ARCHIVE 1967-1975

Boxsets and archive recordings are mostly really crappy outtakes, live jams or other strange rarities, but it´s not the case with Archive - Volume 1: 1967-1975. This is absolutely a worthy purchase and an essential one to fans of Peter Gabriel era Genesis. It is pretty expensive of course, but you get 4 CDs worth of songs.

The first two CDs are The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway performed in it´s entirety. It is a very good perfomance of the album and the production on this show is awsome.

The third CD is the most exciting one as it has some songs on it that hasn´t been on any other Genesis live CD before. Dancing With the Moonlit Knight succeeded by Firth of Fifth are good examples of excellent songs played live. The most interesting is Suppers Ready though, with Peter Gabriel singing as oppossed to the version on Seconds Out were Phil is singing. Needless to say which version is the best. These songs have excellent sound quality. I Know what I like is a nice live song and a good addition to this CD, but for the life of me I can´t imagine why they would put More Fool Me on this else perfect CD. What a horrible song and it doesn´t get better just because it´s played live. Stagnation is played live at a BBC session, and is in a differnt version from what you hear on Trespass. It´s not neccesearly a bad thing though. One of the real winners here are Twilight Alehouse though. This is really a beautiful Genesis song with one of Peter Gabriel´s best vocal perfomances. It sounds like it could have been on Nyrsery Cryme or Foxtrot. It´s from a single released in 1973. What a winner. Happy the Man is from another single and it was released in 1972. A pretty weak song in my ears. Rather commercial in the bad way. Not very exciting. The last song on CD3 is Watcher of the Skies in a cut single version. This is really a bad idea. Don´t waste your time on that one.

CD4 is from the "From Genesis to Revelation" period of the band. And it is not as bad as some of the previous reviews have stated, but then again I kind of liked "From Genesis to Revelation". Here the songs are in other versions. Some not quite finished and some more raw than the original. Actually I like these versions much better than the ones on "From Genesis to Revelation". There is even an early version of Dusk here.

While not for the new fan of Genesis Peter Gabriel period, it certainly is for the incarnated one. I find it very essential, and it is only because of the flaws on CD3 and the good but not essential nature of the songs on CD4 that this is not a masterpiece. 4 stars will do.