I was kinda peeved when I first saw this as an upcoming release. My first reaction was “what the hell happened to Selling England By The Pound?” Why on earth come in at 1976 and miss the best album the band have ever made? Well I’ve since learned that they are releasing the sets out of sequence, and the earlier releases are coming to us soon.
It took me about a year to get over it, and so I finally splashed the $170 big ones to pick up this wonderful collection of music and video.
“Genesis: 1976-1982” covers the five albums the band recorded during that period, pretty obvious really, when you think about it.
A Trick Of The Tail,” “Wind & Wuthering,” “And Then There Were Three,” “Duke” and “Abacab”.
The interesting and rather bold fact behind this release is that each of the studio albums has a track on SACD, CD and DVD, with the DVD and SACD tracks being not only a different format, but a different mix too. Each album contains two discs, one disc contains a CD/SACD layer, with the SACD available in 5.1, the other disc contains the full track-list as DVD (not DVD-A) along with bonus tracks as DVD with video, and with 5.1.
Producer Nick Davis spent 4 years on the project and involved Genesis members Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford throughout the project. Phil, according to the liner notes, chose not to get involved, for reasons he declined to share.
As a nice bonus, each album comes with a DVD that includes various video clips, including some wonderful footage of a 1976 gig, 45 minutes of concert footage including “Fly on a Windshield”, “Cinema Show pt II”, “Entangled” and “Los Endos”. Also, each disc has interviews, copies of tour programs and more. The sound quality on the DVD video clips is quite spotty, with the earlier footage being pretty average, both in sound and video quality as it happens. But for Genesis die-hards, an invaluable addition to any collection.
There’s also a neat 48-page booklet, with commentary on and from the band members along with some previously unseen photo’s.
Comparing the sound quality between the SACD and DVD mixes, reveals a couple of interesting points that are consistant from album to album. First off, the DVD mixes have more of a concert feel, Colins’ vocals are mixed right up front, so you get the impression he’s standing in the room with you. Instrumentation is spread nicely across a fairly wide stage, a little more homogenized than on the SACD mix, with focus and emphasis clearly on the vocals. But it’s really quite excellent, as I say, it has a feel that’s very different to the original studio releases. The DVD “And Then There Were Three” perhaps wanders farthest from the tracks of the original album, but to be honest, it’s a better mix alround. The only minor gripe is that after a couple minutes you start to notice that the level on the instrumentation is turned down very swiftly whenever the vocal kicks in. This is apparent only on the DVD tracks, where there’s the strong emphasis on vocal reproduction at the expense of instruments.
The SACD mixes are more true to the original studio mix, with a nice refresh for the 21st century. There are many little nuances that are lost in the original recordings that have been brought forward in the SACD mix, just to let people know that these really are “new” and not just a brushed-over rework of the original mix.
The CD quality is also very good, a clear improvement on the original recordings without deviating too far from what was originally intended.
To top it off there’s a nice bonus CD of rare songs, about two thirds of which I own or have owned, mostly as vinyl B sides. “Match Of The Day” is a catchy spoof of Saturday night football programming, run by the BBC for many years, and “Inside and Out” should’ve made it onto W&W but never did.
All told there’s a good deal of entertainment across these 12 discs, enough to justify the $170 quite easily, at least for me, the die-hard Genesis fan that I am.
Roozer 1/11/08
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