. Thanks Paul!! 

Michael 

Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Suite (1974) **BONUS**

When I posted Mike Solof's early version of the Genesis classic, 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway', a couple of people expressed interest in hearing one of the other versions that he'd put together, with the piece split into five individual suites. It seems that he's currently busy with other projects at the moment - I know that he's attempting to produce an improved version of the band's 'Six Of The Best' concerts - so I've dug out the original file that he sent me, before it was sent over to Captain Acid to work his magic. It still sounds pretty good even in this early version, so it you want to hear Mike's original mixes in a slightly different format, then give this a listen.

Track listing

01 Suite 1: Lamb / Fly

02 Suite 2: Broadway / Cocoon / Cage / Parade / N.Y.C.

03 Suite 3: Hairless / Counting / Crawlers

04 Suite 4: Chamber / Lilith / Waiting / Anyway / Supernatural / Lamia

05 Suite 5: Silent / Colony / Ravine / Light / Scree / Rapids / It

Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (Early Version) (1974)

Time for another guest post from Mike Solof, and this time it's an alternative look at one of both his and my favourite albums of all time.

I've always loved Genesis and all their various group versions (except for the last album without Collins… who the heck is Ray Wilson??) But 'Lamb...' always held a special place in my heart. I recently got a hold of Highland's great compilation of all the different outtakes available from the album, and although it was a cool listen it was repetitive at times, and still missing some cuts. So I decided to go through all the different versions included in their set and try to edit together a complete alternate version made of the best cuts and segments of cuts from all the demo's available. To do this I had to mix together early takes, demo’s, alternate mixes, and the occasional live track here and there to fill in the missing gaps, as I figured the live tracks were the closest I could come to including an "alternate version".  I really liked the way this turned out and made three different versions. The first was just a pretty seamless entire album version. The second was a 5 part segmented version where each "suite" was separated at the parts that didn’t really mix well into the next, usually because the early takes sound very different from the alternate demo mixes of the finished takes. As much as possible I tried to use the early takes over everything else because they are so unique and different. The third and final version I made up was each track presented as an individual track. This was my least favourite version as some tracks had rough beginnings and ending and worked much better when gently mixed into the next track using fade ins and fade outs. Once I had the whole thing edited to my liking… I turned to my friend CaptainAcid for help with remastering this to sound as best it could. It is my first team-up on remastering and I really appreciate all his help. He helped me touch up about 80% of the whole album and those bits and pieces sound magnificent! THANKS CAPTAIN!! Then, after much discussion with pj we decided to go with posting the full, unedited, one track, complete version for... THE FLOW! (It’s all about The Flow baby!). On most cuts the vocals were very low in the mix so I used modern tech to raise them so you can now here all of Peter's imperceptible, incoherent and unintelligible mumblings in gorgeous clarity, lol, you can thank me later!!) If anyone would like the other versions just drop a note in the comment section and I will gladly provide them, Attention Hound that I am!) 

PS If you'd like to hear and see another fun version of this album, check out this YouTube video by another favourite artist of mine Kevin Gilbert! Kevin was a huge Genesis fan and was actually being considered to take over for Collins. It's really rather a tragic story, as when Kevin’s manager found out that Kevin was on the short list as Collin’s replacement he rushed over to Kevin’s house to tell him, only to find Kevin had accidentally killed himself at his home. But here is a link to Kevin (and Giraffe, his incredible back-up band!) performing 'The Lamb; almost in it's entirety, and it’s just FREAKING BRILLIANT! Ahhh…what might have been, but that's a story I'll save for a possible Kevin Gilbert post I'm considering doing here! (Let me know if you’d like that in the comments!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-RtfxuX3Co.

It's always my pleasure to present the various incarnations of Genesis in new and different ways, like this one posted on Paul's site recently   https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/genesis-acoustic-evening-with-genesis.html

So here is the track listing of what I ended up using from the 2 LP Highland set.

Track listing

01 The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (take 1)
02 Fly On A Windshield (take 1)
03 Broadway Melody Of 1974 (live)
04 Cuckoo Cocoon (different mix demo 1)
05 In The Cage (take 3 and demo mix)
06 The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging (different mix demo 3)
07 Back In N.Y.C. (take 1 and demo mix 3) 
08 Hairless Heart (unnumbered early take)
09 Counting Out Time (take 1)
10 The Carpet Crawlers (live)
11 The Chamber Of 32 Doors (take 1)
12 Lilywhite Lilith
13 Drum Solo - Waiting Room (different mix demo)
14 Anyway (different mix demo)
15 Here Comes The Supernatural Anesthetist (take 1 -demo with Phil on vocals)
16 The Lamia (take 2)
17 Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats (live)
18 The Colony Of Slipperman (Arrival / A Visit To The Doktor / Raven) (take 5)
19 Ravine (live)
20 The Light Dies Down On Broadway (unnumbered early take)
21 Unused Instrumental Intro - Riding The Scree (different mix demo)
22 In The Rapids / It (take 2)

I hope you enjoy this rare peek behind the curtain at Genesis recording their most brilliant album in their catalogue.

Michael

PPS… as always, there is a lot more background info around - here are three great articles on the making of this stunning prog rock masterpiece!

https://classicrockreview.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/genesis-the-demo-mix-down-on-broadway/

https://en.apoplife.nl/in-1974-genesis-releases-the-masterful-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway/

https://www.loudersound.com/features/genesis-i-was-aware-there-was-something-going-on-with-peter

For my part I just made the cover, which I wanted to keep as close to the iconic original as possible, so I decided just to colourize the original artwork. pj

Genesis - Silver Songs (1977)

While the band were at their peak in the early 70's, current and former members of Genesis were often active with solo projects, and they would sometimes call on their band-mates to help out. Founder member Anthony Phillips has released a number of solo albums over the years, and Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins were always happy to lend a hand, while Phillips joined Collins in recording a couple of demos with Peter Gabriel, and Hackett's own superlative 'Voyage Of The Acolyte' featured Collins and Rutherford on one track. Youtuber The Beatles Archeology & Other Subjects realised this and has complied a collection of these recordings, spanning the years from 1974 to 1977, and because a majority of the core group was present in the studio, it really does sound like a lost Genesis album from the mid-70's. I've added artwork by the same artist that designed the 'Selling England By The Pound' cover, and titled it after one of the tracks, so enjoy this mix of familiar and not so familiar recordings by the core members of the band. As the album was a little short, I have cheated a little and included a 1973 track by Peter Banks, as it does feature a rare guest appearance by Hackett, as well as Collins, but it actually slots in quite nicely, so I hope you'll forgive the slight artifice. 

   

Track listing

01 You Never Know [Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Anthony Phillips] (1974)
02 Only Your Love [Anthony Phillips, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford] (1974)
03 Star Of Sirius [Steve Hackett, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford] (1975)
04 Knights (Reprise) [Peter Banks, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett] (1973)
05 Firebirds [Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Anthony Phillips] (1975) 
06 Silver Song [Anthony Phillips, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford] (1974)
07 God If I Saw Her Now [Anthony Phillips, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford] (1977)
08 You Get What You Want [Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Anthony Phillips] (1974)
09 Which Way The Wind Blows [Anthony Phillips, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford] (1977)

Thanks to The Beatles Archeology & Other Subjects for putting this together.

Various Artists - The Cinema Show (2013)

The recent neo-prog tribute album to Yes seemed to go down pretty well, so the obvious follow-up is a similar tribute to Genesis. As with Yes, my favourite albums are the Charisma ones from the early 70's, and this album concentrates on those, picking some of the classic songs from 1970 to 1973, and letting some modern neo-prog bands loose on them. The Flower Kings make an appearance this time, which is great as they are one of the best of the bunch, and they tackle the title track with some relish. In 2010 Genesis were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, and as part of the celebrations Phish performed a live version of 'Watcher Of The Skies', which went down a storm. Chaneton are an Argentinian prog-rock band formed by Alex Chaneton, who are heavily influenced by Genesis, and who have covered some of their songs on their albums, so I've picked 'Eleventh Earl Of Mar' as one of their best. Ex-Gong supremo Daevid Allen joined space-rock band Solid Space and contributed their version of 'Visions Of Angels' for a 1998 tribute album, as did Evolution for a similar record in 1996, and Over The Garden Wall in 1995, and these are the best examples from their respective albums. Neil Morse and Roine Stolt's Transatlantic love their progressive rock, and have covered many classic tracks on bonus discs of their albums, and they included a great cover of 'The Return Of The Giant Hogweed' on the extras disc that came with the special edition of 'The Whirlwind', while The Samurai Of Prog included a great cover of 'Dancing With The Moonlit Knight' on his 2013 album 'Secrets Of Disguise'. Like the Yes post, we close the album with a live recording by a band who aren't afraid to tackle a 24-minute track and record it live in one take, with Nursery Cryme's cover of the classic 'Supper's Ready'. You can hear the love and respect that these bands have for Genesis, and so enjoy an hour and a half of classic prog-rock by some of their biggest fans.   

Track listing

01 Firth Of Fifth (Over The Garden Wall)
02 Watcher Of The Skies (Phish)
03 Eleventh Earl Of Mar (Chaneton)
04 Visions Of Angels (Daevid Allen & Solid Space)
05 The Return Of The Giant Hogweed (Transatlantic)
06 White Mountain (Evolution)
07 Dancing With The Moonlit Knight (The Samurai Of Prog)
08 The Cinema Show (The Flower Kings)
09 Supper's Ready (Nursery Cryme)
 

The cover is from a brilliant collage by Paul Whitehead, which includes figures from just the four albums that these songs come from, and so was perfect for the post.

Genesis - In The Beginning (1970)

I would think that most fans of Genesis have a fairly good idea of how they formed, but it's worth repeating for anyone who isn't aware of how they all met at Chaterhouse School, with the original line-up of the band, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Anthony 'Ant' Phillips, Mike Rutherford, and drummer Chris Stewart, meeting at the public school in Godalming, Surrey. Banks and Gabriel arrived at the school in September 1963, Rutherford in September 1964, and Phillips in April 1965, and all five played in two of school's bands; Phillips and Rutherford were in Anon with singer Richard Macphail, bassist Rivers Jobe, and drummer Rob Tyrrell, while Gabriel, Banks, and Stewart made up Garden Wall. In January 1967, after both groups had split, Phillips and Rutherford continued to write together and proceeded to make a demo tape at a friend's home-made studio, inviting Banks, Gabriel, and Stewart to record with them in the process. The group recorded six songs: 'Don't Want You Back', 'Try A Little Sadness', 'She's Beautiful', 'That's Me', 'Listen On Five', and 'Patricia', an instrumental. They wanted to have them professionally recorded and so they sought out Charterhouse alumnus Jonathan King, who seemed a natural choice as their publisher and producer following the success of his 1965 UK top five single 'Everyone's Gone To The Moon'. After a friend of the group gave the tape to King, he was immediately enthusiastic about becoming involved, and under King's direction, the group, still only aged between 15 and 17, signed a one-year recording contract with Decca Records. From August to December 1967 they recorded a selection of potential singles at Regent Sound Studios on Denmark Street, attempting longer and more complex compositions, but King advised them to stick to more straightforward pop songs. In response. Banks and Gabriel wrote 'The Silent Sun', a pastiche of the Bee Gees, who were one of King's favourite bands, and it was recorded with orchestral arrangements added by Arthur Greenslade. The band considered various names for themselves, including King's suggestion of Gabriel's Angels, before agreeing to his offering of Genesis, indicating the start of his production career. King chose 'The Silent Sun' as their first single, with 'That's Me' on the b-side, and it was released in February 1968, achieving some airplay on BBC Radio One and Radio Caroline, but failing to sell. 

A second single, 'A Winter's Tale' / 'One-Eyed Hound', followed in May 1968 with the same result, and three months later Stewart left the group to continue with his studies, being replaced by fellow Charterhouse pupil John Silver. King believed that the group would achieve greater success with an album, and so 'From Genesis To Revelation' was recorded at Regent Sound in ten days during their school's summer break in August 1968. King assembled the tracks as a concept album, which he produced, and Greenslade added further orchestral arrangements to the songs - a fact which was kept from the band until after the album was released, and which particularly upset Phillips. When Decca found that there was already an American band named Genesis, King refused to change his group's name, but reached a compromise by removing their name from the album cover, resulting in a minimalist design with the album title printed on a plain black background. This actually backfired on him, as when the album was released in March 1969 it was a commercial failure because many record shops filed it in the religious music section upon seeing the title. A third single 'Where The Sour Turns To Sweet' / 'In Hiding' was released in June 1969, following the others into obscurity, and this eventually led to the band's split with King and Decca, although King retained the rights to the album, and has re-issued it numerous times to cash in on the band's subsequent success. After the album was recorded, the band went their separate ways for a year, with Gabriel and Phillips staying at Charterhouse to finish exams, Banks enrolling at Sussex University, and Rutherford studying at Farnborough College of Technology. They regrouped in mid-1969 to discuss their future, and Phillips and Rutherford decided to make music their full-time career, as they were starting to write more complex music than their earlier songs with King. After Banks and Gabriel chose to follow suit, the four returned to Regent Sound in August 1969 and recorded four more demos with Silver: 'Family' (later known as 'Dusk'), 'White Mountain', 'Going Out to Get You', and 'Pacidy'. 

The tape was rejected by every record label that heard it, and so Silver then left the group to study leisure management in the United States, and he was replaced by drummer and carpenter John Mayhew. In late 1969, Genesis retreated to a cottage that Macphail's parents owned in Wotton, Surrey to write, rehearse, and develop their stage performance. They took their work seriously, playing together for as much as eleven hours a day, and their first live gig as Genesis followed in September 1969 at a teenager's birthday party. It was the start of a series of live shows in small venues across the UK, which included a radio performance broadcast on BBC's Night Ride show on 22 February 1970, and a spot at the Atomic Sunrise Festival held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm a month later. During this time the band met with various record labels, including Chris Blackwell of Island and Chris Wright of Chrysalis, but nothing came of them, and in March 1970 they were recommended to John Anthony of Charisma Records by members of Rare Bird, who they had previously supported live. Anthony attended one of their shows and enjoyed them enough to convince his boss, label owner Tony Stratton-Smith, to watch their next performance, at which he was so impressed that he agreed to a record and management deal within two weeks, paying Genesis an initial sum of £10 a week (equivalent to £200 in 2021). Genesis stayed at Wotton until April 1970, by which time they had enough new material for a second album, recording 'Trespass' in June at Trident Studios in London, but that's where this story ends, as this is all about those early days, and the music that they recorded in their first couple of years as a band which didn't appear on the 'From Genesis To Revelation' album. As well as the singles, b-sides and demos already mentioned, we have that BBC radio session from 1970, and some previously unreleased demos of songs that never made it into a proper recording studio, and bearing in mind that they were all still in their late teens when most of these were recorded, the confidence and assurance of the music points to the legendary band that they would become. 

Track listing

01 Try A Little Sadness (demo 1967)

02 That's Me (b-side of 'Silent Sun' 1968)

03 She Is Beautiful (demo 1967 - later 'The Serpent' with different lyrics)

04 A Winter's Tale (single 1968)

05 Hey! (demo 1968)

06 One-Eyed Hound (b-side of 'A Winter's Tale')

07 The Mystery Of The Flannan Isle Lighthouse (demo 1968)

08 Build Me A Mountain (rough mix 1968)

09 Hair On The Arms and Legs (demo 1968)

10 Image Blown Out (rough mix 1968)

11 The Magic Of Time (demo 1968)

12 Shepherd (BBC radio session 1970)

13 Hidden In The World of Dawn (demo 1968)

14 Pacidy (BBC radio session 1970)

15 Sea Bee (demo 1968)

16 Let Us Now Make Love (BBC radio session 1970)

17 Going Out To Get You (demo 1969)

Genesis - Supper's Ready Illustrated

As a little treat before tomorrow night's posts, here's a couple of excellent Youtube videos that I found tonight, where Nathaniel Barlam has illustrated the whole of the classic 'Supper's Ready' in the form of a narrative comic. It's quite an impressive piece of work, so do check it out.

Enjoy

And when you've finished that, settle back, pour a nice glass of wine, and watch the complete 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' illustrated as a narrative comic. 

Enjoy

For fans of Genesis and Yes

 As a special treat before I start tonight's posting, here are a couple of videos that I stumbled on last night. The Genesis one is a 1973 concert that been around for a while, but the Genesis Museum have taken the original tapes and run them through some sophisticated equipment to significantly enhance the picture quality. In order for the sound to match the new video they've sourced audio from various bootleg recordings and expertly synched it to the pictures. I've studied 'Watcher Of The Skies' and can honestly say that I can't see the joins.
The Yes video is a number of their 1969 performances on the German Beat Club TV show, and these have also been remastered and cleaned up, and put together into one video.
If you are even the mildest fan of progressive rock or of these two bands in particular then you simply must see these two videos.

Genesis Live 1973

Yes on Beat Club 1969

Genesis - Abacab (Double album version 1981)

I've always been into progressive rock, and I loved Gabriel-era Genesis, and even stuck with them for a couple of albums after he left, but I felt that they went for the commercial buck from 'Follow You, Follow Me' onwards, and despite a couple of songs that I did like in 'Illegal Alien' and 'Land Of Confusion' I've given them a pretty wide berth since then. Consequently I've never heard 'Abacab', and was intrigued to learn that when they were recording it in 1981 they actually taped enough music for a (shortish) double album, but it was decided to just release the single album that eventually came out. A couple of the tracks were just extended versions of songs which showed up on the album, but there were also songs which were shelved completely. If they had have released a double album they would probably have had to include the extended 12" versions on there just to make up eighteen minute sides, so perhaps it was never really a viable proposition. However, I decided to give it a go to see what it might have sounded like, and this is the result, including the legendary 'Dodo Suite', made up of tracks four to six. 

Track listing

01 Abacab
02 No Reply At All
03 Me & Sarah Jane
04 Naminanu
05 Dodo/Lurker
06 Submarine
07 Paperlate
08 You Might Recall
09 Man On The Corner
10 Like It Or Not
11 Keep It Dark
12 Whodunnit
13 Me & Virgil
14 Another Record