17.10.2003

Supper's Ready

Putting it simple: Excellent. First - I was wrong, I was definitly not the youngest yesterday evening in Oberhausen at the Musical Box concert! But I think I saw one of the oldest fans of Genesis. Ok, the day was very great. We arrived early at Oberhausen despite some traffic jams and I went straight to the Lego shop to have a look at the latest MindStorm products. Well, they don't have some to play with - so I was a little bit disappointed. But this feeling was gone as I spotted the Lego Star Wars Starship Destroyer assembled on a cupboard. This is really one of the biggest models I have ever seen of a Starship Destroyer. It's really hugh, but with a price above 350 Euros - well, it's nice but not that nice - if you know what I mean. Next, we went into the arena, took our seats and waited for the gig to start. The music playing while we waited was excellent as well: The early Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells and Ommadawn) - fantastic. But then it happened: The guy next to me seemed to wanted to start a conversation and he asked me, if I had seen the original "Selling England by the Pound" tour. I slowly looked at him and said "Eh...no...I was a little bit too young at that time.". Gosh, the tour was in 1973 and I'm born in 1972 and I always thought that I don't look 20 years older than I am. Hmm, I have to think about it. But as soon as Genesis...eh...The Musical Box started, everything else was forgotten and I enjoyed this great live music. It was very surprising how close they are to the original gigs. It's one thing to have the correct instruments, lighting, costumes and gestures - which they of course have. But it's a totally different thing to play the instruments well, to manage all the changes in tempo and style and especially to sing like Peter. But they managed it - so you really felt like being at the real Genesis concert back in 1973. Wow. Ok, the singer had some difficulties with the more extreme vocal parts, but hey, there can only be one Peter and I think the musicians missed some notes more often than Genesis usually did, but who cares? Very amazing was the "Phil clone", who looked a little bit like him :) and really spoke, acted and sung like Phil did. The best part of course was Supper's Ready - the 22 minutes song played as the last song; Simply wow - you have to see it. I never thought that they could manage the Apocolypse at the end of the song that well. After that they played the encore, The Knife! (again 10 minutes of great live music) So in the end it's a must see for every fan of the music of this decade. I was at some "real" Genesis concerts where they played some parts of the old songs - but believe me it's not the same because of the instruments. The Musical Box uses the old instruments whereas Genesis today uses new instruments that sound simply different. And be warned, this is not the shallow music from the Phil era of Genesis - these are the "very very old songs". Now, I'm trying to attend the "Foxtrott" tour in November in Cologne and hope to see the "Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" Tour as well. 11:55:12 AM