THE CARPET CRAWLERS / THE WAITING ROOM

"The Carpet Crawlers" is also one of the best songs from "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" album, and musically is also one of the most accessible too, but the lyrics are not very easy to understand, in my opinion, if you have not read the explanation notes of "The Lamb..." story in the gatefold cover of the album. Even having this in mind, it also was a good choice to be released as a single to promote "The Lamb..." album. Again, it didn`t reach a place in the Hit Parade Charts, something that Genesis only achieved once with Peter Gabriel as lead singer (with the "I Know What I Like" / "Twilight Alehouse" single from 1973, which reached No. 14 in March 1974 in the U.K. Charts). "The Carpet Crawlers" also show how good is Peter Gabriel as lead singer, with him using his voice in different ways, also aided a bit by Phil Collins`backing vocals and Steve Hackett`s lead guitar. It is in my opinion one of the best produced songs in "The Lamb..." album, and it is also much better than the "The Carpet Crawlers 1999" single version which was included in their "Turn It On Again- The Hits" CD compilation.

The B-side, called "The Waiting Room (Evil Jam)" is really the same live version of this instumental piece of music from the live version of "The Lamb..." which is included in the "Genesis Archives 1967-1975" Box Set. In one interview done with Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins done in 1982 (which can be found in the web under the title "Genesis:An Autodiscography"), they said that this song was played differently in every concert from "The Lamb..." Tour in 1974-75. It allowed the band to improvise and to relax a bit from the strict arrangements of the rest of the songs from "The Lamb..." . So, they said that this instrumental iece of music has a fixed structure with several parts, but they also improvised a lot in between that structure. I think that it was called as "Evil Jam" in this single because it really has some heavy improvisations. It is also a good live version, in my opinion.

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