Genesis Freak Loves them Live

Rip It Up, Issue 10, 1 April 1978, Page 14

Genesis Freak Loves them Live

Seconds Out Genesis Charisma

This, I fear, will not be an objective review.

Having been a confirmed Genesis freak for a number of years, and suffering for it, I feel duty bound to say this is one of the finest live albums ever recorded, and certainly one of my picks for Album Of The Year.

And believe me, Genesis fans do suffer for their faith. They are followers of one of the world's most underrated and maligned bands. Detractors’ comments range from “technoflash rubbish’’ to “boring and selfindulgent." Mentior .< n&..ie and you’re bound to hear somecrv say “Oh God, you don’t like them, do you?" Whether it’s the heavily keyboarddominated sound, the Elizabethan eccentricities of the lyrics, or the length and complexity of the numbers that turns people off Genesis, I'm not sure. Whatever it is, I’ve found much of it to be a product df ignorance and a simple lack of application. Genesis do require some thought and concentration on the part of the listener. But I'll take one of their albums to a dozen Pink Floyds any day. They play with tremendous drive and skill, and their compositions are small masterpieces. No better display of their talents can be found than on this live album.

Genesis live are an aural experience

without equal, and anyone who saw the film of one of their concerts that came through town recently will have no doubts about their visual appeal. The production alone on this album would leave many recent studio efforts at the starting gate. It’s crisp and superbly balanced, and the tracks have been selected with great care, to. show all the facets of the band.

There’d be little point in giving individual credits here, as the overall quality is so high, but mention should be made o* the splendid renderings of “Squonk" and ’ i

Carpet Crawl”, not to mention a rfiasterfui “Supper’s Ready”, which has a physical potency that leaves the listener staggering. The musicianship is never less than excellent, and often sublime. There is nothing leaden about Genesis, with the combined talents of three of the world’s finest drummers (Chester Thompson, Bill Brjuford and Phil Collins), and a marvellously inventive bass player in Mike Rutherford.

Collins is an admirable vocalist and frontman, and Tony Banks pisses all over Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson.

The best way to judge a live album is to ask yourself "Would I have paid money to see this concert?”

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times over. Play this album to a cynic. If he doesn’t fall breathless against the wall, then he must have cloth ears. Duncan Campbell

Nils Lofgren Night After Night A & m HHH Nils Lofgren is the kind of person you’d expect to make a great live album. He has a recording- history that extends back over eight years and includes a wealth of strong material to draw on and, equally, he has a reputation as a live performer of great energy and flash. - That -Night After Night is not the killer collection that I'd hoped for speaks of the difference between, the concert situation and the recorded medium. Devices that are used to maintain excitement in the live show flashy guitar parts, lengthy solos etc merely drain the energy from any of the excellent songs Lofgren features here. On his solo studio album, Lofgren has had trouble in setting the correct balance between his considerable skill as a guitarist and his even greater skill as a songwriter. The tunes often got buried under the riffs. On the first two sides of Night After Night, the balance is mostly neatly held. Of the seven tracks there, only the G n favourite "Like Rain” suffers from heavy handed guitar work, while “Going Back" and “Your’e the Weight” are taut examples of Lofgren at his best. But on Sides 3 and 4, when the concert should be cooking to its climax, it slips away. Performances are overly long "Moon Tears” that in its original 2 minutes 16 seconds form was ferocious, when stretched to over 5 minutes is merely flabby. It’s symptomatic of the lack' of focus that is the problem here the razzle of the show overcomes the power and intensity of the music.

As a live album Night After Night has its flaws, but there is a single album of high points contained within its double cover. But if it serves to introduce one tenth of the people who bought, say, Frampton Comes Alive to the strengths of Nils Lofgren as a songwriter and performer and causes them to investigate his excellent solo albums, I’ll be well pleased. Alastair Dougal.

Darts Magnet Darts are one of the current darlings of the London pub and club scene. Even punkers find it acceptable to be seen bopping to the loving fifties sound of the Darts, and they give a few aging critics a change to come out of their rock and roll closests.

On the strength of this record it is easy to

see why Darts might doo-wop up a storm in such an environment. However, short of inviting thirty people into my living room, and turning the lights off, I can't really think of any way to get much out of them on my turntable. Unlike Sha Na Na, Darts seem to have an appreciation of doo-wop as living music, and not just a variety act. They write a fair proportion of the material on the record, and seem less wrapped in in kitsch. At the same time, like Sha Na Na, they must be a party band. It just seems so silly to sit in an armchair reading the paper when they are rocking and rolling away. Francis Stark

Dennis Wilson Pacific Ocean Blue Caribou Dennis Wilson has always seemed the lightweight of the Beach Boys. True, he’s the one who suggested surfing as a theme to brother Brian but his contribution appears slight. Pacific Ocean Blue rights the wrong. This first and so far only solo project by a Beach Boy is quite outstanding. It’s certainly steps ahead of any recent Beach Boys album. Dennis Wilson has next to no voice, something between foghorn and fragility. He immerses himself in backings of orchestral density; the background vocalists are legion. But it works. The poignancy of Wilson’s delivery slashes through the monumental arrangements and the nearbanality of the lyrics. Teetering on the brink of bathos Dennis Wilson makes art.

Wilson co-wrote the 12 songs, with, among others, his wife and brother Carl and Mike Love, but the songs are all Dennis. His croaking, real voice makes it his. Pacific Ocean Blue is a very personal document, its unexpectedness making it even more a pleasure. It’s as if Ringo suddenly became John Lennon.

Ken Williams

Little Feat

Waiting For Columbus

Warner Bros. Where I live, El Feats have provided the main musical accompaniment to rave-ups and get-downs for at least five years. Many's the time I’d affix some poor soul with my glazed eye and demand that he/she

acknowledge the Feat as the world’s premier group. Friends and I awaited each new album in the hope that this would be the masterpiece we all knew they were capable of the one that would convert everybody. The N.Z. concert tour in ’76 won many believers it not only boogied our

sneakers away but displayed the band as having enormous energy, a fact not always evident in that foot-shufflin’, fingerpoppin’, backbone-slippin’, funky chicken we heard on the hi-fi at home. Perhaps, then, the masterpiece would be a live album?

Well this sure ain’t it. Oh, it’s a good live LP by normal criteria but this is the Feats fergrifsake! I’m trying to overcome my disappointment and figure out what’s gone wrong. Commercial factors aside, there seem to be three main reasons for making a live album. The first is to present new material, or, more commonly, numbers that are part of a stage act but would not otherwise be recorded. (Van Morrison did this.) Well, apart from a 57 second throwaway of "Don’t Bogart That Joint", there are no new songs on the four sides offered here. So that rules that one out. The second reason for a live album is to present rearrangements of old material. (Joni Mitchell did this and we hope Dylan will too, after his current tour.) The Feat rearrange a few numbers, but they rarely come across as improvements. “Sailin’ Shoes” is slow and heavy, thus losing its original deli cate charm, "Apolitical Blues" is simply overdone; its humour is spoiled. Only the extended “Dixie Chicken" is a real success: Payne has some witty piano noodling and there’s a New Orleans horn sequence.

The third reason for recording material live is to do it better. And Little Feat don’t. With the exception of Side 3, where Payne's keyboard prowess highlights tight, swaggering performances, the energy they displayed in Auckland seems to have dissipated. Numbers seem just run through, and at times that glorious lurching funk is almost flattened out. On "Willin'” Ken Gradney sounds plain bored. The poor quality of both performance and sound fail to make this set an acceptable introductory sampler. Almost any of the previous albums would serve better. Is the title significant? Who/what is Columbus: Lowell George’s departed muse, the missing spirit of live performance, or simply a contract to be fulfilled? Maybe the rationale for issuing this sad L.P. is purely economic. After all, George sings "It's a mercenary territory." But that still doesn’t explain what went wrong with the performances. Perhaps further lyrics from the same song suggest the answer. Little Feat might have been touring too hard, and we know there has been internal feuding. is it the days into nights or the 'l'm sorry's’ into fights? whatever it was, I sure hope they fix it. Peter Thomson