LIVE - THE WAY WE WALK VOLUME TWO - THE LONGS

There is two ways to look at this. One is to think that it is about 1980 and realize that with the Old Medley, Genesis chopped up your fav songs, with many from the Gabriel era, into tiny snippets. In doing so they removed the soul of the songs and while they were at destroying the songs of your youth, Genesis also pissed on your cornflakes while you were distracted. The other way to look at is to realize that its 1992, and 90% of the people at the shows have no idea what many of those songs are, have no desire to seat through a 5 minute keyboard solo, or listen to songs about mythical animals. I'm sure there is a significant part of the crowd who doesn't know Peter Gabriel was once their frontman and they actually once recorded a 23 minute song!

So there is a problem, which is it, a sellout or a reworking of too many songs to play at one concert. I believe it is neither and its a compromise. A well done compromise. When I first heard it in concert, i was pretty mad, So many of my alltime fav songs were chopped up and put into one 20 minute track. I heard more than one complain and say 'What the Hell was that?' It was from both the older crowd, and the newer Genesis fans. When I bought the CD, I realized what Genesis had done. They knew that the days of playing something like Supper's Ready and the like were over. The themselves wee shocked that the last time they played it, they did not get a good reception. So they took the best of the past and made the Old Medley. It sounds very good and this was the closest you are ever going to hear those longs songs again. The long time fans were given mostly what they wanted and the attention deficit fans had a constantly changing long song that had parts that they recognized.

The rest of the album is even better. All of the tracks sound better and with more muscle here than they do on their studio albums of origin. Struemer is a better guitarist than Rutherford and Thompson and Collins are stellar on drums. They even have a drum duet that ends the album. I am not a fan of most drum solos but these two always make it special.

For the crowd that wants to here the older tracks in their entirety, they can always check out the previous two live albums.

A very strong 4 rounded to a 5.