Hi,

(Long ... and only if you like theater and film, plz!)

Of all these, the one that can make the stage best, would be "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", because in many ways it ALREADY is a written stage show.

The hard part is "translating" all the material into stage action, so it can be done and not just "imagine" things like most rock bands like to do to you! You're supposed to .... and so on. In theater and film, this does not translate at all! You can not see into the character's mind.

There is a way to get around this and I would love to direct this. Precedent - ETC La Mamma.

About 35 or 40 years ago, I don't remember when, the ETC La Mamma group travelled across the country with a production of "Carmilla" (the vampire story!). The stage was simplicity itself! One incredibly large sofa for 4 or 5 in dark red velvet nothing else! So during the production various things take place ... so they are in a carriage and the horses are running, and the sofa becomes a carriage and the actors are bouncing all over the place and such. Later it becomes a bed. Later it becomes a living room, you get the idea. Now here comes the kicker. The "sets" were all done with FILM and you saw that right over/above/inside the couch/sofa. The back of the sofa was huge and had this opening, and when the carriage was running, you only saw what you would normally see through the window ... trees running by and such.  So when the carriage was moving fast, the actors on the "inside" the carriage for the duration of that piece would be moving around like nuts.

This would help create some sets for "The Lamb's" story (as an example) and this would allow more than one person to do the vocals (if needed depending on the point of view and concept ... you don't need PG all alone!) ... and also add some to others that could be a part of the "story" to help clear it up a bit more, and smooth out the transitions. This part might be the one that some folks would probably criticize the most as it "might" interfere with the story as you are familiar with it in the album! But it smoothes things out on the stage.

The music needs to be live on the stage like any orchestra work with a staging like ballet, opera and so forth.

Using "film" would help this, and it could be done on 3 or 4 sides/parts of the stage to help with the design of the production.

Question is ... would you go see it? The price for one of these, would likely be over $150/$200 dollars a ticket, because of the film, the sets and the band! That is the price, nowadays, for the Met, for example.

In the end, it is all about how well we grow into the classical areas. If many of these musicians become the conductors and the musical directors in many of these, you will see some of these things. If not ... it's over, and Dean's comment that it is all "pop music" is a very strong comment and then some. It would also mean that the audience that would normally want to see this, just like "The Wall" that I bought a ticket for my friend as his Christmas present, because all he knew was Rush, Styx and Dream Theater, and he had no idea whatsoever, what a "show" meant!

None of the "great" pieces, that I can remember have been made into a proper stage show, that would take it away from the rock audience some. And I think that a lot of this is about the audience itself. I might fall here in the area that Dean likes to criticize me for, but in this case, I don't think that "rock" and "pop" audiences, are ready for a full fledged show and story that would make something special for all of us! My only contention is, that if what I say is not true, it would have happened, but the few tries that have been done, for the most part have been so trashed and ignored, that many artists/musicians and everyone else ends up frustrated and burned out. I still see that interview with Melody Maker on the middle pages when PG left Genesis as a really sad interview. He never really said it, but you knew that people didn't get it with "Lamb" and the band was not exactly supporting his point of view and work. And that hurts when you live for your "art" and "creativity" ... it's like your child is deformed and gotta dispatch it to the end of the world and never see him/her again!

Not one of us, anywhere, lives for that!

I would love to have a chance to direct "The Lamb". But it would make "The Wall" look like a cheap redo, and crap, because none of the moments in it would ever get wasted or be hidden.

Next, I wanna do "Passion Play" but without Ian Anderson, because he would interfere too much! Same thing. Band, stage, actors, film. AND a ballerina! Because I would create it all from beginning to the end with her! I might even use the swan ballet on that! How perfect!

Hi,

Stack!!!! I done it!!!!

For weeks I have been thinking how to stage TFTO, and I finally got it!

It was actually very easy, and there is something that I need to have you watch from the tube or the like. Peter Brook's Mahabharatta. Watch about an hour or so.

So here we go, and I will describe it as detailed as I have "seen" it in my head. I wonder if Jon would appreciate this, but I don't think he is the "artsy" type, like I am,  to go with something like this at all, but I did "see it". FINALLY

Sets would have the use of the "monolithic" style of walls and the like, so that the "people" are smaller next to it. The words would still be sung, some of them "chorus" style (Greek Theater), and some even "spoken". The band still plays the music like the orchestra would normally, so it would be a live performance, not memorex!

The lights would be styled after the old sets from the Beyruth Opera house, with those humongous monolithic walls, and the shaft of light that came down in front of it, to light a small portion of the stage. The color in these is VERY IMPORTANT as we can work the color "design" for each section of the piece.

Because the words are "spiritual", most of the movements and directions are of the same ritualistic form and design, and the musical passages with no lyrics serve as the helpers to change sets and sections of the stage.  This could/should also be accompanied by film as a sort of guided meditation, or passage into another level/world.

I was also wondering about costumes!

With these sets that you can "see" from a quarter of a mile, the easier robes and such would go better with the design, but are not necessarily as important as something else!

The sets, and the IDEALISM of the words, is to be shown on the monolithic walls in FILM. Some of these could be as easy as symbolic visions of this or that, or as an example, during one passage a slow film of a low flying something around Stonehenge, and the like. I would want to get more "international" with these images, because I would not want to suggest that only one culture can have the spirit of the Gods, which to me is what the whole thing is about!

THIS will NOT, likely be appreciated by rock music fans and the like, because screaming "rock'n'roll" is likely going to get you thrown out of the theater! Go get stoned somewhere else!!! But I would likely only put this together in the bigger/better concert halls (not rock dives!) that also do classical music for the stuffed set, because seeing something like this would blow away the local symphony to smithereens!

I would invite Dean, Snow Dog, and ALL the PA Admins to the opening night! They would all get the prime seats as would a few other folks that deserve to see this like no one ever has! In some ways, this is more like the "dream" that Jon would have imagined that helped create the piece of music, than anything else. And my own imagination, of course!

Altairius wrote: ... Anyway, that first big melody in 'Revealing Science' is good but Neal and Roine have both written infinitely better music than the drivel on TFTO. ...

Weird to hear you say that today, when the guitar was not exactly the explored instrument that it is 40 years later, or today! How easily we forget "time" and its effects on an instrument or in music.

No one sits here, or elsewhere, and talks about all the drivel in Tchaikovsky, or Mozart (and he does have a lot of it, too!), or any other serious musician, but we are all such incredible experts that we can call that "drivel".

Nothing out there, in music, and expression, INCLUDING your opinion, is DRIVEL, because if it was it would be ignored, and it wasn't!

I would rather you be honest and say you like one melody, but not the other! It would be much more respectful to an artist, something that EVEN YOU would like to have if it were your own piece of music!