LIVE - THE WAY WE WALK VOLUME ONE - THE SHORTS

A precious pair of postscripts to a brilliant career or two final tugs on the udder before putting the cash cow out to pasture? It's hard to know what to make of "The Way We Walk", in part because it divides GENESIS' final "We Can't Dance" tour into two separate parts: the "shorts" and the "longs." Historically, it's in line with the band's earlier live releases, the double-album "Seconds Out" and the live/studio hybrid "Three Sides Live", both of which featured Daryl Steurmer on guitar and Chester Thompson on drums. The decision to not only re-enlist the services of Daryl and Chester but to credit them as members on the album artwork is a classy gesture and one likely to placate longtime fans.

However, there's no getting around the fact that "Volume One: The Shorts" is designed for latter-day GENESIS fans. The set list digs back as far as their eponymous 1983 album only once, for the moody "Mama." Otherwise, this performance is comprised of material from "Invisible Touch" and "We Can't Dance", two well-crafted albums with plenty of hits, but not the sort of music that prog fans were itching to hear live. The band does a fine job of rendering the studio versions live, aided by the fact that the original sounds were only a pre-programmed button away from resurrection. Phil's voice is right on target, but his audience interaction is a little wooden here, from the awkward opening of "Jesus He Knows Me" to a really, really, really annoying call-and-response segment during "Throwing It All Away".

Highlights to my mind include "Mama" (of course), "I Can't Dance" and "No Son of Mine". Because these live versions are remarkably faithful to the originals, "The Way We Walk Vol. One" does function as a sort of greatest hits collection, assuming you pulled those hits from their last two albums. Ultimately, a nice walk down short-term memory lane, but not a necessary trip.