Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary - Madison Square Garden, New York City, 5-14-1988, Part 4: The Manhattan Transfer, Genesis, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Bee Gees, & The Rascals

Here's the fourth part of a six-hour long version of the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert. 

Atlantic Records put out a lot of records by jazz artists. But since jazz music isn't a big seller, most of those artists didn't get invited to this concert. Two who did, Herbie Mann and Bobby Short, got cut out of the TV broadcast versions, so I don't have their performances. That just leaves the Manhattan Transfer to represent jazz, since they had some hits and wider commercial success in the 1970s and 80s.

Genesis is a band was only intermittently together in the 1980s. Phil Collins split his time between being in Genesis and having a hugely popular solo career. Mike Rutherford also carved out a successful solo career as the leader of Mike + the Mechanics. Genesis had last put out an album in 1986, "Invisible Touch," then toured to support it into 1987. However, this was the only concert they reunited for in 1988. Their twenty-minute long set was essentially one gigantic medley, although I've broken it into four tracks so I could get all the song names in.

As I mentioned previously, Crosby Stills and Nash sang the song "Southern Cross" to start this concert, but I don't have that recording. Then they returned for their own twenty-minute-long set. Most bootlegs of this concert have "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" earlier in the show, because the song order was scrambled up a bit on some TV broadcasts. But you can tell they did it here with the songs "Wooden Ships" and "Teach Your Children" because actor Michael Douglas referred to all three songs when he introduced them.

The Bee Gees played a relatively short set. In addition to "Lonely Days" and "Jive Talkin'" presented here, they also performed "To Love Somebody." However, I couldn't find a recording on that one. I found mention of it being posted on YouTube and then taken down, so it must be out there. If anyone has it, please let me know. Personally, I think the Bee Gees deserved another song or two, since they've one of the best selling acts of all time, but probably in the late 1980s they were still suffering from the backlash of their disco era overexposure.

The final musical act in this part is the Rascals. They broke up in 1972. This concert was their first reunion since then, going back to the original line-up that ended in 1970. After this concert, they would go on a short tour for a few months. After that, there were further one-off reunions in 1997 and 2010, and another tour in 2012 and 2013.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

069 talk (Manhattan Transfer)
070 Mack the Knife (Manhattan Transfer)
071 Birdland (Manhattan Transfer)
072 Turn It On Again - Land of Confusion - Misunderstanding (Genesis)
073 Throwing It All Away (Genesis)
074 That's All - Tonight Tonight Tonight - Invisible Touch - Turn It On Again [Reprise] (Genesis)
075 You Can't Hurry Love - Shortcut to Somewhere - All I Need Is a Miracle (Genesis)
076 talk (Michael Douglas)
077 Wooden Ships (Crosby Stills & Nash)
078 talk (Crosby Stills & Nash)
079 Our House (Crosby Stills & Nash)
080 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
081 talk (Bee Gees)
082 Lonely Days (Bee Gees)
083 Jive Talkin' (Bee Gees)
084 talk (Dan Aykroyd & Bill Murray)
085 Good Lovin' (Rascals)
086 Groovin' (Rascals)
087 People Got to Be Free (Rascals)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/t2DmMTS8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3pBToJ89aaas4tj/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Mike Rutherford on guitar and Phil Collins singing.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 5: Phil Collins & Genesis

The fifth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was both Phil Collins and Genesis. Phil Collins did the first half as a solo artist and then the second half as part of Genesis.

By 1990, Phil Collins was massively popular. His album "...But Seriously," released late in 1989, was the best selling album in Britain in 1990, staying Number One in the charts for a stunning 15 weeks. It hit the top of the charts in the U.S. and most elsewhere too. Yet at the same time, he was continuing to be very successful as part of Genesis. At the time of this concert, their last album was "Invisible Touch," released in 1986 and another massive seller. The next Genesis album would come out in 1991. In between tours to support those albums, Genesis did almost no live performances. But they made an exception for their festival, since it was such a high profile gig.

By this point in the festival, it seems the wind died down. I don't remember any rustling noises in this set.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk by Rob Lowe (Phil Collins)
02 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
03 Colours - Drum Duet (Phil Collins)
04 talk (Phil Collins)
05 Another Day in Paradise (Phil Collins)
06 Sussudio (Phil Collins)
07 Mama (Genesis)
08 That's All (Genesis)
09 Throwing It All Away (Genesis)
10 talk (Genesis)
11 Turn It On Again - Somebody to Love - [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - Twist and Shout (Genesis)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There - Lovin' Feelin' - Pinball Wizard - Midnight Hour - Turn It On Again [Reprise] (Genesis) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XAEy2mka

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OnuN85P8jJcMiRb/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Genesis (including Peter Gabriel): Six of the Best Reunion, National Bowl, Milton Keynes, Britain, 10-2-1982

Peter Gabriel was the lead singer for the British band Genesis from their start in 1967 until 1975, when he left for a very successful solo career. The band's drummer, Phil Collins, took over as lead singer and the popularity of Genesis soared as they switched from a prog rock style to pop rock. After Gabriel left, he only united with his old Genesis bandmates for a single concert in 1982 - this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't professionally recorded or filmed, so all we're left of it is audience bootleg recordings. I've taken the best such recording and significantly improved the sound quality, using the advances in audio technology that have become available in recent years. So even if you have this already, you need to hear this version.

Before I discuss the sonic improvements, I want to explain how this singular concert happened. After Gabriel left Genesis, he remained on good terms with his former bandmates. For instance, Collins played drums on several songs on Gabriel's 1980 solo album. Collins was even Gabriel's best man in his wedding in 2000. Earlier in 1982, Gabriel had arranged a concert called WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance), which included performers from dozens of countries (in addition to headliners like Gabriel). It was one of the first efforts to popularize world music in Britain. Unfortunately, the concert was in a difficult to reach location and there was a train worker strike, plus probably many people weren't ready for world music yet. As a result, Gabriel faced huge debts from that one concert. Worse, he owed money to some nasty people who began giving him death threats.

Being a big rock star, he could have raised the money eventually, but he needed it urgently. So he called up his old Genesis bandmates with the idea to have a one-off Genesis reunion to pay off those debts. The concert happened as expected (right at the end of a Genesis tour), and he was able to pay the debts. Since then, he's stuck with the WOMAD idea, and it's gone on to have many concerts over the years promoting world music, until the present day. So the story has a happy ending. But although the musicians involved in this concert claim to have enjoyed it, there has never been another reunion concert or tour since. All the original members of Genesis have occasionally gotten together for interviews and/or photo ops, but that's it. That's probably a reflection of how complicated the music from early Genesis is. It's not like being able to jam to a simple Chuck Berry song. To do the prog rock songs right, one needs a lot of group practice. But at least there was this one reunion.

The band was billed as "Six of the Best" instead of "Genesis." The six mentioned in the name were: Peter Gabriel (lead vocals), Phil Collins (drums), Tony Banks (keyboards), Mike Rutherford (guitars), Daryl Stuermer (guitars), and Chester Thompson (drums). The last two weren't official members of Genesis, but they regularly joined the band for concert tours. Additionally, Steve Hackett was a guitarist for Genesis from 1971 to 1977. He was touring in South America at the time, and only arrived back in Britain the day before the concert. Because he missed most of the rehearsals, he only joined the band for the encores ("I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" and "The Knife").

The concert went fairly well, despite the fact that it was held outdoors and it rained heavily for over 24 hours straight, leaving the audience totally wet and muddy. Gabriel started the show by rising from a coffin carried to the stage by four pallbearers, a stunt which was a surprise to even the other musicians on stage. The concert happened to take place on Rutherford's birthday, so the crowd sang 'Happy Birthday' to him during the show. 

All the songs were from the years Gabriel sang the lead vocals with Genesis, with two exceptions: "Solsbury Hill" was a 1977 solo hit for Gabriel (and the lyrics actually deal with his feelings about leaving Genesis!) and "Turn It On Again" was a 1980 hit for Genesis without Gabriel. That was the only song in the concert with lead vocals only by Collins. Gabriel attempted to play bongos on "Turn It On Again," but he was foiled by the surprisingly tricky and changing time signatures, and basically gave up before the song ended. 

Now, let me discuss the audit edits I made to this concert. As I mentioned above, the best available recording is an audience bootleg - someone in the audience with a tape recorder. But these can vary drastically in sound quality depending on various factors, such as their position relative to the stage and the quality of the tape recorder. I wouldn't have attempted to improve this except for the fact that I thought the audience boot was an unusually good one. 

The main problem, in my opinion, was that there was the sound of audience cheering during the songs as well as at the ends. No doubt, because of the unique nature of this Genesis reunion, the crowd was especially loud and excited. Luckily, there's a fix for that sort of thing these days. I used the MVSEP audio editing program to split the songs into crowd noise and all other sounds. Then I cut out all the crowd noise I didn't want, while keeping the applause at the ends of songs as well as other times when it felt appropriate. I also kept the crowd noise during the banter between songs, but lowered it a lot so the talking could be better heard.

After I did that, I edited all the songs again. This time, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to isolate the vocals from the instruments. Then I generally boosted the vocals on all the songs, as well as the banter, relative to the instruments. I also listened along, and carefully removed most unwanted vocals, such as fans shouting "WOOHOO!" in the middle of songs.

These edits took a lot of time and effort, but I think they made a big impact. I would argue that this recording now could easily be mistaken for a soundboard bootleg instead. Of course, it could still be even better in a perfect world, but I've heard plenty of soundboards that sound worse than this one does now. So if you've been avoiding this concert due to sound quality issues, I suggest you give it a listen.

Some die-hard fans made an entire booklet to go along with this concert that looks professionally done. So I've included that in the download files. It contains interesting quotes from all the band members about the concert. Furthermore, in case I missed mentioning key details, check out this Wikipedia page just about this one concert:

Six of the Best - Wikipedia

This fan page also has lots of good info about the concert:

Six Of The Best - Genesis (genesis-band.com)

Here are a couple of good quotes about the concert from that link:

Mike Rutherford: "I regret it now, but I was keen not to record the show. I thought it would be a bit rough and ready and that it was better to be there and in the moment."

Gabriel: "I was frustrated because it was very sloppy. I was certainly not sharp enough. You can memorize stuff and work on your own until you're blue in the face, but actually you need to be sitting in with the band and doing some warm-up gigs. So it was frustrating, and yet it felt a warm occasion, there was a nice feeling up on stage. A lot of fans seemed to enjoy it, even though it was very loose."

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 talk by Jonathan King (Genesis)
02 Back in N.Y.C. (Genesis)
03 Dancing with the Moonlit Knight [Part 1] (Genesis)
04 The Carpet Crawlers (Genesis)
05 talk (Genesis)
06 Firth of Fifth (Genesis)
07 talk (Genesis)
08 The Musical Box (Genesis)
09 talk (Genesis)
10 Solsbury Hill (Genesis)
11 talk (Genesis)
12 Turn It On Again (Genesis)
13 talk (Genesis)
14 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Genesis)
15 Fly on a Windshield (Genesis)
16 Broadway Melody of 1974 (Genesis)
17 In the Cage (Genesis)
18 talk (Genesis)
19 Supper's Ready (Genesis)
20 I Know What I Like [In Your Wardrobe] (Genesis)
21 talk (Genesis)
22 The Knife (Genesis)
23 talk (Genesis)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gcNUP

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TroG7D5n

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/O3yZouNIT0MXv90/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert, during the final encore. From left to right: Mike Rutherford, Daryl Stuermer, Chester Thompson, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, and Peter Gabriel. Tony Banks can't be seen, but I believe that's his red jacket showing one arm between Hackett and Gabriel. Also, Hacket's face was mostly hidden in this photo, so I used another photo from the same sequence and pasted in his head just enough to make it visible behind Collins' shoulder. The "Six of the Best" text at the top is from promotional material for the concert.

Peter Gabriel - Rarities, Volume 1: Free at Last - Studio Recordings, 1974-1977 (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

Here's another Mike Solof guest post. I really like Peter Gabriel's solo career music (most of it, anyway), but Mike takes that fandom to a different level. So I'm leaving the curation of that career for this blog to him. This is just the first album in what promises to be a long series, which is why the title includes the part "Rarities, Volume 1." To be honest, he'd post a lot more of Gabriel's rare music than I would, but I figure more options are always better than fewer.

As usual, Mike has created a PDF file that's included in the zip file with his own comments. Please read that. I'll just say a few additional things here.

One, Peter Gabriel has a history of being a musical perfectionist who is very selective over what he's allowed on his albums. As a result, there's a surprising amount of unreleased material. For instance, the vast majority of this album is made of originals that never made it to any of his albums, and still aren't released as bons tracks or the like. One might even imagine this to be his true first solo album, since there's another material for it.

Two, there are two songs where there have been some musical edits. I want to explain those, since Mike doesn't mention them in the notes. A few weeks ago as I write this, PJ at his blog "Albums I Wish Existed" asked me to use the Spleeter music editing program to remove some weird clapping noises on the song "You Get What You Want." So I did. That was such a good idea that I've used that same edit here too. The other edit is something new. When listening to this, I noticed the lead vocals for the song "Get the Gun (Down the Dolce Vita)" were buried down in the mix. So I used Spleeter again to bring those vocals more to the fore.

However, in case you're someone who doesn't like those edits, the unedited versions for both songs are included as bonus tracks. The edits (or lack thereof) are the only differences with those versions.

This album is 50 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks. And if you like this, there's a lot more where it came from. Mike has already sent me six more volumes that I hope to post relatively soon. And that's for just a fraction of Peter Gabriel's solo career!

01 You Never Know (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)
02 Firebirds (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)
03 You Get What You Want [Edit] (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)
04 Howling at the Moon (Peter Gabriel)
05 Excuse Me (Peter Gabriel)
06 Funny Man (Peter Gabriel)
07 No More Mickey (Peter Gabriel)
08 Get the Guns [Down the Dolce Vida] [Edit] (Peter Gabriel)
09 Here Comes the Flood (Peter Gabriel)
10 God Knows (Peter Gabriel)
11 Strawberry Fields Forever (Peter Gabriel)
12 Slowburn [Extended Version] (Peter Gabriel)
13 Jetzt Kommt Die Flut [German Version of Here Comes the Flood] (Peter Gabriel)

Get the Guns [Down the Dolce Vida] (Peter Gabriel)
You Get What You Want (Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins & Anthony Phillips)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292299/PeterGab_1974-1977_RaritiesVolum1FreeatLstStdioRcordings__1974-1977_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I asked Mike to pick a photo, and this is the one he chose. I don't know the details, but I'd guess it's from around 1977, when the punk look was all the rage.

Genesis - An Acoustic Evening with Genesis (1999-2007) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

If you've been regularly following this blog, you may recall that a couple of months ago, I posted a "dream concert" of sorts by the Monkees. That was put together by a musical friend named Mike. It turns out Mike Solof has a lot more music that he'd like to post here. His musical taste is similar to mine, but he likes some musical artists I'm not that keen on. So, at least for now, he's going to focus on those. Basically, the plan is that he'll send me an album, I'll make some tweaks to it, or maybe not, but in the end the idea and most of the effort putting the album together belongs to Mike. From now on, I'll indicate which albums are Mike's efforts by putting his name in the title.

In terms of explaining things, Mike prefers to make a PDF file where he can write at greater length sometimes, and also include pictures. There's such a PDF included with this zip file. But I'll make some basic comments to give you a rough idea of what this is about.

Genesis is known as a progressive rock band, and definitely aren't known to play acoustically. But Mike has found some acoustic versions of some songs, enough to make an hour-long album. All the versions here were recorded from 1999 to 2007. But in terms of the original material, this runs the range from the early 1970s when Peter Gabriel was the lead singer to the 1990s with Phil Collins in command and the band had gone in a much poppier direction. Most of the songs are sung by Collins, but there's about 20 minutes near the end in which Gabriel's early 1970s vocals were overdubbed onto new recorded solo piano versions of Genesis songs.

Mike has this thing where he likes to present his albums as a single mp3 file, to create a continuous flow of music without any gaps. I prefer having each song as a separate track, which helps having the mp3 tag info for each of the songs. Since file size isn't much of an issue on the Internet, we're having it both ways. I'm presenting two zip files. The names should make clear which is which. Both contain Mike's PDF file. 

As for any more comments about this album, please check out Mike's PDF file. And thanks to Mike for wanting to share his music via my blog this way. Hopefully he'll be able to fill in some gaps with some popular music that I'm not that keen on. It seems he especially has a lot of progressive music that I don't (with Genesis here being a good example).

01 I Can’t Dance (Genesis)
02 Invisible Touch (Genesis)
03 Follow You, Follow Me (Genesis)
04 Afterglow (Genesis)
05 Horizons (Genesis)
06 Please Don’t Ask (Genesis)
07 Turn It On Again (Genesis)
08 Ripples (Genesis)
09 Can-Utility and the Coastliners (Yngve Guddal & Roger T. Matte with Peter Gabriel)
10 The Fountains of Salmacis (Yngve Guddal & Roger T. Matte with Peter Gabriel)
11 The Battle of Epping Forest (Yngve Guddal & Roger T. Matte with Peter Gabriel)
12 Blood on the Rooftops (Yngve Guddal & Roger T. Matte with Phil Collins)
13 Mad Man Moon (Yngve Guddal & Roger T. Matte with Phil Collins)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118273/Gensis_1999-2007_AnAcoustcEveningwithGen_atse.zip.html

Mike didn't present me with cover art for this album, so I made one. I don't know where the cover art photo comes from. I found it in Mike's PDF file. Maybe he can explain. But it looks like the Phil Collins-led version of Genesis performing acoustically in the time period of this album.