Rewiring Genesis · A Tribute to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway            9/10

By Eduard Antoniu

The Calling All Stations era of Genesis could have lasted longer. Some performers on that album/tour have fond memories of it. Among them, Spock’s Beard’s drummer and frontman Nick D’Virgilio has had a special relationship with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album. He also performed a version of it with the late Kevin Gilbert in 1994. More recent is his take on the “The Colony of Slippermen”. And then he and producer Mark Hornsby knew they were going to try and take the entire album to a different level.

The Musical Box re-staged The Lamb… show. To do a tribute to the original album is an ambitious and challenging task. Performers more or less knowledgeable of the music on the original album had fun in doing this rendition. It should be an enjoyable experience for the listener as well. Compositions on the original album lend themselves to various treatments using acoustic rather than electronic instruments. There are no synthesizers on this rendition as far as Nick D’Virgilio knows; just a Theremin on “The Waiting Room”, where the “experiments with foreign sounds” were done by Jimmy Blankenship, a recording engineer and good friend of Mark Hornsby. Even the most skeptical among the fans of the original album should give this tribute a try. Getting past differences between British and American pronunciations in some of the vocals can be rewarding. After all, this is justice done to bringing The Lamb closer to where it Lies Down: on Broadway.

Maybe unintended, the end of the title track seems to get an infusion of the live version done by Genesis (in Seconds Out, The Way We Walk). The horn/string section, arranged by John Hinchey, is amazing on “In the Cage”. The treatment at the song’s end sounds almost like John …Cage/Philip Glass. “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging” would be a cappella if there were no drums. I was a bit skeptical when I first read of such a rendition but the result is stunning. The “porcupine cuddle” chorus in “Back in the N.Y.C.” is really sweet. The “off we go” bit sounds as if added to John Philip Sousa music. “Hairless Heart” is almost like Tchaikovsky ballet brought into café concert. “Counting out Time” goes Dixieland in the middle.  A string part on “Anyway” has the finesse of female vocals on a National Health or Hatfield and the North album. For a bit in “Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist”, Don Carr, on guitar, sounds like Brian May. Female vocals are used for “The Lamia”. This could have also been done for the opening lyric of “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging”. Navajo music meets church choir in “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats”, respectively Brahms string quartet in “Ravine”.

I could see this 97-minute rendition (almost equally split on two CDs) become a musical …on Broadway. So does Nick D’Virgilio. In the case of a Lamb… movie, both he and I would favor the original as soundtrack. Till then, there’s a one-off performance of most of this release at “The Basement” in Nashville, TN on Sunday, January 4^th, 2009.

Only registered users may post a comment.

There are currently no user submitted comments.