It's been a semi-productive day having been to the gym already for a good sweat on the ergometer, a decent session with the heavy iron, and then some quick drills in the pool afterwards. Now, I've had my Bodner's sandwich and my fill of the all the protester madness at the border on the news so I'm going to switch off temporarily for a quick 'snoozaroonie' on the couch, along with this new Three Sides Live album by Genesis.
I found this double Live album at the Bridgeburg Bookstore & Games shop in Fort Erie this past Thursday. I was lured in with a cool looking book on the Blues in the front window, and later emerged with this album to boot. It's a pretty cool shop if you find the possibility of being buried alive in the aisle under a mountain of books, magazines and other assorted ephemera thrilling.
(I do.)
Anyway, I haven't been dying to acquire this particular album - the bands third live release - as, well, it's not my preferred era of Genesis, but I do admit to really loving the +8 minute live take here on the the track Ababcab so, yeah ... why not?
After all, I should have nice things too!
This is actually Genesis' second double live LP set in less than four years and was originally a kind of a hybrid work, and has appeared in several different editions. There was confusion from the start because, despite its title, Three Sides Live in its British version, as Charisma GE 2002, had four concert sides. The U.S. version, which determined the title, was made up of ten live cuts recorded on-stage in Germany in 1981, with Daryl Stuermer and Chester Thompson in the group's lineup, doing the leaner, more pop-oriented repertory that constituted the group's sound by the early '80s, off of the albums Abacab and Duke.
The resulting album offered lean, crisp, and generally bracing accounts of the group's then-current sound -- a mix of pop/rock highlighted by some prodigious musicianship -- and a four-minute glimpse of its progressive rock past in the guise of the In the Cage Medley, containing Cinema Show from Selling England by the Pound.
Remember when I mentioned most of the songs included here weren't among my favourites? Well, in this live recording, these songs are completely transformed. The band plays with all the energy they lacked on the studio recordings, Abacab roaring into it's completion (which was faded out on the album version!), delivering master double-guitar work as well as keyboard play and drumming. Suddenly the keabord parts of Dodo swings like nothing else. Me And Sarah Jane suddenly grooves along with reggae feel and a charm and at the same time loneliness the album version was completely devoid of.
Similarly, Behind The Lines is delivered with an energy that leaves you quite breathless once it fades into Duchess, which is delivered with an intensity that is impressive.
In other words, this is some primo napping shit that I unfortunately had put off far too long in acquiring so, yeah ... happy impulse purchase!
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