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| Wednesday, September 19, 2007 03:45 PM |
| Genesis allowed is not! Is planet forbidden! |
 by Fëanor |
Nevertheless, my brother, his wife, and I can now finally say that we have seen Genesis perform live. I even have a $40 T-shirt to prove it! Although I'm having second thoughts; I think maybe I should have gotten the red one instead. Still, this black one's cool (yes, I'm wearing it right now).
It was a good show. But let's start with the negatives: Phil Collins occasionally struck me as an out-of-touch grandfather or uncle trying to entertain the young whippersnappers, what with his corny attempts to connect with the audience via dull lighting tricks, cheesy stories, and silly faces. The little videos playing on the big screen behind the band were often a bit cheesy, too. And they definitely could have played more of the grand old songs from the Peter era, or even off of A Trick of the Tail, and fewer of the embarrassing tracks from more recent times.
But! They did play some old stuff, and played it well. In fact, even the corny new stuff they played well. The sound levels were excellent throughout - everything was nice and loud. The drums in particularly sounded great. There were neat lighting effects, as well as even some pyro stuff, and some of those videos on the screen were cool. I particularly liked the one that featured animated versions of characters that have appeared in the art of various Genesis albums over the years, and another one that featured photos and short video clips of the band, in all its incarnations, from all over its long history.
Song-wise the highlights for me were: a rocking rendition of "In the Cage" (off The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), followed up by an instrumental medley of some of the older songs; the drum duet between Phil Collins and Chester Thompson, which built slowly from the two of them simply tapping a few drums into a huge crashing, amazing, brutal crescendo with the whole band involved (wow, Phil really is a good drummer!); the epic "Los Endos," which came immediately after the drum duet; and a surprisingly thrilling rendition of "I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe)" (off Selling England by the Pound).
But of course, a show isn't all about the band and their performance; it's also about the venue, and the crowd. We had pretty decent seats (although while seated, it was necessary to angle our bodies to the right quite a bit to get a good view of the stage), but sadly we were seated right in front of a whole gang of drunken loudmouth asshole idiots. At non-seated shows, it's not hard to just wander away from such offenders, but in a seated show like this one you're pretty much stuck with them the whole time. This particular group was extremely disdainful and sarcastic about everything, which confused me; what were they doing at the show if they thought it was stupid? They had lots of idiotic things to say, too, which apparently had to be said at a nice loud volume level, especially during the quiet parts of songs. And they helpfully spilled their drinks under our seats, and hit me in the head with a drink tray. What charming companions!
Thankfully, they weren't so awful that they ruined our experience. But the three of us all agreed that this kind of thing seems to happen an inordinate amount of the time when we go out to live shows. What is that about? Do these experiences just stick out in our heads, tricking us into thinking they happen really often? Or is the ratio of assholes to reasonable people really that high? And is the ratio that high naturally, or does the prevalence of drink and drugs at concerts artificially increase it?
Other interesting things I noticed about the crowd: the patterns of sitting and standing during the show, and the demographics. I've noticed in the past that your average show audience, regardless of the act playing, will almost always be made up mostly of young (often attractive) people, usually in a pretty even mix of both sexes. This is because the kind of people most likely to go out to live shows the most often are young couples. But the crowd at this show definitely had a much higher median age than normal, and far more men than women. Plus, I don't know about the attractive thing so much (excepting myself and my two companions, of course; we're all beautiful).
Probably at least partially due to the abnormal demographics (although also partially due to the type of music being played - lengthy, intricate, and instrumental), there was a lot more sitting during this show than during your average rock show. But how and when people chose to sit and stand was a bit fascinating to me. It happened in waves - an analysis of the patterns might be interesting. Somebody would start it, and then most other people in that same area would end up going along (although you'd always have one or two random hold-outs just doing their own thing, often to the annoyance of others). And the people all the way up front were standing throughout most of the show, possibly out of enthusiasm, but also possibly because they were ashamed to sit down, for fear of disappointing the band, who, after all, were right in front of them, looking right at them.
Anyway, like I said, it was a good show, and I'm very glad I went. I'm especially glad I went with my brother, and got to be there when he saw his favorite band live for the first time. Even so, I'm not sure I'd go to the bother and expense of seeing this incarnation of Genesis again any time soon - mostly because there's a lot about going to concerts in general that I don't like, and I rarely feel the need to see an act more than once live. But I would definitely go see them if Pete ever decided to get off his high horse and join in. From interviews I've seen with him and what I know of him, though, I doubt that's going to happen. He seems to view his work with Genesis as old hat, and even a little embarrassing. He's moved on. |
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