SUPPERS READY (GENESIS TRIBUTE)

Few days ago I reviewed "Top Musicians Play Genesis" and mentioned this one as far better of the two. Now looking at the previous reviews & ratings I'm surprised about 2,2 stars average. The main fault seems to be the performances being too close to the originals. That's quite true, but still I'd say this is above the average level of tribute albums (not that I've heard very many). Track selection is fairly good and balanced, spread pretty evenly over the Genesis dicography except that the newest song is 'Mama' (1983). Does someone miss Invisible Touch or We Can't Dance songs here? Me neither.

Faithful soundalike attempts surely aren't the ideal thing on tributes. However, I don't have big complaints about the openers, ROBERT BERRY's 'Watcher of the Skies' or OVER THE GARDEN WALL's 'Firth of Fifth'. The vocals in the latter are a bad Peter Gabriel clone which disturbs me. DAVID HENTSCHEL (the Genesis producer!) with JAY TAUSIG on vocals do a good, and again, quite faithful, version of 'Undertow'. Fantastic ANNIE HASLAM from Renaissance is a perfect performer for 'Ripples'.

And as in the aforementioned "Top Musicians" CD, 'Back in N.Y.C.' is just a bad song to me even though KEVIN GILBERT does a good job with it. RICHARD SINCLAIR (of Caravan fame) gives a charming version of 'For Absent Friends', backed only by David Rees-Williams on keyboards. MAGELLAN's carbon copy of 'Mama' clearly loses to the powerful original, especially for the vocals. Sadly one of the worst Duke songs is represented, 'Man of Our Times', and the vocals resemble of bands like Toto.

'Many Too Many' is a pleasing one, sung excellently by Nick D'Virgilio from Spock's Beard, and so is SHADOW GALLERY's 'Entangled' or 'Carpet Crawlers' by the Brand X guitarist JOHN GOODSALL with MICHAEL ZENTNER on vocals. Again, these stick close to the originals but are fairly good nevertheless. CAIRO have chosen 'Squonk' and manage to add some new things in it. Probably my least fave here is 'I Know What I Like' by CRACK THE SKY. For a closer, WORLD TRADE (ie. Billy Sherwood on vocals, bass, guitar and keyboards) have chosen a surprising track from Abacab album but 'Keep It Dark' turns out to be interesting.

The leaflet kindly lists all the musicians and the cover art is nice. On the long run this isn't as clearly better than "Top Musicians Play Genesis" as I first thought, because there's so little originality in the performances. Therefor there aren't many songs I want to save to myself. Good, but non-essential.