This should have been tax deductible as a retirement fund contribution.
Kronomyth 18.0: Well, I for one felt shorted.
Honestly, Genesis has never released an excellent live album, and they weren’t going to get lucky on the fourth try with a catalog that included 1983’s Genesis, Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance. If you enjoyed those albums, welcome to Heaven—and pay no mind to the men with the pitchforks shoveling piles of money into the Genesis tour bus.
Two years earlier, Phil Collins released Serious Hits… Live which, in my opinion, is the one to own. Genesis simply seems to be going through the motions on this tour, perhaps because so much of the music now depended on Tony Banks’ preprogrammed keyboards, which gives the music a rigid and mechanical feel (“Mama,” “Land of Confusion”). It’s nice that Daryl Steurmer and Chester Thompson, part of the Genesis touring troupe since the 70s, are finally given full recognition, though the band might not have waited until the final curtain call to do it.
The Way We Walk Volume One: The Shorts is at least a clean concert document, so latter-day Genesis fans might find this a nice walk down short-term memory lane. The rest of us, sweetly smoke-stained graybeards and whitehairs who would trade our iPods for a good cup of tea, remember things differently. Starry-eyed, we’ve seen the souls collected on “Supper’s Ready,” and can’t reconcile that image with the trite treatment of a televangelist on “Jesus He Knows Me,” let alone applaud its nth retelling. By the time “Invisible Touch” and its F word arrives, we’ve already disappeared into the past to battle giant hogweeds and dance with moonlit knights, invisible and untouchable.
Original 2LP version
A1. Land of Confusion (5:16)
A2. No Son of Mine (7:04)
A3. Jesus He Knows Me (5:21)
B1. Throwing It All Away (6:03)
B2. I Can’t Dance (6:54)
C1. Mama (6:50)
C2. Hold On My Heart (5:41)
C3. That’s All (4:59)
D1. In Too Deep (5:35)
D2. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (3:35)
D3. Invisible Touch (5:43)
All songs written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford.
The Players
Tony Banks (keyboards & vocals), Phil Collins (vocals & drums), Mike Rutherford (guitar, bass & vocals), Daryl Steurmer (guitar, bass & vocals), Chester Thompson (drums). Produced by Nick Davis, Robert Colby and Genesis; engineered by Nick Davis and Geoff Callingham.
The Pictures
Design by Genesis and Icon. Photography by Lewis Lee and Cesar Vera.
The Plastic
Released on 2LP, compact disc and cassette on November 17, 1992 in the UK (Virgin, GEN LP/CD/MC 4), the US (Atlantic, 82452-2/4), Brazil (Virgin, 427 197), Colombia (EMI, 11001514) and Japan (Virgin, VJCP-68110) with picture innersleeve; reached #3 on the UK charts and #35 on the US charts (RIAA-certified gold record). Also released as promotional compact disc in 1992 in Japan (Virgin, VJCP-28137).
I had a pen pal in Oregon who loves Genesis as well. Selling England is his favorite album by the group too, even though The Lamb was his first exposure. Believe it or not, he found a fantastic live album by Genesis. It was recorded live at the Rainbow in ’73 after Selling England came out. You may have to do some digging, but it’s worth it. He says, “Forget Seconds Out, get out of here Three Sides Live, and stay the fuck away from The Way We Walk!”
Ooh, I’ll have to check that out. Genesis Live isn’t bad, there just isn’t enough of it. Oddly, Seconds Out was the first Genesis album I owned. Small miracle I bought a second one.
I also really hate the call-and-response on “Throwing It All Away”.