A new Genesis in Liverpool

[jimmy]

A new Genesis in Liverpool
Oct 13 2008 by Mike Chapple


The Musical Box - A Trick Of The Tail _320

LIVERPOOL plays host to what could prove to be a remarkable concert at the Philharmonic Hall (Tuesday October 14).

The Musical Box - renowned as one of the world’s most meticulous tribute bands - will be re-enacting Genesis’s performance of their album A Trick of the Tail tour first performed live in the UK in 1976.

No strangers to Liverpool the band, formed by a group of Genesis enthusiasts in Montreal in 1993, have chosen the city especially for the launch of its latest UK tour.

“This will be the fifth time we have played the Philharmonic in the last four years,” said amiable founder member Sebastien Lamothe who takes on the convincing role of original Genesis bass player Michael Rutherford. “We love being in Liverpool and have always received a great reception there - we’re guessing that it’s going to be the same again this time.”

In those previous years in the city they have reproduced twice both the band’s 1973 Selling England By The Pound album and their ambitious prog rock opus The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway from 1975.

Both were revelations in rock stage show production for their respective times particularly The Lamb which featured some extraordinary effects and costume changes from the band’s charismatic lead singer Peter Gabriel. With full co-operation from the original line-up of Gabriel, Rutherford, keyboard player Tony Banks, guitarist Steve Hackett and drummer Phil Collins and their live production specialists, the Box have recreated the shows to an extent where both Genesis and fans who came to see the groundbreaking 70s shows think the experience is as good as the real thing.

“What you have to remember is that all of this took place at a time when it was very courageous to come up with shows like this with highly visual effects with lots of people involved in the choreography and pyrotechnics,” explains Lamothe, who was but a babe in arms when these shows were performed. “It was also well before the MTV generation or YouTube evolved which would have recording all of these remarkable shows for posterity. But then there was nothing like that around. We’re giving people the opportunity to see how good they really were. Creatively, they were relatively just a bunch of kids at the time aged between just 23 and 26 years old but who were producing works of musical genius.”

As usual, Sebastien has gone to great lengths with this latest tour to reproduce exactly the distinctive double headed 12 string bass that Rutherford played on the 70s tours which this time proved to be more of a problem than usual.

He explains: “Mike always had a new bass made for him for every tour and this is the third I’ve had reproduced but we had a lot of difficulty for this one. The person who created the one for Trick of the Tail I think had died and anyway Mike had hated it so much that he gave it away to be used as a competition prize on a German radio station when the tour ended. So we had nothing to work with apart from studying images taken at the time.”

The most difficult morph, however, sprang from a case of history more or less repeating itself.

Denis Gagne had been a remarkably authentic Gabriel through the years.

But in 2008 the Gagne/Gabriel replacement in the Box had been set aside for Martin Levac, who played drums and sang perfectly as Collins on the Selling England By the Pound tours which played twice at the Phil last year.

But things, says our diplomatic Rutherford Doppelganger, “didn’t work out” and Gagne was subsequently hauled back from a budding career in Hollywood to unexpectedly fill the gap at short notice.

This has meant not only having to reproduce convincing vocal and physical impersonations of the then hairy, thickly bearded Collins but honing his drumming skills to duet with Gregg Bendian who “plays” King Crimson sticks man Bill Bruford who filled the vacant rostrum for the 76 tour.

Got all that?

Well, Sebastien thinks Gagne has, judging by the sold-out standing ovations the band have been receiving around Europe before landing again in Liverpool for UK sector of the tour.

“Denis is a perfect mimic and will make just as good a Phil Collins as Gabriel as I think you will see,” says Sebastion confidently.

Check it out for yourself.

* The Musical Box performance begins at 8pm.

[Anita]

Are you going Mark, or do you only like the real thing?

[Klaatu]

I know friends who will be going to that.

[Ged]

A trick of the tail is a cracking album when performed live, the likes of Squonk, Ripples, Dance on a volcano and Los Endos.