GENESIS REVISITED: LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

Return Of The Giant Hogweed

Steve Hackett's massively successful Genesis Revisited tour has now resulted in yet another live album and video following last year's Genesis Revisited: Live At Hammersmith. The present album was recorded in the Royal Albert Hall. (Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks should take note: classic Genesis can still sell out arenas of this size.) The set list draws exclusively from the Genesis albums to which Steve contributed: Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England By The Pound, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, A Trick Of The Tail, and Wind And Wuthering. To be exact, precisely three songs from each of these six albums make up this impressive set list. However, out of the 18 tracks featured here no less than 13 were also present on Live At Hammersmith. Moreover, it is the same line-up with Roger King on keyboards, Gary O'toole on drums, Rob Townsend on sax and flute, Lee Pomeroy on bass, and Nad Sylvan on vocals. Even some of the guest performers are the same including a returning John Wetton (though he sings Firth Of Fifth here instead of Afterglow).

The considerable overlap with Live At Hammersmith raises some doubts about whether yet another live release from the same tour was really needed. In the light of this let's look at the differences. Out of the five tracks not also on Live At Hammersmith, by far the most interesting are Return Of The Giant Hogweed and Fountain Of Salmacis, both originally from Nursery Cryme. These songs are not often played live. (When I saw this show live in Copenhagen a little while ago they also played The Knife, but unfortunately this song is not present here.) Another interesting feature of Live At The Royal Albert Hall is the presence of Ray Wilson, the singer that Genesis hired for Calling All Stations in 1997 (some 20 years after Steve had left the band!). Wilson sings on The Carpet Crawlers and I Know What I Like.

In the end I must say that I do enjoy the present live album as much as Live At Hammersmith and I thus think the two deserve the same rating of four stars. Live At The Royal Albert Hall is a great live document in its own right, but it is probably only fanatics like me who will feel a great desire to have both of these live albums.

To get the Blu-Ray of this new show of Steve Hackett, I had to buy this extravagant box-set with Dvds, Cds and Art-Book. It fit neatly with my others culinary book.This is another gimmick from Inside Out to give you some video content if you want the Cds. This concert is much like the recent and previous one in Hammersmith London, with some different songs, like "Carpet Crawlers", "The Return of the Giant Hogweed", "Ripples" and "The Fountain of Salmics". My review will come only from the Blu-Ray, I won't listen to the others formats.

For Steve Hackett, the goal of this project is not to play the same notes, but as he says in the liner notes, to be authentic. Each player can bring their own touch as long as it doesn't betray the spirit of the originals songs. Steve Hackett brings some improvisations at the end of "Supper's Ready", "Ripples", Roger King add a short new passage in the song "I Know What I Like", but the most extreme addition, is the guitar solo of Roine Stolt in the remarkable song "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" where he brings his typical Flower Kings sound. Ray Wilson is guest on 2 songs and his voice fits perfectly in the song "Carpet Crawlers". Nad Sylvan is really comfortable in the singing department, even if sometimes he forced a little too much his voice. John Wetton sings in the song "Firth of Firth". "Los Endos" is played with the usual improvisation of any Hackett's concerts and with some passage of his solo material.

Apparently the sound mix of the Cds suffers from too much bass, but I didn't notice this with the Blu-Ray. This time the drum is not too loud like on the Hammersmith Dvd. There is some nice surrounding effects, you will hear what I mean with the guitars on the "Return of the Giant Hogweed". The picture quality is nice in high definition with plenty of visuals and animation on screens.

I would have changed a couple of songs, but it's impossible to please everyone with a band that has to choose songs from a rich catalogue. For those who are interested in documentary, there is a 40 minutes making of the show, which presents the musicians and show mostly Steve Hackett, who is in very good mood. So good that there is a album by album review interview of 1 hour.

With rumors and hopes for a new Genesis tour filling my social media, my only response is that Steve Hackett, the great guitarist of Genesis, is already giving us the sound and experience of Genesis through his Genesis Revisited tour. Personally, I will get to see the live show in a few months, but this live album recorded at the famous Royal Albert Hall is quite a teaser for me, and quite an experience in and of itself.

First of all, the production values are enormously high. Hackett's guitar (probably the most important part) thunders as if in a vacuum, and the array of instruments all sound well-mixed and larger than life. I especially love the sax and flute work from Rob Townsend. These musicians, and all the rest, are all incredible, and there's a reason Hackett chose them. The presentation is rather "epic", if I can use that word. It keeps you guessing at what will be played next and how the songs will have changed. This is a sophisticated and professional show, through and through.

Yet, everyone wants to know about the tracklist. Honestly, it's pretty stellar. Obviously, there's not much reason for me to go into why certain Genesis songs are so great, as that's been done to death a million times over by others. However, I will say that the songs all sound great, and I love Hackett's changes. Everything from "Dance on a Volcano" to "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" to the spectacular visions of "Supper's Ready" and "Watcher in the Skies" are all different, yet the same. Their best moments are for sure left intact. Though most people dislike it, my favorite Genesis album is "Wind & Wuthering", and so I was more than pleased to see my favorite Genesis songs "Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers", "In the Quiet Earth", and "Afterglow" in the tracklist. Not only that, but they have been modified with a new jazziness that elevates them considerably.

In all honestly, I think Hackett has improved upon most of the tracks he has modified. It may just be modern recording methods, but the songs have much more contrast between highs and lows, much more depth, and a certain personality that simply fits. Hackett's "Genesis Revisited: Live at the Royal Albert Hall", then, is a wonderful live album that almost stands as an album all by itself. Hackett is continuing his strong solo career, and he deserves to be recognized more.

The Genesis Revisited tour was nice and all, but this live album, the second one from the GR tour, is unnecessary overkill. The sound is great (a little bass-heavier than the last one, which is neither good nor bad, just interesting), and all of the performances are just fine, but there's an odd going-through-the-motions vibe to the show, as if the novelty of performing all of these old classics had given way to "Ugh, this tour's just gonna keep going forever isn't it." There are five tracks here that weren't on Hammersmith: "The Carpet Crawlers" (with vocals from Ray Wilson, who doesn't sound horrible here), "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" (basically done the same as on GR II, except with Nad Sylvan singing instead of Neal Morse), "Horizons" (the same as ever and introduced as "agnostic guitar"), "The Fountain of Salmacis" (which sounds nice but doesn't really feel like it matches any of the Genesis studio or live renditions) and "Ripples" (done in a stripped-down version with the classic solo replaced with a brief classical guitar flourish, and with great Amanda Lehmann vocals that make this version a necessity). The concert also makes one significant downgrade from its predecessor: the rendition of "Afterglow," after "Unquiet Slumbers" and "In That Quiet Earth," is done by Sylvan instead of John Wetton, and he sounds pretty wimpy in comparison (what's really strange is that Wetton was around, and he actually sang on "Firth of Fifth" immediately afterwards).

The other performances are great, of course, even if I find myself missing a bunch of the stuff from Hammersmith that was dropped to make room for the "new" stuff here (it's weird to imagine a world in which "Blood on the Rooftops" somehow became overplayed, but I guess it finally happened to Hackett and O'Toole). Every official recording of "Supper's Ready," especially at this late of a date, is a treasure in its own way (Hackett's ending solo goes a little over the top of a little over the top, but I don't mind), and everything here is worth coming back to once in a while even if somebody already has a copy of Hammersmith. And yet, the slight inescapable sense that Hackett had overplayed his hand with the GR tour occupies the album nearly from start to finish, and while that's not a crippling blow, it's enough to make me like this one a smidge less than Hammersmith (which caught this tour in ascent as opposed to its inevitable plateau and decline). If you liked Hammersmith, you may as well get this one too, but you'll probably give it a listen or two and then forget about it.