SECONDS OUT

I can't understand why so many people adore this album, consider it one of the greatest live albums ever, etc. To me, it has some great music from early Genesis, but shows me all that I don't like in Phill Collins led Genesis. Moreover, Genesis always had good concerts due to Peter Gabriel's charisma and the theatrical side of the concerts. But musically, they were immensely better in the studio. Alive, they lost some of the instruments and overdubs from studio, and didn't compensate that with new arrangements, lots of energy or improvisation. Genesis, actually, was quite the opposite, all of their musicians like to play exactly what they wrote, and if you compare a bootleg from them in 1971 and 1974, the differences in the songs that are on both are minimal. And they're not the most energetic band, surely! So this album has new versions to the songs that are at most times very similar, and none of them is superior to the original. I really miss Peter Gabriel in many moments, like Firth of Fifth, Carpet Crawlers (Phill managed to make this song even slower and popper than it was). Besides, Firth of Fifth doesn't have the amazing piano introduction, and the synth solo is made on a different synth, with a worse timbre. Supper's Ready is well played, Phill does his job very well. But there are some very small changes that were made that really upset me. An example is a keyboard theme from the part 4, Ikhnaton and Itsacon and their band of Merry Men. There's a descendant arpeggio of D in this section that's really important for all the music. Alive, Banks changes a single note from the arpeggio, and the result is disastrous. It shows us how this masterpiece of progressive rock is carefully done and anything changed can be the water drop that breaks the camel's back. I Know What I Like is one of the few songs that I like here. It has an extended ending, with some improvisation, where they even play a small section from Stagnation (a song from Trespass). Phill does a good job here, too. The songs from A Trick of the Tail I can't bear, in the originals or here. Except Dance on a Volcano, which is at least entertaining, the others are really bad songs. If it may serve as a consolation, they would get remarkably worse in the 80s.

So I think this album doesn't add almost anything to Genesis's discography, so it's good but not essential at all. I must say that if I were on their show from this tour, I would certainly love it. The problem is that I don't find it artistically relevant enough to be released.

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