Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Ever since the idea hit the first artist and studio executive, the concept of the live album has been rightly heralded as a boon; and at times an act of division. If left unchecked the reputation of a group would depend entirely on what is recorded in the spur of the moment, if not encouraged then many a music fan would never get to experience the sound in a venue, would never get to embrace the feeling of being like-minded individuals singing along to their favourite song as of taking part in a kind of communion, of sharing an intimacy.
Intimacy is a point of the live recording, and of course by driving possible future sales if the audience at home is grabbed and tickled by the production, but intimacy is the proof of how the crowd react to the music, to the sense of history that is being revealed like a flower opening up as it feels the sun on its delicate leaves.
Aside from the much-appreciated recent tour by Phil Collins, Tony Banks, and Mike Rutherford, only Steve Hackett has kept the Genesis name relevant and in the fan’s memories in the last decade and a half, and perhaps arguably to the detriment of his own solo work which has been of the most extreme quality. Yet, the music and the time to keep the flame alive, his time on guitar from Nursery Cryme to Wind & Wuthering is one of the main reasons that the group struck the imagination of the fan, and which weathered the tempest, the storm of Peter Gabriel’s departure as the vocal and focus of Britain’s premier Progressive Rock band.
How to strike a balance, how to pursue your own solo career and yet continue to keep a memory more than live, by making it sonically immortal; perhaps the only way, the best way is reproduction, and in Genesis Revisited Live: Seconds Out & More, that reproduction, the positivity of one of the great live albums in its class, is what drives the audience, both at home and those that were in attendance in the theatres and venues during the tour.
There, as a line on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album speaks, is magic in the air, an alchemy that brings Roger King, Rob Townsend, Jonas Reingold, Craig Blundell, Amanda Lehmann, and the conjurer-like Nad Sylvan together with the wizarding musician, and as tracks from Steve’s own discography, Clocks, The Devil’s Cathedral, Shadow Of The Hierophant, and Held In Shadows, sit comfortably and with reverence with tracks that echoed the 1977 Live album Seconds Out, and arguably overtakes it, for one the sound with Steve sounds much more involved, more defined, and as the second disc’s opener of the much loved Squonk, The Carpet Crawlers, and Robbery, Assault And Battery lift the roof, so the clarity of memory is raised.
It must always be said that Nad Sylvan’s contribution to Supper’s Ready is something not only to be admired, but which is almost heavenly, as if utilising the angels themselves, and so it is on this particular live album, and with stunning renditions of I Know What I Like, The Cinema Show, and Afterglow all involved in the soul of the release, it is no wonder that the fans have always understood why Steve was so integral to the band between those aforementioned albums, and why he is so revered today.
An album that captures the very heart of one of Britain’s greatest musicians and thinkers, solo or with a group of timeless musicians, Genesis Revisited Live: Seconds Out & More is the perfect way to highlight a sense of belonging, of being in the company of genius.
Ian D. Hall