HERE, NOW, REAL,
RAEL
THE MUSICAL
BOX
performs
GENESIS
THE LAMB LIES
DOWN ON BROADWAY
The
Fourth Time (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, 17 December 2004)
Some time during the late summer or early autumn of 2004, my brother
sent me an email informing me that The Musical Box was finally touring
with their Lamb show again, and that they would be passing through Pennsylvania
in December. I called him immediately upon receiving the email--which
was too bad for him, because it was early on a Saturday morning and
I woke him up. I was excited, and so was he; though he had not seen
either of the two Musical Box shows I'd been to after that first one
at the TLA, he knew that the Lamb show was special. So three tickets
were purchased by me for Friday night (at the time, it's possible that
the band had not yet added the third date on Saturday the 18th--all
three shows they played at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside were to sell
out). Then the waiting began; it was months before the day finally came,
and I left work early on Friday for the long trek starting up in Saddle
Brook, New Jersey (my workplace by that time), stopping at Edison (in
my new house, to which we moved from North Brunswick in late May of
that year) and going all the way to Glenside.
Glenside
seemed a strange place for a rock concert. We drove through dark winding
rural roads into a small, quaint little town, and on Keswick Avenue
was the marquee of Keswick Theatre. The main building looked like the
kind of place Shakespeare might have lived in if his father had more
money, but attached to the front was an overhanging marquee of the style
on movie theaters of the fifties. Dawdling outside were the typical
Musical Box fans: grown men, usually approximately twenty years older
than me (I am after all a fairly young Genesis fan, having been born
during the And Then There Were Three tour), generally with beards;
and since they were dawdling outside in the cold, it was mostly because
they were smokers--or because they were scalping tickets. Some might
have known the album by heart--there was one group who were all wearing
shirts with the album cover on the front--and some had just listened
to it, possibly for the first time, and barely knew the songs. Admittedly,
the Lamb is one of the more difficult albums by the band and is not
generally among the favorites--most fans will probably choose Selling
England or Nursery Cryme if you ask what their favorite Peter
Gabriel Genesis album is. There were a few women in the crowd, but not
many (there was my wife, showing her pregnancy to anyone who looked
carefully enough, and not quite able to fit into any of my Genesis T-shirts).
I was afraid we would end up being late for this most important musical
experience of my life up to that point, because the drive was a long
one and we had to backtrack in one place, and because we had to park
up a residential street instead of using the tiny lot behind the venue.
We were in good time, but my brother who lived closer hit some Friday-night
traffic and was running to the venue from his far-away parking spot,
calling me on his cell phone, out of breath: "I'm coming!"
We
got inside in fine time, however. My brother was unfortunate enough
to miss the beginning because he had to wait in line for the bathroom
(I don't mind telling you he has a bladder the size of a thimble), but
I was eventually able to find the correct seat and my wife joined me
well before the lights went down (incidentally, my wife had to "join
me" because she had run off earlier to get to the ladies' room--strangely
enough, the line for that was much shorter than at the men's room--another
indication of the strong male showing of TMB fans). The Keswick, as
you could have guessed from my initial description, is a quaint old
theatre, but it avoids the dangerous seating and decay of other old
theatres while maintaining the intimacy (and incidentally the excellent,
truly excellent acoustics) of a smaller venue. The seats were somewhat
small and tightly packed, and I had to angle my head to see a good portion
of the stage, but the seats did have the ability to lean back and give
one a comfortable position. (As for the audience: like any audience
at a concert, there were some drunk people and some annoying people
(usually those two qualities went together, actually), particularly
a large party of about a half dozen who seemed to spend the whole show
getting up and walking over us to get out and then coming back again
and then getting out again. But there was no one who was really obnoxious,
and nobody passed out onto us.) Eventually some house announcer made
some announcements and the show began. Since no video documents the
authentic Lamb tour, and I have seen very few full descriptions of the
show, what follows is a song-by-song analysis of all I can remember,
along with some recollections of the real thing by other fans who emailed
me with information (and some additions based upon the second time
I saw TMB's Lamb production).
Introduction
For those
unfamiliar with the stage setup for the Lamb show, it was fairly typical--in
fact, for almost thirty years without break Genesis arranged themselves
in basically the same order from left to right: lead guitar (Hackett),
bass (Rutherford), drums (Collins), keyboards (Banks), with the lead
singer generally stage center but wandering freely. In the case of the
Lamb, there were multiple microphones set up on either side of the stage
on raised platforms, in the middle, and for specific songs Pete sang
from other parts of the stage. (From now on, I will name the players
as though they are actually the members of Genesis.) With this stage
setup everyone but Hackett seemed to be on platforms of some kind; Hackett
sat down for the whole show at stage left (by which I mean the audience's
left) in the front, Rutherford on his platform was more toward the back
of the stage. Behind the whole band was the three-panel slideshow, based
off of the album cover of the Lamb, which of course featured a triptych
image of various parts of Rael's story. The final touch, which I thought
was rather odd in that it was the only real decoration on the stage,
was a large boulder situated to the right of Rutherford and to the left
of Phil Collins, at the very back of the stage. Its use would become
more obvious as the show progressed.
Peter
tells the introduction to Rael's story standing behind the middle pane
of the slideshow, his shadow silhouette projected mysteriously onto
the panel. For our show, he was dressed in the classic batwing costume;
I've been told by someone who saw the band actually do the show that
for this part of the show Peter wore the costume he wears during the
"Evil Jam" (see my description of this later in this page).
Peter describes the wall swallowing up Manhattan island, Rael captured
inside, regaining consciousness underground. "This is the story
of Rael..." Incidentally, later in the original Genesis tour this
introductory passage would be entirely deleted, and for several shows
Peter experimented with telling the story of Rael in the first person,
as though he were actually Rael at all times, and not just a narrator.
Much earlier in the tour, in late '74, the illusion was not nearly so
complete and Peter would point out what side of the album each section
of music corresponded to. TMB chose to tell the story in the fashion
of Peter from about the middle section of the Genesis tour, when the
story was well-developed but not yet in the first person, and still
had the introductory section.
The
Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
The opening
song probably uses the largest number of slides, and made me wonder
how they could possibly keep up the rate of image change throughout
the whole album. Basically we see various images of New York City, beginning
with a long shot of the skyscrapers and getting closer to images of
traffic, graffiti, and various interesting characters from the city.
Whenever the song got to a chorus, an image of a lamb would be superimposed
onto whatever was showing at the time. Peter is wearing his basic Rael
costume for this song, which consists of a very simple ensemble: white
T-shirt, black jacket, blue jeans, and a rather artificial looking mop
of hair. In old pictures of Peter I had seen some very heavy eye makeup,
but this Peter did not seem to go so far.
Fly
on a Windshield
A great
number, because the jam sounds fantastic at full concert volume. A picture
of New York is slowly enveloped by a blurry, gauzy covering, and eventually
a huge fly buzzes across the three slide panels and collides with a
seventies era automobile. When it hits the windshield, I think the slides
went black and we were focused on the band for the jam.
Broadway
Melody of 1974
Various
images of the various people Peter mentions in the song are flashed
across the slides; I particularly remember one of Groucho Marx when
that bit of lyric comes up, I think he was seducing some woman on a
couch. At the last line you see an image of a baby covered with needles.
Cuckoo
Cocoon
A spider
web type image starts in the middle of the screen and spreads out and
becomes more cocoon like as the song progresses. Peter appears at the
bottom right of the stage, seemingly protruding from the base of the
platform upon which Tony sits. He lies down for this song and sings
into two microphones which flank his face.
In
the Cage
Various
images of stalactites, stalagmites, etc., appear on the slide panels.
The song begins with Peter creeping out from behind Phil, seemingly
coming out of the rock at the back of the stage. He contorts himself
as he sings the chorus, as if his body is constrained (in this version,
unlike the actual Genesis live version, Peter sang the chorus with the
correct high notes from the album; by which I mean instead of barking
out "In the cave" or "In the cage," he went the
full extension of the phrase: "In the ca-AAAVE," "In
the ca-AAAGE"). I believe Rael is shirtless for this song. During
the bridge section when Rael meets John, a square showing an image of
a Peter-like face comes into the middle panel and cries a tear of blood.
The
Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging
I think for this song Peter is on the raised platform on the right
side of the stage. On the slide screen behind him, a parade slowly progresses
from the far right side of the screens to the far left, eventually filling
the whole space with various people from New York City. The person leading
the parade, a figure in a trenchcoat, I assume to be Rael.
The
Story of Rael
This is the end of side one of the album, so the band take a break
and Peter tells a story about the section of music they are going to
play next. Rael goes into a perfect reconstruction of NYC and recalls
his first romantic adventure, after which he is left "cuddling
his prickly porcupine," and goes to a soft carpeted corridor which
leads to a chamber of 32 doors. In the original story that I have heard
many times, Peter generally says that only one of the doors can get
any of the people out; but I think in the TMB version Peter said that
none of the doors could get any of them out. I seem to remember that
Peter told this part of the story while on the upper left side of the
stage.
Back
in NYC
Appropriately enough, for this number we get to see more pictures
of NYC as in the title track. I have been told that in the original
version of this song there was a flashpot explosion, but due to recent
disasters and tragedies associated with explosives at rock concerts,
TMB did not use any such thing. (Actually, based on some video footage
I have now seen of the real band playing the album, I can tell you that
Peter used (or pretended to use) a kind of fire bomb during the "you
can tell by the night fires" part of the song, creating some flames
in the back of the stage.) During the chorus of "no time for romantic
escape," Peter climbed onto the platform with Mike Rutherford and
they faced each other so that they could sing "NO!" together
into the microphone.
Hairless
Heart
(At this
point in the show, as in other points where necessary, a black-shirted
roadie runs out on stage so that Hackett can switch guitars.) We get
to see a picture of a white, feathery heart object on a satin cloth,
and as the song progresses, a black-gloved hand takes a straight razor
to the heart and shaves it.
Counting
Out Time
I think
that for this song Peter had time to change, and he comes out in a very
tight-fitting body suit. At least part of the song is sung by Peter
on the raised platform to the right of the stage. This helps him point
to the diagrams which sometimes appear across the three slide panels,
showing the naked female body with humorous pointing hands marking out
the "errogenous zones" in different formations. There are
also various old-fashioned looking images, I assume from the fifties,
of couples making out or embracing.
The
Carpet Crawlers
Strangely
enough, I can't seem to remember much about what happened during this
song, though it was a crowd favorite and I had a lot of fun singing
along for the choruses. (What happened on the slides was that we saw
a big close-up of the ragged edge of a strip of carpet, and as the song
progressed more and more characters and objects appeared on the carpet.)
I was disappointed though that TMB chose to not end the song as was
usually done by Genesis when playing it live; they simply petered out
at the end, as in the album version.
The
Chamber of 32 Doors
Again,
I don't really remember too much about this one, but I do remember when
Pete sang the "I'd rather trust a man who works with his hands"
and related lines, various pictures of blue-collar guys were flashed
up on the screens.
The
Story of Rael
Here
Peter tells the remainder of the story of the album, taking us from
when Rael meets Lilywhite Lilith to when he looks into the ravine and
sees his drowning brother John.
Lilywhite
Lilith
Mainly
what I remember is a picture of a middle ages-type of image of a woman
being flashed up on the slides, rather grim-looking.
The
Waiting Room
A very
effective number; during the beginning or really "evil" part
of the song, it is mostly dark and black. Then, when the driving riff
cuts in, bright white lights are shined directly into the audience.
About halfway through, as in the beginning of the concert, Peter's shadow
is projected onto the middle pane. This time, he is wearing a spiked
headpiece which has four points pointing in the cardinal directions
(as it were), and big creepy gloves with long clawed fingers. He gestures
disturbingly across the slide pane. Eventually the screen appears to
crack and shatter as Rael throws his rock at the hovering globes, and
the disturbing silhouette figure crumples below the edge of the panel,
and the lights pointing at the audience fade down to nothing.
Anyway
Various
images of death, mostly skull and skeleton related, flash across the
panels.
The
Supernatural Anaesthetist
Basically
all we see on the screen is the depiction of the Supernatural Anaesthetist
himself. He appears to be a black man wearing space age goggles and
a jet-powered pogo stick, and he bounces around the three panes of the
screens ("such a fine dancer").
Lamia
For this
song, Peter, wearing his body suit, is enveloped in a fabric tube which
hangs by a chain from the ceiling and flares at the bottom, just showing
his feet beneath the rim. The fabric is decorated with the snake-like
figures of the lamia, and as Peter sings parts of the song he spins
the tube with his free arm. The fabric is lit by a blacklight I think,
making it look ethereal and supernatural. At the end of the song the
tube drops slowly to the ground, and Rael, in obvious pain, creeps in
hunched-over stance off the stage behind Phil.
Silent
Sorrow in Empty Boats
My memory
could be playing tricks on me and giving me the obvious image, but I
think the screen showed images of empty boats floating on water.
The
Colony of Slippermen
This
is one of the showpiece numbers from this concert. During the previous
song, when we weren't looking, the boulder has opened up and become
a glowing, placental sac, and as the rest of the band plays an Eastern-sounding
riff, Peter makes his crawling hestitant journey out of the sac and
onto the stage. He is wearing the bulbous, mutated slipperman costume,
with a saggy pair of testicles in front and a long tube running out
in back. Peter can manually inflate his testicles to a grotesque size,
and does so at the beginning of the song (the first time I saw the show,
I remembered the testicles quickly deflating; the second time, they
stayed absurdly huge for quite a while). On various Genesis bootlegs,
it was easy to hear how Peter's voice became much more muffled and far
away when he did this song, because it was so hard to get the microphone
under his mask. However, TMB may have improved on this situation, because
Peter's vocals did not suffer one bit in his costume, and he was very
mobile, prancing and jiggling very humorously across the stage. As he
passes by Hackett, Steve does something to him--it sort of looks like
(to the casual observer) that Steve is suggestively and very cheekily
grabbing and squeezing part of Pete's fleshy costume; but what Steve
was actually doing was detaching the length of hose from his behind,
because after that Peter merely has a small stub of tube protruding
from his back end. During the "Raven" section of the song,
pictures of a raven show up on the screens. On the album version, it
was always very cool to hear Phil sing John's line: "Can't you
see? Where the raven flies there's jeopardy." But live, Genesis
didn't seem to do this. TMB does do this: Phil sings the line. The screen
depicts the raven flying over the large ravine with a big waterfall,
and it drops the tube. Again on the album version Pete switches at the
end of this song from repeating the phrase "watch it float away"
to repeating "snake, snake, ake," etc. Live, Genesis did not
do this: Peter merely repeated "float away" for a while. However,
TMB sang it like the album version, and Peter repeats "snake, snake,
ake," as he creeps off stage behind Phil.
Ravine
I would
assume that pictures of a ravine were shown on the screen, but I can't
remember--it was a very short song.
The
Light Dies Down on Broadway
Again,
I don't remember much about this one, other than the ravine shot being
used and an image of a window or door was superimposed over it, floating
in mid-air.
Riding
the Scree
This
was a particularly great number: Tony played his solo very well and
the rest of the band jammed to great effect. Interesting to note that
during a good portion of this song, what would become the core three
members of Genesis are the only people on stage: Phil, Tony and Mike.
Peter comes in to sing his lyrics on the far right platform. I think
the slide screens were left dark for this one.
In
the Rapids
I think
for this song Mike Rutherford finally got to sit down for a while; up
until that point, he was standing up for the whole show. Various images
of water are shown on the screens; I particularly remember a desolate
image of a beach with shoreline. I have often noticed that in the Genesis
live versions of this song, Peter dispensed with several lines of lyric;
but TMB's Peter sang the whole song (which I appreciated).
It
The
main cool thing about this number is that near the beginning strobe
lights flash and on either high platform on stage left and right is
a version of Rael. One of them is Peter and one of them is a dummy dressed
up to look like Peter--as though there actually are two of him. The
strobe lights make it just hard enough to see that you're not quite
sure which one is "real" and which one is not. Then the lights
go out and when they go back up again only Peter is singing. I think
for this song the lights may have been flashed onto the audience again,
as in "Waiting Room." The slides showed the word "it"
three times (one in each pane), and as the song went on different pieces
of images we had seen earlier in the concert were flashed inside the
letters. Again, this was a song where originally the band used explosives
(sometimes to disastrous effect, according to some of Phil's recollections
on certain bio films of the band), but TMB opts to go explosive-free.
TMB accurately reproduces the live version of this song rather than
the album version, in that it comes to a conclusion instead of fading
out--of course it being the last number they are pretty much forced
into performing it that way.
The
Encores: The Musical Box, Watcher of the Skies
After
the conclusion of "It," the band remains on stage, except
for Peter. Phil indulges in some nostalgia by repeating some totally
accurate Phil words from an earlier time: "That was the Lamb Lies
Down on Broadway. Sorry for making you stay up late." Of course,
in the original performance from which this comes, an audience member
replies "That's all right!" which Phil finds humorous. I tried
to yell "That's all right!" loud enough so that Phil heard
me, but I don't think he did. (The second time I saw this show, Phil
did not say anything like this.) Eventually Pete returns to the stage
and tells the croquet story for "Musical Box." They did an
excellent, bring-the-house-down, standing-ovation version of the song,
complete with the old man costume at the end. Then the band actually
did leave the stage, and we were forced to applaud for several minutes
before they came back on, Pete in his batwing outfit, nicely bringing
the concert sort of full circle with the same costume he'd worn at the
opening. They did a great version of one of their signature songs, "Watcher
of the Skies," and as we stood up again to applaud Peter said "Thank
you, good night!" with unmistakeable finality, and up went the
house lights.
My
Analysis
One of
the first things I noticed about this performance was the lack of strong
transitions between songs. This was one of the things that was very
good about the original Genesis live version: for each side of the album,
the band played all the songs so that they segued into one another effortlessly.
With TMB, this happened all right with the first few numbers, maybe
even the whole first side of the album. But starting at the transition
between "Back in NYC" and "Hairless Heart," the
smoothness started to break down. Often numbers would quickly peter
out and over the applause of the audience there would be a pause before
the next song would pick up. One particularly jarring transition for
me, which I've already mentioned, was the transition between "Crawlers"
and "32 Doors." Also, one of the really crazy things that
I particularly enjoyed about the Genesis live version of the album was
how at the end of "Counting Out Time," Phil and Pete yelled
out very emotional vocal yowlings for quite a while (the amount of time
they spent doing it increased as the tour stretched on). TMB did not
spend much time on this. Another transition that annoyed me was the
end of "Lamia," which in Genesis' live version came to a satisfying
conclusion--but TMB, as in the album version, simply petered out and
stopped. Another thing I really loved about Genesis' version of the
Lamb was the transition between "Light Dies Down" and "Riding
the Scree," which is signalled by a rousing drum roll from Phil;
TMB did not do this. Of course, there were some songs in which they
were forced to create a smooth transition, because that's the way they
were played on the album (such as that between "Windshield"
and "Broadway Melody," or between "Rapids" and "It"),
and because they would sound odd if there was no segue. But in general
I felt there were awkward pauses between songs, with the band audibly
resetting itself.
A
second problem I had with the performance, which I hinted at on the
previous page, was in the improvisations. The Lamb actually features
many passages with instrumental solos or improvisations. To name a few:
Pete's flute solos (2 of them) in "Cuckoo Cocoon," the band's
jam during "Fly on a Windshield" (mainly a Hackett solo),
the evil jam in "Waiting Room" (one which I was particularly
interested to hear, as it is based so entirely on improvisation and
morphed a lot over the course of the Genesis tour), the jam at the end
of "Supernatural Anaesthetist" which segues into a solo from
Tony which was only played during the live performances of the album
and which I usually refer to as "Interlude" on bootleg track
lists, "Silent Sorrow," the opening of "Slippermen"
as Peter emerges from his sac, and "Ravine." Unfortunately,
and as I could have predicted, I found many of these improvisations
to be rather flat. One particular problem was Pete's flute solos--the
TMB Pete is a perfectly OK flautist, but he played those solos in a
very boring fashion. He also played them note-by-note as they were played
on the album, which interestingly enough is never how Pete played
them live in the real Genesis: those solos were different every night.
"Waiting Room" was very effective and sounded great at full
volume, but I still felt that it was only the album version of
the song, and did not have any of the creativity heard on such late
Genesis Lamb performances as, say, Empire Pool (15 April 1975--one of
the most famous versions of the song, which was released as the b-side
of a single). Tony's "Interlude," while sounding very much
as it does on bootlegs, was short and didn't get anywhere. "Silent
Sorrow," while restful and a wonderful transition track, was not
as interesting as some Genesis versions I've heard; the same can probably
be said for "Ravine." One improvisation where I thought the
band really shone was the opening of "Slippermen," which necessarily
must be longer than the album version and for which they showcased some
nice versatility and depth.
As
I suggested earlier, the main problem with this performance was that
the band were not really playing a live version of the Lamb; they were
reproducing the album version. This is not usually the way TMB
approaches their music, but I felt that's what I was hearing that night.
What is amazing about the Selling England show and Foxtrot show
is how much they can bring to life the old songs as they must have sounded
back then; there is a lot of that in the Lamb as well, but not as much
as in their other shows. Though I think it can be argued that TMB may
outshine Genesis in technical proficiency especially in those earlier
tours, and though their Lamb performance was full-throated and (as far
as I could tell) note-perfect, the Lamb show demonstrates just what
a good bunch of musicians the real Genesis actually were. Even though
their Lamb show, according to their own accounts, only completely worked
about 1/20 of the time, they played the damn music very well, with gusto.
This
is not to belittle the achievement of TMB one iota; they are an amazingly
talented bunch of musicians. I loved Phil, who played in the same style
as Phil, with a devil-may-care smirk on his face and a casual set of
motions, as if to say "Yes, I'm playing the drums, but I could
read a magazine and have a conversation with someone while I played
if I wanted to." I have heard many recordings of live Lamb performances
by Genesis, and have been able to make Phil's wonderful backing vocals
out with varying degrees of clarity. But I have never heard as much
backing vocal from the original Phil as I did from TMB's Phil. His vocals
were fantastic and may possibly have exceeded (in quantity if not in
quality) anything the real Phil ever did. Hackett played his parts very
well, and Rutherford as usual provided a strong backbone which is hard
to point to as virtuoso playing but which added another beautiful layer
to the wall of sound. Tony hit all the right notes; my brother opined
that at times it sounded as if Tony had to work very hard to keep up
with the rest of the band, and was sometimes lagging behind. But damned
if he didn't do an amazingly good job at playing the incredibly virtuosic
solo at the beginning of "Riding the Scree." It sounded beautiful.
Peter,
as usual, did an excellent job of hopping around the stage and doing
the typical bum-wiggling required of him. I particularly loved the way
he moved in his Slipperman costume, seeming to really enjoy the playacting.
He told the stories correctly, as heard on various recordings, and probably
remembered all the words better than the real Peter ever did. His flute-playing
I have touched on before, rather negatively, but I was surprised at
how often he did pull out the flute, and it was cool to hear that part
of the music faithfully portrayed. I did notice an interesting thing
about the quality of his vocals. One of the things that really impressed
me about previous Musical Box shows was how much the vocalist sounded
like Peter when he sang the classic songs. And when the band got down
to the classic encore numbers "Musical Box" and "Watcher,"
I once again noticed this quality of his voice, almost channeling Peter
Gabriel during the conclusion of "Box." However, I did not
notice this during the playing of the Lamb. TMB's Peter did not
actually sound like Peter when he sang the Lamb. Yes, he had a beautiful
soaring voice, without the froggy rough edges of the real Peter's voice
in 1975; but he didn't sound like Peter, and sometimes this hurt the
performance. I felt numbers like the title track and "Back in NYC"
suffered somewhat in lacking the real angry, aggressive cries which
the real Peter could sometimes belt out--TMB's Peter always had nice,
smooth vocals which were spot-on but which lacked the anger and rebellious
swagger of Rael. For this reason, however, the classic numbers played
for encores sounded all the more effective, and really brought the house
down, because the lead singer was once again channeling Peter, as he
hadn't during the main performance.
After
the performance, my brother and my wife and I walked over to a little
coffee house that was right next door to the theatre and waited in line
with all the other Genesis fans who had found a place that was still
open for business after the concert. We talked about the show and I
voiced a lot of the opinions I have written down here. It was a great
atmosphere, with everybody there talking about the show and talking
about their original experiences with Genesis (if they had any). It's
a real treat to be able to hang out with other Genesis fans, because
sometimes it can seem like they are few and far between; and no one
who likes Genesis can be all bad.
The
Musical Box is still my favorite live act (other than the real thing),
and their Lamb show was the crowning moment of my concertgoing experience
up to that point. Their devotion to Genesis is a special thing and their
dedication to accuracy produces what is almost a miracle, a glimpse
into a world that is now thirty years in the past (in fact, this show
that I saw was commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Lamb tour,
which began on 20 November 1974)--providing a wonderful and almost cathartic
experience for generations of devoted Genesis fans. My devotion to the
Musical Box is still fully intact, and I can't wait to see them the
next time they swing by my town; or if it gets to be a while and they
don't come back, maybe I'll take a vacation up in Canada...
It's
only knock and know-all, but I like it.
Epilogue:
The Fifth Time (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, 25 June 2005)
As you may have been able to tell from a close reading of the above
description, I did indeed get to see The Musical Box again, and even
got to see them doing the Lamb again. In 2005 I discovered TMB had added
some East Coast dates to the end of their 30th anniversary tour. Now
with a new baby, it would be tough work for me to make it down to Atlantic
City, New Jersey and back (it required babysitters in the form of my
in-laws), but I felt it was worth it. The show I saw was the very last
of a series at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. I can now say from
experience that driving into Atlantic City on a Saturday night is not
fun (and, due to an accident on the Expressway, driving out of Atlantic
City wasn't fun either!). After finally arriving at the casino, parking,
and then (of course) having to walk all the way through the casino to
get to the Xanadu Theater where TMB was playing, we were late. The band
were already breaking into the opening strains of the title track by
the time I showed my ticket at the door. Fortunately we were guided
to our seats, which would have been impossible to find otherwise as
the theater was pitch black and the seating made no sense.
I have to say that if this had been my first time seeing
the Lamb, I would have been unhappy. My previous experience of seeing
shows in Atlantic City casinos was very positive: the Foxtrot show had
been at the Borgata, a very nice, new casino with a very nice theater.
The Taj Mahal's Xanadu is a surprisingly grubby and disappointing venue,
with terrible seating (though the fact that it is small and "intimate"
made for some great acoustics). There were simply a bunch of chairs
set up on the floor, which were not comfortable and which were not tiered
in any way, so that I spent the whole show craning my neck around the
huge heads of the bunch of tall guys sitting in front of me. Still,
I managed to get a pretty good view of the main parts of the stage,
the performance was as good as ever, and I was once again impressed
by the fan turnout. I always expect when I go to a show in a casino
that the audience will be made up to a large extent by people who don't
know anything about the act and are just there to see a show. As it
turned out, the people crowding in to see TMB seemed to be almost entirely
die hard Genesis fans who knew all the words and were perfectly willing
to bang their heads when the guitar solos kicked in. At one point, I
heard someone during a quiet moment start chattering about something
or other, but he was firmly told to "shut up!" by at least
three or five people, who were there to listen to the damn music, thank
you very much. On a good note, we were not disturbed here as at the
previous show by people getting in and out of our row, and other than
the instance I have noted, there was very little chatter.
It was definitely great seeing the show again and having
all the neat visuals reinforced for me--if I had had a chance to write
about the show a little closer to when it happened, I probably would
have been able to improve my description of the concert even more. As
it is, though, it has now been a month since the show, and my recollections
are already hazy. I can't wait to see it again!
(Click on the Continuing Adventures link below to read
reviews of more TMB shows I attended.)
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