THREE SIDES LIVE

A lot of people divide Genesis up into two periods, the Gabriel era and the Collins era. And many fans are divided over which version was better. Personally, I prefer the Gabriel era, but the Collins era was really good for awhile there. In fact the albums with Steve Hackett were just as good as the ones that came before in my opinion.

What you have here is a collection of live recordings from the Collins era, spanning from 1976-1982. And they are very good selections. The first CD focuses more on "the hits" so to speak, but it's a good selection of their more progressive and energetic rock songs. Dodo-Lurker, Me and Sara Jane, and Duchess are great songs.

CD two begins with one of the biggest hits in North America at least, Misunderstanding, which doesn't work as well live as the other tracks, but it quickly kicks into a high gear with an awesome rendition of In the Cage from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The end of the song morphs into a lightning fast version of The Cinema Show instrumental section with snippets of The Colony of Slippermen and Riding The Scree sprinkled in for good measure. The song eventually becomes Afterglow, a great song that works well after long instrumental passages.

You know you have the remastered version if the next track is One For the Vine, an incredible prog mini-epic off of their Wind and Wuthering album, but the real highlight is Fountain of Salmacis, another Gabriel era song from Nursery Cryme. This was an unexpected surprise, and they do a great job with it, although I wish they included a version with Steve Hackett playing guitar, as I think he handles this song better than Stuermer. Hackett is present, however, on the next track, it., also from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which merges into an awesome instrumental excerpt of Watcher of the Skies from Foxtrot.

What I like about this album is mainly the energy of these performances. While I didn't like a lot of the poppier more electronic they were writing at the time, they still could put on a killer show at the time, as is evidenced by this live album. In many ways I like it more than it's predecessor, Seconds Out, which could have been a better album if it wasn't for the first CD, which I felt had a weak song selection and ordering.

Incidently, the other version of this album, pre-remaster, has Five studio tracks instead of One For the Vine, Fountain of Salmacis and it. / Watcher of the Skies. On the record, these songs took up the entire fourth side, hence the title "Three Sides Live". I prefer this remastered version because I feel those live tracks omitted were the highlight of the album, and the studio tracks are more in the vein of 80's pop rather than prog. Still, if you want those tracks, I believe they are available on the Archive 2 box set in addition to the original pressing of this CD.