My first Genesis concert - Dortmund 10.2.98
After waiting for 5 and a half year my dream came finally true:
seeing
Genesis live!
It was a great show and although I am a devout worshipper of Phil
Collins I never missed him during the show. Of course I thought about
how Ray might sound on this song and how he would handle that song
but
during the concert his voice sounded execellent on all songs.(Even the
dirty laughter on MAMA he managed quite good combining it with an good
use of his tongue :-) Maybe it would have been nice to see a second
drummer during the instrumental sections but Nir is a superb drummer and
he really makes much noise with his double bass drums. :-) (During his
drum solo on TDL you could really feel the beat with your stomach *BUMM
BA DA BUMM BUMM* - simply GREAT GREAT GREAT!).
We arrived early at 17:00 and in a mad dash for the stage I managed to
get a place in row 2-3 between Ray and Tony. (YEAH!).
There I met Susanne (Hi Susanne! :-) and also I couldn't get through to
him I spotted Volker with his Paperlate cap in the back.
We were standing in the middle of a "hardcore Genesis fan block" and we
were clapping and singing and cheering for the whole concert. When
Ray
started to sing the first song everybody was singing with him and he
seemed to be very happy about this and wasn't nervous at all. He has a
great powerful voice and is a good showman. He is the right man for
dramatic songs. With him Genesis can play and tour for many years!
We
hardcore fans figured out a plan before the concert how we could get
Tony to smile or at least react to the crowd in some way. The plan
of
throwing women's underwear on his keyboard was rejected and so it
finally was just the usual yelling *TOOONY TOOONY TOOONY* and I can say
we had quite some success. Numerous times during the concert Tony
was
smiling or grinning and especially when Ray told some naughty jokes
about Tony and his wife in bed (You know, everything that goes up must
come down. And in Tony's age it comes down faster!- supported by the
first fast rising giant lamp post behind Tony which shrinked to normal
size shortly afterwards. :-)
The light show was great, but a few more vari-lites would have been
nice. Maybe it looked even better from the back of the hall.
And the jumbotrons were there. 3 giant jumbotrons which were
definetely
*NOT* moving looked quite good when they were used. What I don't
understand is why they left about 1-2 meters between the jumbotrons.
For
this reason all the pictures were torn apart and didn't look as good as
they could have.
During the first encore TIAA the crowd was in such a good mood that
it
decided to do the Phil -Diiaaeyyy without Ray even singing it and Ray
was quite amused because he was searching the right time to start the
first verse. :-)
During ICD Ray went into the crowd and picked a nice girl to dance with
him on stage. Well, she really took advantage of this situation and
decided that this song was the right one for a slow romantic dance. So
she embraced Ray and grabbed his bottom firmly! :-) WHOAA! The crowd
liked it a lot and screamed and yelled and whistled.
Well, after the show Nir threw his drumsticks in the crowd. One landed
only a few meters next to me and some guys were nearly fighting over it
and a security guard had to seperate them.( If only it had flown in
my
direction, I would have jumped directly to the ceiling in order to get
it ;-).
Meanwhile the tour book is on sale and it is quite nice. Tony's
scariest
moment on stage was according to the book that famous night at the
Drury
Lane Theatre in London 1972 when he forgot the FOF Intro and stood up
and screamed "OH F**K". The problem was that his father was in the
audience that night and Tony had to explain to him later that this
incident was not a bow. :-)
BTW, Genesis continues its tradition of hiding some errors in their
booklets and tour books! ;-) (Nitpicking time: Tony's favourite song
from the new album is "There must be some way"!)
All in all it was great, marvellous, superb show. IMHO it must have been
the best show of the tour to date because there was not the famous
"spark leaping over" - the audience was practically ON FIRE and that for
the whole concert! What do the other paperlaters who attended earlier
shows think about this gig? Was it really this good or am I just
too
enthusiastic about my first Genesis concert?
Florian Balken