Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
People quite often think of silence as being damning, of largely falling into the zone of negativity and condemning, the muzzled contempt biting at the tongue and willing to spread the seed of discontent and slander when your back is finally turned. Too often silence is greeted with the look of lack of enthusiasm, and yet silence for a short while is the epitome of awe, the reflected understanding of what can pass for sheer majesty, the shock of beauty, the reverence of joy, silence is esteem.
It is esteem in which The Musical Box perform on stage, the extravaganza promised, the gala, the festival of the recreated sound and experience of one of Britain’s finest ever Progressive Rock groups, Genesis.
There is nothing like the spectacular to leave you riveted to your chair, the only movement felt for a short while is that of your pulse as it races wildly with expectation met and the requited love of songs that for many in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall would never have heard live before. In that pulse, slowly movement could be seen to infect the audience’s heart and soul, the initial reverence as the band performed three acts with honour, as instrumental melody extracts of Robbery Assault and Battery, All In A Mouse’s Night, Mad Man Moon, Entangled, One for the Vine were bookended by the opening drama of the finale of the Wind and Wuthering album, Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers… and …In That Quiet Earth were joined by the Jazz infused rampage of Los Endos.
If silence is seen as awe, then watching a crowd slowly finding their feet as selected songs from arguably one of the finest albums of all-time The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway weaved a spell of beauty and rising temperature throughout the hall, then awe is replaced by majesty.
Accompanied by visuals of 1970s New York, the feel of the evening quickened, doubled, intensified in its flavour until it could be seen across the faces of the audience as they looked upon devoutly at the memory of songs such as Broadway Melody of 1974, In The Cage, the exuberance and anger of Back In N.Y.C., Counting Out Time and The Carpet Crawlers felt the glorious search for Progressive Rock’s true heart.
An evening of the three-act play, Shakespearean perhaps, bit more in keeping with that ol’ devil with the more elusive past, Kit Marlow, ensued, a taking back by The Musical Box to the very beginning, seldom heard by so many and a stirring of the heart till it felt as if it would snap under the pressure of reminisce and recall. A Place To Call My Own, Time Table, Seven Stones, Can-Utility and the Coastliners, The Cinema Show and Looking for Someone were greeted like old friends, made welcome and enquired after of their previous whereabouts and adventures.
A night of high drama, of understanding why the music of Genesis has prevailed across time, when so many of their stable-mates and cohorts n that first Progressive era have fallen by the wayside or deemed irrelevant by new fans to the genre, all topped off by an encore which solidified the evening perfectly, there is nothing you can do to stop the beating heart when Dance On A Volcano and The Musical Box bring a superb evening of recreated memory to the forefront of your mind, exquisite!
Ian D. Hall