ARCHIVE 1967-1975

Just a short review to clear up a few points. Firstly the version of "IT" was taken from the LP version because they ran out of tape recording the Lamb. Also there are a number of vocal overdubs mostly on the "carpet crawlers" . There are also a number of overdubs on other instruments and even Hacketts killer solo on" Firth of Fifth" has been played with. I think that is a bit of a shame really as what we are presented with is a Historic set of recordings. I would have liked to see more material from the Trespass to Nursery Crime period and there certainly are recordings that exist which I'm certain they could have acquired for this project. As it is this is an expensive Box set and it contains some truly important material that cannot be obtained "legally" otherwise. Most notable being "Shepard", " Pacidy " and the BBC trespass tracks. The live" suppers ready" is excellent as is all of the live material presented here. My only complaint is that the genesis to revelation LP gets far to much attention and these tracks are mostly so similar to the original release (minus strings) that we are not really getting anything worthwhile here. The sound of these tracks is even more unpleasant than the original which always suffered from a terrible production. Also the very best moments of genesis to revelation are missed off this release. Otherwise this is a great and worthy addition to any Genesis fans collection indispensable to fans of Gabriel era Genesis in particular. A little word of warning regarding the booklet that comes with the box set. It is poorly designed and badly constructed try not to re-read it to often or you will find as I did it falls to pieces all to easily, which is a shame because it contains a lot of interesting stuff. The back to front chronology is also a little annoying but with such poor material on side 4 I can see why they did this, after all if it started with the genesis to revelation stuff it would not have sold half as well I suspect. As it is side four pulls the whole thing down a little and so I cannot truly give this 5 stars. Parts deserve 5 , but there are parts that really only warrant a 2 so I have settled on four.