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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cake Without The Icing!!, 27 Jan 2006
What are they playing at? OK, so I have been a Genesis fan since the 70's and I am naturally biased towards the Gabriel/early Collins eras but I was hugely impressed with the Invisible Touch concerts, particularly the way in which they successfully combined the hits with the weightier, more dramatic material. I eagerly anticipated the release of this DVD, only to find that it shows a concert stripped of the In the Cage/Afterglow centrepiece.
The reason? They had to change the tape. Pathetic. If they wanted to include "Cage" they would have done. They had four nights to draw from so didn't anyone think about changing the running order (or the stage at which the tapes were changed) on one or more of those nights so they could have an interrupted recording of what for me (and many Genesis fans) was far and away the highlight of the set? This is not just one song missing but a sizeable chunk of the concert, its heart and soul, no less. I don't accept the argument that as In The Cage is available on the Three Sides Live/Mama Tour videos it is not vital to include it here. The fact is that it was an integral part of the show and in any case if we applied the same logic we would omit Mama, Abacab, That's All, Home By the Sea and Turn It On Again, which are all available on one or other of those videos. To me the whole things smacks of men in suits making decisions about what we, the punters, really want (apparently it's just the later stuff). In doing so, they have removed one of the important elements (adventure and drama) that made Genesis such a great live band and left us with a mere parade of hits culled almost entirely from two albums: Genesis and Invisible Touch, two AOR-orientated works which, compared with, say, Duke or Lamb Lies Down, are fairly bland affairs. Having said all of that, even without the stronger material at their disposal, Genesis as a live act could still knock most other bands into a cocked hat and there is still plenty to marvel at here. The musicianship is, as ever, faultless (although Tony Banks' keyboards are mixed too low and sound like they were being played somewhere down the road) and Phil Collins demonstrates his complete mastery of the audience. This makes it all the more frustrating to know that this DVD should be so much better than it is. One day, justice will be done to Genesis as a live band. Perhaps we shall even see the release of DVD's of the Seconds Out and Duke tours. Now that would be worth shelling out your hard-earned cash for. In the meantime, for those who want to see what live Genesis was all about, The Way We Walk DVD would be the better bet.
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