Genesis Live - Calling All Stations Tour

Calling All Stations (26/8/97-31/5/98)

As always, see anything you like, email me. All boots are listed in chronological order, and all are on Audio CD-R unless I say otherwise. All dates are written in the European style, as in day/month/year. Click on the text links below to scroll directly to the entry you're interested in.

Tour Summary and Menu

Alternate Calling All Stations, 1997 (Studio)

The Other Calling All Stations, 1997 (RTL, Cape, Studio)

After the Ordeal, 1997-1998 (RTL, Cape Canaveral, Studio)

CAS on Europe 2, 1997 (Berlin, Cape Canaveral, Denmark)

Cape Canaveral, 28/8/97 (Florida)

Calling All Radio Stations, 15/11/97 (Danish Radio, et al)

Small Talking in Paris, 13/12/97 (RTL Studios, Paris)

Bray Warm-Up '98, 23/1/98 (Bray Film Studios, Windsor)

Budapest '98 (rehearsal), 28/1/98 (Sportshalle, Budapest)

Budapest '98 (first gig), 29/1/98 (Sportshalle, Budapest)

Katowice, Poland, 31/1/98 (Spodek, Katowice)

Katowice '98, 31/1/98 (Spodek, Katowice Poland)

Dortmund '98, 10/2/98 (Westfalenhalle, Dortmund Germany)

Strictly Mechanic, 12/2/98 (Schleyerhalle, Stuttgart Germany)

Rome '98, 18/2/98 (Palasport, Rome Italy)

Paris '98, 23/2/98 (Palais Omnisports de Bercy, Paris France)

A New Beginning, 25-26/2/98 (NEC, UK)

Birmingham on Radio 2, 25-26/2/98 (NEC, UK)

Earls Court '98, 27/2/98 (Earls Court, UK)

Glasgow '98, 1/3/98 (SECC, Glasgow Scotland)

Cardiff '98 (second night), 5/3/98 (International Arena, Wales)

Manchester '98, 6/3/98 (NYNEX Arena, Manchester)

The Red Dress Returns, 8/3/98 (Point Theatre, Dublin)

Lille '98, 13/3/98 (Le Zenith, Lille France)

Munich '98, 27/3/98 (Olympiahalle, Munich Germany)

Hamburg '98, 30/3/98 (Sporthalle, Hamburg Germany)

Stockholm '98, 3/4/98 (Globe, Stockholm Sweden)

Helsinki '98, 5/4/98 (Hartwall Arena, Helsinki Finland)

Rock Am Ring, 30/5/98 (Nurburgring, Nurnberg? Germany)

Rock In Park, 31/5/98 (Frankenstadion, Nurnberg)

The Singles

Alternate Calling All Stations

1997

01 Shipwrecked (4:23)
02 Congo (5:11)
03 Alien Afternoon (7:49)
04 Not About Us (4:42)
05 Small Talk (5:16)
06 Calling All Stations (5:50)
07 If That's What You Need (5:10)
08 One Man's Fool (8:41)
09 Sign Your Life Away (5:08)
10 Run Out of Time (4:57)
B-Sides:
11 Papa He Said (4:08)
12 Banjo Man (4:25)
13 7/8 (5:23)

Type/Quality: Studio/Very Good-Excellent

Comments: This Highland release features a collection of alternate mixes and/or demos from the Calling All Stations recording sessions. The sound quality varies and can be a bit rough at times, but never below what I'd call very good. The differences between some of these songs and their final versions can sometimes be hard to spot. "Congo" is missing a keyboard passage at the end. "Small Talk" is missing some vocals at the end, as well as the talking sound effects heard on the album version. Some random guitar noise is heard at the very beginning of "If That's What You Need."

"Sign Your Life Away" is that rare thing, a demo version of a b-side. This is definitely different than the official b-side version, as it begins with the chorus. It may also be a different mix. "Run Out of Time" features a different vocal take than the final version. However, the last three tracks on the disc are just the official release b-sides. All of the b-sides from the CAS sessions are available on my After the Ordeal compilation, below.


	The Other Calling All Stations 1997

(B-sides)
01 Papa He Said (4:09)
02 Banjo Man (4:21)
03 Anything Now (6:58)
04 Sign Your Life Away (4:44)
05 Run Out of Time (6:07)
06 Phret (4:05)
07 7/8 (5:09)
(Cape Canaveral - 28/8/97)
08 No Son of Mine (3:20)
09 Lover's Leap (2:20)
10 Turn It on Again (2:32)
(Live RTL Studio, Paris - 13/12/97)
11 Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (2:05)
12 Follow You Follow Me (2:56)
13 Not About Us (3:31)
14 Mama (6:45)
15 Calling All Stations (6:55)
16 Invisible Touch (4:46)
17 Turn It on Again (4:03)

Type/Quality: CD/Very Good

Comments: This is a collection of Ray Wilson-era b-sides, for those of you who did not run out and buy all the single CDs when they were originally released. You'd think that all of these were taken off of single CDs, so there should be no problem with the audio quality, right? Well, not quite right. For some reason the copy I received had audible split second popping noises preceding each track. Also, the copy of "Papa He Said" has a glitch in the opening 10 seconds that sounds really funky. The back of the insert I was given had an incorrect track list, placing "Phret" and "7/8" earlier in the list than they actually were on the CD. The track list above is the right one. I'm almost certain that tracks 1-13 of this CD were officially released b-sides. Tracks 14-17 were probably taped from a radio broadcast (see below for more info on these).

All the tracks really do sound very good. However, I was not quite satisfied with this collection, and, having picked up a few extra Ray Wilson tracks from other sources, I put together a more extensive and higher quality collection, which is listed directly below.


	After the Ordeal 1997-1998

(B-sides)
1-01 Papa He Said (4:07)
1-02 Banjo Man (4:21)
1-03 Phret (4:02)
1-04 7/8 (5:09)
1-05 Anything Now (6:56)
1-06 Sign Your Life Away (4:40)
1-07 Run Out of Time (6:07)
1-08 Nowhere Else to Turn (4:26)
(Cape Canaveral - 28/8/97)
1-09 No Son of Mine (3:21)
1-10 Lover's Leap (2:20)
1-11 Turn It on Again (2:33)
(RTL Studio, Paris - 13/12/97)
1-12 Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (2:06)
1-13 Follow You Follow Me (2:56)
1-14 Not About Us (3:35)

(RTL Studio, Paris "Genesis Rehearsals" Promo)
2-01 Mama (7:21)
2-02 Calling All Stations (7:22)
2-03 Invisible Touch (4:55)
2-04 Turn It on Again (4:41)
(Calling All Stations tour)
2-05 Small Talk (5:33) (13/12/97)
2-06 That's All (4:53) (23/1/98)
2-07 Hold on My Heart (5:56) (29/1/98)
2-08 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:12) (12/2/98)
2-09 The Dividing Line (9:56) (25 or 26/2/98)

Type/Quality: Varies, but mostly CD quality, excellent (see below for more information)

Comments: This collection includes all the tracks from The Other CAS, plus a few others that I got from other sources. Instead of using the previous bootleg's questionable tracks, I took tracks off of the actual single CDs--half of which I already had. If I had to take a song from The Other CAS , I took it into my audio editing program (I use Adobe Premiere) and manually removed the pop from the beginning (it was actually quite easy). Track 1-08 is an unreleased b-side that I took from another collection which you can find in my Compilations/Miscellaneous section. Tracks 2-08 - 2-09 are mp3s that I converted to audio CD track files. The first features the controversial Anthony Drennan guitar solo interpretation (I think it sounds fine--they've done this song so many darn times, it must have been nice to have somebody different playing it, to breathe some new life into it), and was taken from the now-defunct Genesis web site "The Path." "The Dividing Line" is from the Birmingham radio broadcast which I have in more complete and better quality versions below. Like most live performances of this song, this one totally rocks. A great song to play for anyone who is dissing on Ray Wilson Genesis.

Tracks 2-05 - 2-07 are also taken from the compilation disc that had "Nowhere Else to Turn." "Small Talk" sounds great (it's also from the RTL studio show), but 2-06 and 2-07 are lower quality audience recordings--very muffled. However, all three of these songs were played very, very rarely on this tour ("Small Talk" and "That's All" were to my knowledge only played once), so as such they are valuable tracks to have. If you're wondering why I chose After the Ordeal as a title (especially considering it's one of Tony Banks' least favorite Genesis songs!), well: I consider the CAS tour and album a kind of ordeal for the band; they went from a 9 million-copy-seller in WCD to an album that got so little response from radio and fans in the US that the US tour was cancelled. Also a lot of angry Phil Collins/Genesis fans who will never learn to live with a new singer. CAS was the first Genesis album that didn't sell more copies than the album before it. That would be tough on any band's pride/self-respect. Yet, here we all are, after the ordeal, waiting to see what happens next.

CAS on Europe 2

26/8/97, 28/8/97, 15/11/97, 9/12/97?

26/8/97, Berlin Album Launch (broadcast: 10/9/97)
01 Radio Introduction/Interview (1:42)
02 Interview (1:24)
03 Interview (1:52)
04 Not About Us (3:10)
05 Interview (0:26)
06 Interview (1:42)
07 Lover's Leap (2:20)
08 No Son of Mine (3:07)
09 Turn It on Again (2:23)
10 Interview (1:21)
11 Interview (0:49)
12 Interview (1:02)

9/12/97?, Europe 2 Studios (broadcast: 2/2/98)
13 Station ID/Introduction (0:20)
14 Interview (1:52)
15 No Son of Mine (3:02)
16 Turn It on Again (2:10)
17 Follow You Follow Me (2:59)
18 Lover's Leap (2:04)
19 Not About Us (3:32)

15/11/97, Hotel Richmond, Copenhagen, Denmark (broadcast: 2/2/98)
20 Introduction (0:18)
21 Land of Confusion (5:02)
22 Invisible Touch (4:41)
23 Shipwrecked/Announcer conclusion (5:19)

28/8/97, Cape Canaveral, Florida (from CD single)
24 No Son of Mine (3:21)
25 Lover's Leap (2:20)
26 Turn It on Again (2:33)

Type/Quality: Radio/Excellent-Very Good

Comments: From various venues and times, this is a very high quality compilation of various radio broadcasts from very early in the CAS tour. All of the actual radio broadcasts are from the French station Europe 2, while the last three tracks are taken directly from single b-sides documenting the United States album launch performance at Cape Canaveral (specifically, these tracks all come from one of the two "Shipwrecked" single CDs). The last couple of performances here I have in more complete forms on other discs (for the Denmark show, see Calling All Radio Stations, below; and for the Cape Canaveral gig, see very next entry), but the first two, especially the second, are unique. I have the Berlin album launch gig on VCD, but tracks 1-12 of this disc represent a radio broadcast version of the songs, not the VH1 televised event on my VCD. The songs are the same, but the interview that Alan Bangs performed with the group in Berlin has been excised and in place Europe 2 interviewers have inserted their own questions, with the band's answers dubbed over in French (making them pretty useless to me, since I only speak English). These interview questions have been tracked onto a lot of different tracks, almost one question per track.

The second section of the disc, tracks 13-19, is the most interesting. This is the CAS radio broadcast that "got away," until now. A short acoustic set similar to the launch gigs, this was supposedly recorded at Europe 2 studios. It appears to have been slickly edited so that most of the songs segue into each other very smoothly; it has been suggested by knowledgeable individuals that these may not be strictly "live" tracks, as the radio station seems to claim, but were probably edited afterwards, perhaps even to the extent of the vocals having been recorded separately. The date is in question, but David Dunnington after considerable research has landed on 9 December '97 as one of the most likely dates. This recording is one of the more difficult to find radio broadcasts from this tour.

Directly after their broadcast of this material, Europe 2 re-broadcast a small portion of the first electric set of the CAS tour, played in Denmark. These are tracks 20-23 of the disc. The full show was several songs longer, but this version has the advantage of being very good quality and of having a "Land of Confusion" without the digital error of the initial broadcast (see my entry for Calling All Radio Stations). Finally, to round out the disc (as mentioned at the beginning of my comments), we have some tracks from the US album launch at Cape Canaveral.

What would be nice is if someone were to put together every CAS radio performance into one long multi-disc set, though, as this disc shows, it would be a very repetitive track list if arranged chronologically. In fact, it would be hard to choose the best sources for each broadcast. The Berlin launch alone was broadcast by several radio stations, and varies from the VH1 broadcast; and one would have to decide whether to include the interviews from Cape Canaveral, which are quite lengthy and sometimes involve conversations with members of NASA which have nothing to do with Genesis. It's kind of annoying to have this material spread over several discs like this. We'll see if anything develops...it's very nice to have the rare 9/12/97 performance, regardless, as I believe I now have all radio broadcasts from the CAS tour.

Cape Canaveral

28/8/97

1-1 Introduction (0:49)
1-2 Interview (4:32)
1-3 Calling All Stations (studio) (5:25)
1-4 Interview (3:35)
1-5 There Must Be Some Other Way (studio) (7:59)
1-6 Interview (3:18)
1-7 The Dividing Line (studio) (7:36)
1-8 Interview (2:52)
1-9 Congo (studio) (5:00)

2-01 Interview (NASA)/Introduction to Acoustic Set 1 (3:39)
2-02 No Son of Mine (live) (3:39)
2-03 Not About Us (live) (3:30)
2-04 Alien Afternoon (studio) (7:33)
2-05 Introduction to Acoustic Set 2 (0:45)
2-06 Lover's Leap (live) (2:56)
2-07 Turn It on Again (live) (2:50)
2-08 Small Talk (studio) (5:16)
2-09 Interview (NASA) (2:32)
2-10 Interview (audience) (2:00)
2-11 One Man's Fool (8:41)
2-12 Interview (audience) (2:11)
2-13 Goodbye/Credits (2:45)

Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good

Comments: This is transferred from a good tape of the album launch show done at Cape Canaveral in Florida, at the Kennedy Space Center. This was supposed to be the North American album launch, and only the precursor for a bunch of US gigs starting in November '97. The fact that the entire US leg of the CAS tour was eventually cancelled puts a sort of painfully ironic pall over this whole show. As usual, the announcer is rather irritating. The audience is ludicrously excited about everything anyone says--even the most boring NASA engineers. The people being interviewed often find it hard to get through a whole sentence before being drowned out by enthusiastic cheering. This album launch coincided with the excitement over the Mars Rover, so there are a couple of interviews with NASA guys. If I were a Genesis fan in the audience I think I would be rather pissed at the way this show was put together. First of all, you have to sit through a good 40 minutes of talking and playing of album tracks before the band even plays any live tracks--and when they finally do it's only four very short songs! Also you could be in for a major disappointment if you are fooled by Ray's introduction of "Lover's Leap" as "Supper's Ready"--I think it would have been better if he'd have specified they were only going to play the opening section...

Not that this show isn't an interesting thing to have! This is the band's only live performance in the US, and one of the very first performances of the "tour"--the very first being the European album launch of a couple days before (see previous entry). The studio songs are all the full versions from the album, though at the beginning of each you can still hear the audience from Cape Canaveral cheering, and the end is often cut off by the announcer. I've edited out all the ads here--the show was originally supposed to be two hours, but with the ads cut out it weighs in at around 90 minutes--just too long to fit on one CD. Of the actual live tracks played here, I have all but "Not About Us" on the After the Ordeal set. This show you'd want mainly for the whole experience, though, not just the live numbers. There's some interesting talk about the band's new dynamic and their relationship with Phil now that he's gone. Two female audience members (Angela and Ruth!) also get to stand up and ask the band members utterly inane questions like "Tony, which planet do you like better, the moon or Mars?" (This is on tracks 10 and 12 of the second disc.) It's fun to listen to Mike and Tony try to cope with these kinds of moments--Ray seems better at answering questions than they are. A chunk is missing from near the end of "Alien Afternoon"--this is where the tape was flipped. If you're a romantic and sentimental American (some of us are), and if you missed the CAS tour, you can listen to these CDs and fantasize about what might have been.

Calling All Radio Stations

15/11/97

1-1 No Son of Mine (6:55)
1-2 Congo (6:48)
1-3 Land of Confusion (5:20)
1-4 Calling All Stations (6:54)
1-5 Turn It on Again (4:18)
1-6 Alien Afternoon (8:29)
1-7 Invisible Touch (5:23)
1-8 Shipwrecked (5:04)

RSH Gold Awards Ceremony, 8/2/98:
2-01 Not About Us (5:09)
2-02 Land of Confusion (5:17) (13/12/97)
SWF3, 18/11/97:
2-03 Inside (1:38)
2-04 Land of Confusion (5:07) (15/11/97)
2-05 Not About Us (3:45)
RTL Studios, Paris, 13/12/97:
2-06 Mama (6:43)
2-07 Calling All Stations (6:53)
2-08 Invisible Touch (4:44)
2-09 Follow You Follow Me (2:59)
2-10 Turn It on Again (3:56)
Cape Canaveral, 28/8/97:
2-11 Introduction (1:24)
2-12 No Son of Mine (3:35)
2-13 Not About Us (3:21)
2-14 Lover's Leap (3:00)
2-15 Turn It on Again (2:58)

Type/Quality: Radio/Excellent-Very Good

Comments: The first disc comes from the Hotel Richmond in Copenhagen, Denmark, broadcast by Danish Radio Studios; the radio station's name was "Med et Z." This is the first full electric set played by Genesis for the CAS tour. Rather short, but the quality is phenomenal, and the performance is great--a bit different sounding than their later performances, as they had yet to iron everything out. There were originally a lot of interviews to go with the music, but this version (by Highland) edits them out--sometimes you get to hear the Danish announcer say a few words at the end of a song, then he fades out or is cut off. At the very end of "Land of Confusion," a few words have been slickly edited out, so that the last line of Ray's vocals runs like this: "Stand up/our lives are going to." Actually I am told by a knowledgable source that this is a digital skip (he also mentions that this version is sped up and that it was taken from a DAT recording of the broadcast).

Sometimes an audience will get into a zone where they will all clap in time with one another--usually this happens when they want the band to come back on stage for an encore. However, this Danish audience claps that way after EVERY SONG. They sound like a bunch of robots.

The second disc is a patchwork of radio broadcast material, mostly from very early in the tour. We have the whole live Cape Canaveral set, a good number from RTL Studios (taken from a promo CD of that set), and bits from two other broadcasts that I don't have anywhere else. In fact, several of the songs from these weird broadcasts are only rehashes of material I already have, but from different broadcast dates. I had trouble figuring this out, but I think the date given before each chunk of songs on 1-5 of the second disc is actually the radio broadcast date, and not necessarily the date of the performance.

For instance, the 18/11/97 tracks are from a German Radio SWF show (with German announcements) where Ray Wilson was interviewed in the studio and played a couple of live acoustic songs. Tracks 3 and 5 are the acoustic numbers that he played that day (before "Not About Us" Ray says "This is our new single," and then starts singing "Sometimes it's hard to be a woman..."). Track 3 is not Genesis, but one of Ray's first big, big hits which he had with his previous band, Stiltskin. Track 4 is a live Genesis performance from an earlier date, played in the middle of the interview to give Ray a break--and if one thinks about it logically, the only performance it could possibly have come from is the very same Danish electric set from the first disc--they had not yet played any other electric sets by 18/11/97, and this is definitely an electric version of "Land of Confusion." Also after closely comparing the version on disc one with this version, I am pretty confident that they are the same performance. The only difference is this version on the second disc does not edit the last line of lyric (the quality is not quite as good, though--for my best version of this performance of "Land of Confusion," see CAS on Europe 2, above).

Again, 8/2/98 is only a broadcast date. The original date I had for these first two tracks on disc 2, taken from Simon's site, was 13/2/98, and the only boot for the show of 13/2/98 is an audience boot from Zurich. I was forced to the conclusion that those tracks were from some other date. Tracks 1 and 2 are very fake-sounding; there's a German announcer who sounds like he's talking to a huge crowd of people, but it sounds as though the audience noise has been added in. Actually track 1 on disc two was really a mystery to me, as it seems to be a non-acoustic, live version of "Not About Us"--something that I would have said did not exist! In fact, it does not exist (one big clue: the song fades out at the end and audience noise is layered over top of it).

David Dunnington, great researcher of all Genesis radio broadcasts, delved into this problem for me and came up with the solution. This is a Genesis "performance" made on 7 February 1998, at what was called the RSH Gold Awards Ceremony. Organized by Radio Schleswig Holsten and broadcast on TV by the German station ZDF, this show had the band miming before an audience to a soundtrack of canned music. "Not About Us" is actually the album version, and the second track, "Land of Confusion," is most likely from RTL Studios. I compared my version of that song on the Small Talking in Paris boot with this one, and they seem to be the same, except that this one has lots more crowd noise in the background, and at the end Ray says "Thank you!" instead of "Merci!" This difference is easily explained by the description of the performance. Given the fact that this was originally broadcast on TV, it's entirely possible that someone taped this weird thing and it exists in boot circles--though I've never heard of its existence.

So, after a lot of work on the part of some people, I now have what I believe to be very accurate dates for all of these tracks. This is a curious collection of music and a nice addition to my list.

Small Talking in Paris

13/12/97

01 No Son of Mine (7:37)
02 Congo (6:48)
03 Land of Confusion (5:30)
04 Small Talk (5:33)
05 Mama (7:14)
06 Not About Us (3:50)
07 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro)(2:08)
08 Follow You Follow Me (2:59)
09 Lover's Leap (2:20)
10 Calling All Stations (7:06)
11 Invisible Touch (5:02)
12 Shipwrecked (5:00)
13 Alien Afternoon (9:24)
14 Turn It on Again (4:12)

Type/Quality: Radio/Excellent

Comments: At RTL Studios in Paris, bits of this show were released as b-sides for the single of "Not About Us," and quite a few tracks from it are on my own compilation set, After the Ordeal (and a few other places). This, however, is the full set played by Genesis, as broadcast on the radio. I am told by David Dunnington that post production overdubs were probably added to this before it was broadcast. It sounds very slick and the clarity is amazing. Though it is missing some of the great songs that would become regulars in the set (Domino, HBTS, the Lamb, FOF), this is a great early show. As an added attraction the set includes "Small Talk," which was never played live again.

Bray Warm-Up '98

23/1/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:34)
1-02 Land of Confusion (5:16)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:16)
1-04 Calling All Stations (7:07)
1-05 Hold on My Heart (5:49)
1-06 That's All (5:33)
1-07 There Must be Some Other Way (9:26)
1-08 Domino (12:19)
1-09 The Carpet Crawlers (5:12)
1-10 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (4:52)

2-01 Congo (6:49)
2-02 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (12:59)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (2:09)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (2:59)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:22)
2-06 Mama (6:56)
2-07 The Dividing Line (11:08)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:28)
2-09 Turn It on Again (5:53)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (5:50)
2-11 I Can't Dance (6:57)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good

Comments: Really you can say this about a lot of the gigs from the CAS tour, but this is the first "real" live performance of the tour. Before this, the band had been doing mainly radio appearances and shortened gigs before small audiences. This one was at the Bray Film Studios in Windsor, England (interestingly enough, the people recording it seem to have been Italian). They had already played a bunch of rehearsals there, but this was their first audience gig--Ray mentions this at the beginning of the show, saying how he had had the singing job for a year and a half and now they finally had an audience to play to. This is a very long set, probably the longest one they ever played on this tour, and it includes a couple of songs that they barely ever played again--namely "Hold on My Heart" and "That's All." "Hold on My Heart" was played a few more times, but "That's All" was never played again--Ray just doesn't seem to have the right voice for it. There is a possible cut near the end of "Congo"--either that or Ray missed his cue and comes in after he should have. This is clearly an early gig, as a lot of the stuff that would happen later on in the way of song intros or jams had not yet been totally developed. For one thing, Ray doesn't have his lighting story to tell before HBTS--instead, he actually discusses what the song is really about (a very rare thing to do during a Genesis song intro). Before the acoustic section, Ray says he didn't know how to introduce this part of the set, so he asked Tony, who said to say that they were all songs from the seventies. Ray then says "I checked, and they're not!" But in actual fact, all the acoustic numbers ARE from the seventies--it's Ray who's wrong. I still have mixed feelings about the actual CAS album, but I have a soft spot for the tour, and this is a great, full show, with no real cuts and not too many problems with the quality. I already have "That's All" on my After the Ordeal compilation. Once you hear the track in context like this, and not nestled in with a bunch of radio tracks, it sounds better. Good show.

Budapest '98 (rehearsal)

28/1/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:37)
1-02 Land of Confusion (5:13)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:49)
1-04 Calling All Stations (6:57)
1-05 Hold on My Heart (5:50)
1-06 Alien Afternoon (9:03)
1-07 There Must Be Some Other Way (9:54)
1-08 Domino (part 1: In the Glow of the Night) (4:26)
1-09 Domino (part 2: The Last Domino) (7:26)
1-10 The Carpet Crawlers (5:20)
1-11 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (4:55)

2-01 Congo (7:06)
2-02 Home by the Sea (5:40)
2-03 Second Home by the Sea (7:40)
2-04 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (2:12)
2-05 Follow You Follow Me (3:00)
2-06 Lover's Leap (2:21)
2-07 Mama (6:49)
2-08 The Dividing Line (11:03)
2-09 Invisible Touch (5:40)
2-10 Turn It on Again (5:13)
2-11 Throwing It All Away (5:37)
2-12 I Can't Dance (6:25)

Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good

Comments: At the Sportshalle in Budapest, Hungary, this is what is called a "dress rehearsal." Having an almost entirely new band to work with, I think Genesis was understandably concerned about their live performing ability and seems to have taken a lot of time to practice before starting on real gigs. This one was done right before the first actual gig, which happened the very next day in the same venue and featured an identical set list (both, as you can see, have the rare "Hold on My Heart"). Unlike the previous warm-up gig in Bray Film Studios, which featured a fairly normal-sized audience, this one was played to a nearly empty concert hall--judging from the meagre applause between songs, there were only about four or five people looking on! So we are treated here to a very rare thing: an audience bootleg without an audience. The sound is excellent. There's not even any cheering after the first number.

Tony nearly falls apart on the piano intro for "Lamb," but as always he recovers. Ray tells no intros for any of the songs, so we are left with silences between numbers. This is all for the best, as it covers the split second pauses on these discs. They are barely noticeable. When "Hold on My Heart" comes back from the bridge section, the sound gets muffled for a few seconds. It's possible that after "Congo" and before HBTS there is a hiccup or repeated section of the recording. Ray's only intro for HBTS is to say "Ghosts!" before the song--he seems to say it twice, but as I say, this may be a hiccup. Part of HBTS itself gets slightly fuzzy, almost as though the band were playing underwater. It sounds weird like this for over a minute, but eventually recovers.

The first time Ray addresses the audience at all is before the acoustic section. He makes a joke about the low turn-out for the gig, and tells the people that he hopes they're enjoying it. Someone messes around a lot with their guitar before the acoustic numbers actually start. There is probably a big splice in the middle of "Mama"--there's an audible break and the song seems to start up about where it left off, but in lower quality. This carries on for quite a while and then there's another break and the song picks up again at better quality. The whole section in between the breaks is probably from a different gig. This is the only real cut on the recording. There is a very small disruption in "Throwing It All Away"--the volume suddenly cuts down to almost nil, but within a couple of seconds it recovers. Probably this was due to the recording device being suddenly moved or hidden.

Most existing audio versions of this gig are called Nervous Restart. This version, interestingly enough, must come from a different source. I'm fairly certain that the audio for Nervous Restart was pulled off of an amateur video of this gig (which I have on VHS and DVD). Nervous Restart has various problems. One is that the in between stuff has all been cut out, very often at the expense of the first few seconds of each song. There is a cut in SHBTS and "I Can't Dance" is incomplete. My audio version is probably the more complete of the two (though it has its own problems, as you can see from my description). My version is missing the half-minute improvisation that the band played before starting the gig, but I have this on the video version.

Budapest '98 (first gig)

29/1/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:05)
1-02 Land of Confusion (4:58)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:27)
1-04 Calling All Stations (7:19)
1-05 Hold on My Heart (5:40)
1-06 Alien Afternoon (9:00)
1-07 There Must Be Some Other Way (9:39)
1-08 Domino (10:38)
1-09 The Carpet Crawlers (5:55)
1-10 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (4:49)

2-01 Congo (6:31)
2-02 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (14:19)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (3:23)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (3:02)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:15)
2-06 Mama (6:50)
2-07 The Dividing Line (11:41)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:15)
2-09 Turn It on Again (5:52)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (5:56)
2-11 I Can't Dance (7:22)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good

Comments: At the Sportshalle in Budapest, Hungary. I know what you're thinking--seven boots into this section and NOW we hit the "first gig?" (That's what you were thinking, right?) But in fact this is what even Ray himself describes this show as: "my first gig with the band--it will not be the last." Disregarding all of the radio shows and warm-up shows before it, this is in fact the kick-off gig of the real CAS tour. The audience are treated to a nice full set which, while it does not include "Shipwrecked" or "Not About Us," does have the rarer "Hold on My Heart." This number was tried out at a few of the warm-up gigs before this one, and performed here; but it was never performed again. It does appear that near the end of the song Ray messes up the lyrics a bit and possibly one or more of the band get off the beat. Perhaps they were not comfortable with this number. (There's some talking over a part of "Hold on," but not much.) It is somewhat evident that this is the first night of the tour, as there are some rough edges in the performance. The guitar seems to hold on for a bit too long near the end of "Dividing Line." There is a small guitar malfunction at the beginning of the acoustic set (which is quickly sorted out). During the band introductions at the end of "Turn It," Ray doesn't seem to remember what city Mike Rutherford is from. He also calls Nir "Nir Z," and is seemingly not confident enough to attempt the pronunciation of "Zidkyahu." However the stories for "There Must Be Some Other Way" and for "Home by the Sea" are much as they would be on later shows, and Ray grabs a girl from the audience for "I Can't Dance." He makes a good joke about the band's age in his intro for "Carpet Crawlers." When Ray gets to Tony's lighting rig in the "Home" intro, the crowd chants Tony's name. The girl he picks for the last number seems to be able to dance fairly well, and even sings along during her time on stage, prompting Ray to point out: "And she sings, too!"

Now some words about sound quality and the particular quirks of this copy of the show. Curiously, according to Simon's track list for this show, my version has two more songs: FoF and HBTS. The sound is somewhat hissy and there's a bit of background noise to go along with that. For instance I noticed some low pops from time to time, and some interesting fluctuations in the hiss. Depending on what stereo I used the hiss and the pops could be audible or not. On the second half of the first disc, the recording stops and starts a couple of times between songs, though none of the songs or intros seem to be cut. Mainly the sound quality is quite good, very clear and enjoyable, maybe just a little rough around the edges at times. This show did have one problem: digital stutters. My normal experience with digital stutters was that they would last several seconds and generally destroy the portion of the song they occurred during. However these stutters only lasted a split second and only occurred perhaps two or three times on a disc. Actually I didn't really hear any actual stutters at all on the first disc. The only time it seemed to actually happen during a song and to disrupt the music was towards the end of "Dividing Line" and towards the middle of "I Can't Dance." I attempted to repair both of these. I was successful on "Dividing Line," but the one in "I Can't Dance" unfortunately resulted in a very small cut: "Fat guy's talking to me trying t---eal my blues." If you're not listening close you might not even notice it. There was an additional error in the transition between FYFM and "Lover's Leap." The tape seemed to stop, rewind, and start again, producing a rather sickly-sounding hiccup. I repaired this seamlessly. There is one actual cut in the recording which removes a small portion near the end of "I Can't Dance."

This is a landmark gig and it's overall in very good quality and very complete. A nice one to have.

Katowice, Poland

31/1/98

1-01 Land of Confusion (5:22)
1-02 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:33)
1-03 Calling All Stations (6:58)
1-04 Alien Afternoon (9:47)
1-05 The Carpet Crawlers (6:32)
1-06 There Must Be Some Other Way (9:19)
1-07 Domino (11:10)
1-08 Shipwrecked (5:36)
1-09 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:23)
1-10 Congo (7:04)

2-01 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (11:44)
2-02 Intro: Acoustic (1:11)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (2:12)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (2:55)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:18)
2-06 Mama (6:45)
2-07 The Dividing Line (11:24)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:33)
2-09 Turn It on Again (5:56)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (5:59)
2-11 I Can't Dance (7:48)
2-12 Not About Us (date?) (3:04)
2-13 No Son of Mine (date?) (7:27)
2-14 Phret (4:03)

Type/Quality: TV/Very Good

Comments: At the Spodek in Katowice, Poland. This one was transferred from a TV program (I have bits of the broadcast on VCD, and another audio version below). This bootleg for this show, which comes quite early in the actual CAS tour (there were a lot of launching shows and rehearsal gigs before this, but the tour didn't really get going until late January of '98), is a bit different than others I've seen. One disappointing difference is that mine is missing "No Son of Mine," whereas all others I've seen have it (unfortunately my VCD is also missing "No Son of Mine"--but the next entry has it). In an attempt to make up for this loss, whoever made this boot added a "No Son of Mine" from some other performance at the end of the second disc (sounds like an audience recording, but I have no idea of the date). Also tacked on the end are a great quality "Not About Us" that's not from RTL Studios but is probably from a radio show because of its quality level, and the studio b-side "Phret." (The original show was also totally and ridiculously mis-tracked, grouping songs together on single tracks, making 5 seconds of applause into its own track, and starting tracks in the endings of other songs. Needless to say, my version fixes all that. I also normalized the levels while I was at it, which raised the volume level to something more manageable.) "Not About Us" was a song that had been played during the launch gigs in the acoustic set, and would be played during a good bit of the rest of the tour, but was not being played at the time of this Poland gig.

The actual Polish show is very good quality, though the volume is a little low and there are definitely some crackles every once in a while. I don't think that quite all of Ray's stories/intros are in here, but there are a few. This is one of the rare early shows that features a lot of songs from the new album: there's "Alien Afternoon," "There Must Be Some Other Way," and "Shipwrecked." "Shipwrecked" would eventually be dropped from the set, and the other two later in the tour were usually not played in the same set. Nir gets very self-indulgent for his drum solo at the end of "Dividing Line." This song never ceases to amaze me, as every version of it sounds totally awesome and really showcases the musicianship of the band members. The medley-less "Turn It on Again" has the band intros. Ray mercifully restrains from singing snatches of Mike and the Mechanics songs, but he seems to forget how to say "bass pedals," and is forced to settle with "that thing...with the feet." A nice addition to "I Can't Dance" is Ray's use of the harmonica at the end--this was always a blues song, but it's nice that they finally really admitted it by putting in the harmonica solo. Possibly the first use of the harmonica in a Genesis song.

Ray speaks some Polish to the audience in the beginning; generally on this tour, in at least his first intro to an audience he would try to speak their native tongue. Ray makes a few other attempts at connecting with the audience (he tries to get them to go "Oh-oh-oh" in the chorus of "Land of Confusion," and sing for parts of HBTS and "I Can't Dance"--heck, he even lets them sing part of "Lover's Leap"). It's a good indication of how much smaller Genesis' audience has become, when Ray actually gets a fan out of the crowd to come on stage and "teach him how to dance" for the "I Can't Dance" number (this was the standard thing done during nearly all of the CAS shows).

Katowice '98

31/1/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:06)
1-02 Land of Confusion (5:16)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:29)
1-04 Calling All Stations (7:10)
1-05 Alien Afternoon (9:09)
1-06 The Carpet Crawlers (6:03)
1-07 There Must Be Some Other Way (10:22)
1-08 Domino (11:08)
1-09 Shipwrecked (5:48)
1-10 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:11)

2-01 Congo (7:09)
2-02 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (14:46)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (3:08)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (2:55)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:22)
2-06 Mama (6:42)
2-07 The Dividing Line (11:23)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:31)
2-09 Turn It on Again (6:46)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (6:10)
2-11 I Can't Dance (8:01)

Type/Quality: TV/Very Good

Comments: At the Spodek in Katowice, Poland, this is an alternate version of the above entry. I prefer this version to the previous one, because I believe (without too much basis in fact) that it sounds slightly better than the other one. It also just has the Katowice show, with no strange, unidentifiable bonus tracks and with the first number intact. All of the intros are here, including the lighting rig story in front of HBtS, which was not in the previous version. There are still some pops, but I think this is a cleaner, better copy of the show.

The show did have one problem, a burning error which caused just the slightest digital stutters in between the first and second lines of lyric in "Congo." What I did in an attempt to remove this error was splice in the clean section from the other Katowice boot. However, as their sound mixes are noticeably different, the cure is almost as bad as the disease (so to speak). It's a fairly obvious patch, but the rhythm of the song is uninterrupted.

One thing I noticed about this gig listening to it this time around is that the performance is by no means perfect. There are a couple of noticeable screw-ups by the band. Something definitely seems off during the tiny bridge of "Invisible Touch," and Ray is a bit off with his lyrics during "I Can't Dance." There are one or two other instances of this roughness, I think. Still a very memorable show with a nice set list.

Dortmund '98

10/2/98

1 No Son of Mine (7:18)
2 Land of Confusion (5:23)
3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (7:06)
4 Calling All Stations (7:30)

Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good

Comments: At the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany, this is obviously only an excerpt from a full Genesis show. Germany in particular seemed to love Genesis on this tour, and produced several radio shows, mostly featuring only the beginning songs from the concert. According to my friend and yours, David Dunnington, this four-track broadcast is actually a Christmas re-broadcast of the show (the original broadcast was not as good and had only the first three songs). There's a bit more reverb on here than I would like, but it's not horrible, and it's definitely radio quality. The opening of "No Son of Mine" is overlapped by a German announcer and two back-to-back station IDs from the members of Genesis. The announcer pops back in between songs one more time. I was surprised that Ray's first intro to the audience (featuring his full vocabulary of German) is left on the recording. An interesting and nice-sounding little disc, but it would be better if it were longer.

Strictly Mechanic

12/2/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:38)
1-02 Land of Confusion (5:09)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:36)
1-04 Calling All Stations (8:04)
1-05 Alien Afternoon (9:22)
1-06 The Carpet Crawlers (5:44)
1-07 There Must Be Some Other Way (10:40)
1-08 Domino (11:11)
1-09 Shipwrecked (5:48)
1-10 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:22)

2-01 Congo (6:57)
2-02 Intro: Home (4:00)
2-03 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (11:45)
2-04 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (3:18)
2-05 Follow You Follow Me (2:57)
2-06 Lover's Leap (2:24)
2-07 Mama (6:50)
2-08 The Dividing Line (11:38)
2-09 Invisible Touch (5:24)
2-10 Turn It on Again (5:31)
2-11 Throwing It All Away (5:44)
2-12 I Can't Dance (8:41)

Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good

Comments: At the Schleyerhalle in Stuttgart, Germany, this is one of the more famous boots from this tour (Highland's version of this is known under the name ...Through the Ages...). This is because it's very good quality. Aside from one small cut in "There Must Be Some Other Way," which removes the end of a chorus and the beginning of the instrumental section, this is a complete show. It comes from a time in the tour when "Alien Afternoon" and "Shipwrecked" were being played. There's not much more to ask for: a full set in good quality.

Unfortunately this version of the boot does have one problem, and it comes (as it almost always does) in the track transitions. Having had a deal of experience in the myriad of things that can go wrong when one track goes into the next, I believe this problem to be clipping. That is, the last split second of every track is cut. This may sound kind of bad, but actually it's barely noticeable. Since the CAS tour had no medleys, and since no songs stretch over more than one track, the only thing that gets clipped is audience cheering--and that only very slightly. In many places, you won't even notice the problem unless you're listening for it. Originally, there was a small gap between the intro for HBTS and the song--I have removed it. There was also a very small hiccup just as HBTS became SHBTS--I fixed that.

Ray has a prepared speech in German to give to the crowd before "Calling All Stations." After that, though, he pretty much stays away from the German and speaks in English. Before "Shipwrecked" he scans through some radio stations, much in the way Phil used to before "Illegal Alien." Though in this case I think he actually is going through radio stations, and it's not as funny (it's not meant to be particularly funny anyway). In the intro for HBTS, Ray claims that Tony's "girl" or lighting rig is from Germany; to the crowd's delight. I've also long noticed Ray's impressive proclivity to make the audiences sing along with the songs; he does it a lot. It is a good way to get the crowd involved, but he relies on this tactic much more than (certainly) Pete and (even) Phil.

As I say, this is a pretty great bootleg. Although I noticed two distinct pops during "Follow You Follow Me," and an unfortunate wave of tiny crackles towards the end of "Congo," I think there is very little noise like this on the recording and that it deserves a spot among the best bootlegs from this tour. Which is actually saying something, since there are quite a few great audience recordings available from the Ray Wilson era.

Rome '98

18/2/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (partial)(3:41)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:00)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:21)
1-4 Calling All Stations (6:55)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:01)
1-6 Domino (10:37)
1-7 Shipwrecked (4:56)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:06)
1-9 Congo (6:32)

2-01 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (14:49)
2-02 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro)(cut)(1:40)
2-03 Follow You Follow Me (2:55)
2-04 Lover's Leap (2:19)
2-05 Mama (6:23)
2-06 The Dividing Line (11:42)
2-07 Invisible Touch (5:19)
2-08 Turn It on Again (5:03)
2-09 Throwing It All Away (5:30)
2-10 I Can't Dance (5:46)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good

Comments: At the good old Palasport in Roma, this is an interesting recording showing the new Genesis at the scene of the old Genesis' triumph. The audience seem thrilled at everything the band does: there's laughter, cheering, screaming, "bravo"s, and a "you're welcome" for every time Ray says "thank you." As you can tell, the audience is fairly audible (this is an audience recording after all, and it is in Italy), but not distracting or annoying. The annoying part is that this recording is fairly heavily edited, starting right at the beginning: "No Son" comes in about halfway through the song. Ray is a bit hard to hear on his first intro, due to some muddy reverb, but he gives the crowd some rudimentary Italian which they are happy to hear. This is one of the only intros you get, though, as a lot of the in-between stuff has been cut by the taper. Ray usually told an intro for "Crawlers," but it is missing here. There is an edit before "Domino" which may cut a second or two off the beginning of that song. After "Domino," another edit jumps us right into the middle of Ray scanning through radio stations before "Shipwrecked."

Around this time, the set list was going through some subtle changes. As late as 13 February, both "Alien Afternoon" and "There Must Be Some Other Way" were part of the set. On 17 February however, the day before this concert, the band appear to have dropped "Alien Afternoon." According to this recording, on this night's gig they also dropped "There Must Be Some Other Way." This is actually borne out by the recording of the 19 February gig in Milan, which has a nearly identical set list to this one. Still, I'm suspicious, because later gigs in February had "There Must Be Some Other Way" back in the set. So it's possible that an entire song is missing here, but I'm not sure.

Anyways, though other intros were cut, we are fortunately able to hear all of Ray's humorous lighting intro for HBTS, which is received favorably by the crowd. Ray starts it out by saying how happy he is to be in Rome. When he gets to "Tony's girl," the crowd erupts and even starts chanting "Tony! Tony!" before Ray can get on with his story. After HBTS, there is another edit which cuts into the beginning of "Moonlit Knight." The rest of the acoustic set is complete, but the very end of "Mama" cuts off and goes straight into the beginning of "Dividing Line." The opening of "I Can't Dance," where Ray presumably plucks a girl out of the audience to dance with him (as he did on other shows), has also been cut out here. Ironically (or perhaps on purpose), the part later in the song where Ray asks the audience to give the girl a hand has a break or cut right at the spot where Ray (presumably) said what her name was--the poor girl has been deleted from this recording.

So obviously this is a rather sloppily edited show. The sound quality is not bad, but there are rare moments in the recording where the sound sort of breaks up for a moment. My track times don't exactly match other versions of this show, because my original discs came with one long track on each, and I had to re-track them myself. While I was at it, I changed where the first disc ended and cut out some of the moments of silence which were originally stuck between songs due to the tape being turned off and on. The edits are still there, but they are a little smoother. Though there are cuts, it's nice to hear an Italian audience enjoying Genesis again.

Paris '98

23/2/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (7:15)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:09)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:04)
1-4 Calling All Stations (7:40)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (6:05)
1-6 There Must Be Some Other Way (9:15)
1-7 Domino (10:29)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:07)
1-9 Congo (6:40)

2-01 Intro: Home (3:25)
2-02 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (12:21)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (2:04)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (2:46)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:21)
2-06 Mama (6:43)
2-07 The Dividing Line (12:08)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:02)
2-09 Turn It on Again (6:56)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (6:00)
2-11 I Can't Dance (8:04)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good

Comments: At the Palais Omnisports de Bercy in Paris, this is a fairly typical and good quality audience recording from this tour. The sound starts out muffled (probably the recording device is hidden at this point), but it improves after a few minutes. The taper also has the rather bad habit of clapping after each song, right next to the microphone, causing a lot of little pops which fortunately don't interfere with the music or stories. I noticed a small jump in the music--possibly a digital skip--which cuts out the last syllable of the word "confusion" as Ray sings it near the end of "Land of Confusion." I did not hear anything else like this in the recording, so hopefully it is the only occurrence. The only other thing that need be mentioned is that the band get themselves off-kilter near the end of "Throwing It All Away," forcing Ray to skip a line of the lyrics to get back on track--actually, he recovers quite well I thought, though the mistake may be his fault in the first place. As usual with European audiences, Ray uses some of the native language in his opening intro, but sticks to English for the rest of the night. You get all the typical stories, the lighting rig gag before HBTS, and a dancing girl during ICD.

Birmingham on Radio 2

25 (and 26)/2/98

01 No Son of Mine (7:49)
02 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:27)
03 Calling All Stations (7:05)
04 The Carpet Crawlers (5:00)
05 Domino (part one: In the Glow of the Night) (4:14)
06 Domino (part two: The Last Domino) (6:34)
07 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro, acoustic) (2:12)
08 Supper's Ready (Lover's Leap, acoustic) (2:29)
09 Not About Us (acoustic) (3:14)
10 The Dividing Line (10:08)
11 Mama (6:47)
12 Turn It on Again (3:33)
13 Invisible Touch (5:10)

Type/Quality: Radio/Excellent

Comments: As the announcer at the beginning of this recording says, this is a Radio 2 re-broadcast of Genesis at the National Exhibition Center (NEC) in Birmingham, UK, in February 1998. Genesis played the NEC on both 25 and 26 of February. When broadcast on the radio, this show was said to have been only 25 February, but information that "Not About Us" was not played that night have led experts to believe that the show is a combination of songs from both nights at the NEC. There were two radio broadcasts with songs from these dates, and both broadcasts played different songs, but my version has all of them. My track times pretty much match those of Nir Perfect, which is supposed to be a pre-FM version.

This is an excellent, seemingly flawless recording that's a good one to play for those who dislike Ray on the studio album. He does what I think is a great job with all the older tracks on here. A nice set.

A New Beginning

25 (and 26)/2/98

1 No Son of Mine (6:41)
2 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:29)
3 Calling All Stations (7:00)
4 Domino (10:41)
5 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro) (acoustic) (2:12)
6 Lover's Leap (acoustic) (2:26)
7 Not About Us (acoustic) (3:14)
8 The Dividing Line (10:07)
9 Mama (6:44)

Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good-Excellent

Comments: As far as I know, this is just another bootleg from the radio broadcast of the show at Birmingham NEC. It is probably a mix of cuts from both the 25 and 26 February shows. David Dunnington tells us that this bootleg is in fact a reproduction of the first radio broadcast of this show on the BBC 2 station, made before it was re-broadcast with the additional tracks you see on the above entry. Some other differences: "No Son" fades in here, as though part of the metronome beginning were missing. "Dancing With..." is missing the first two words ("Can you"). The quality is possibly just a touch less here than on the other, though in general it is still excellent. Listening to this boot, I could almost forget that there were things about the CAS album that I didn't like--mixing the (admittedly few) CAS tracks here in with these other classic numbers makes the newer ones sound better somehow. Also I think they chose the right tracks to play and the right tracks to leave in the studio.

Earls Court '98

27/2/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:00)
1-02 Land of Confusion (4:55)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:10)
1-04 Intro: Calling (0:53)
1-05 Calling All Stations (6:44)
1-06 Intro: Crawlers (0:53)
1-07 The Carpet Crawlers (4:57)
1-08 Intro: There Must Be... (1:06)
1-09 There Must Be Some Other Way (8:45)
1-10 Domino (10:31)
1-11 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:22)
1-12 Congo (6:31)

2-01 Intro: Home (2:50)
2-02 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (11:13)
2-03 Intro: Acoustic (0:51)
2-04 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (2:08)
2-05 Follow You Follow Me (2:53)
2-06 Lover's Leap (2:21)
2-07 Intro: Not About (0:14)
2-08 Not About Us (3:25)
2-09 Mama (6:40)
2-10 The Dividing Line (12:07)
2-11 Invisible Touch (4:55)
2-12 Turn It on Again (5:07)
2-13 Throwing It All Away (5:46)
2-14 I Can't Dance (7:22)

Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good

Comments: Obviously this one was played at Earls Court in London. Not that bad an audience recording, though someone--most likely the taper himself--has the tendency to scream "YEAAAHHH!!" into the microphone at the beginning of the songs. At the end of "Firth of Fifth" you can hear someone (maybe not the same person) say something about how the song "sucked." Ray seems a bit shy or uncomfortable to be playing at this famous venue, and mentions in one of his intros that he was told they would be a "tough crowd." The usual story before "Home by the Sea" is really quite funny and involves the band members' lack of amorous relationships and their compensation for that lack with lighting equipment sets, all of which have women's names ("this is Dolores, she's from Dublin...what do you think of her? I'd give her one..."). It's nice to have a complete, full show, and this set is fairly typical for this tour.

Glasgow '98

1/3/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (7:30)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:04)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:25)
1-4 Calling All Stations (7:53)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:49)
1-6 There Must Be Some Other Way (10:12)
1-7 Domino (10:49)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:29)
1-9 Congo (6:37)

2-01 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (14:11)
2-02 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (3:06)
2-03 Follow You Follow Me (2:56)
2-04 Lover's Leap (2:26)
2-05 Not About Us (3:37)
2-06 Mama (6:43)
2-07 The Dividing Line (12:34)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:02)
2-09 Turn It on Again (5:16)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (5:46)
2-11 I Can't Dance (7:40)

Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good

Comments: Played at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) in Glasgow, Scotland. This was the Genesis show played in Ray Wilson's home town. It comes a bit into the tour and thus the band are playing pretty smoothly together, though Ray sounds just a bit nervous during his intros. This show was one of three audio shows I received from the same trader, all of them gigs played by Genesis in Glasgow--though all in different venues. All of them featured material that the trader had most likely recorded himself: this is supposed to have come from a first generation source. The sound is quite good, very clear through the whole thing. The bass may be a bit strong in places, but that's about it. There may be just a few seconds missing from the beginning of "Throwing It All Away"--the recording device had probably been turned off to remove the pause between the last number of the regular set and the first encore, and the song fades in--but that's the only cut on here. A very typical set from the middle of the tour. Whether Ray was actually nervous or not, he tells the intros pretty well--the lighting rig story before HBTS is funny. I found the encores ("Throwing It All Away" and "I Can't Dance") in particular to be very fun, good performances. Nice show.

Cardiff '98

5/3/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (7:40)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:11)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:34)
1-4 Calling All Stations (8:18)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:16)
1-6 Alien Afternoon (9:08)
1-7 Domino (11:13)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section)(5:22)
1-9 Congo (6:59)

2-01 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (15:24)
2-02 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (3:12)
2-03 Follow You Follow Me (3:04)
2-04 Lover's Leap (2:35)
2-05 Not About Us (3:53)
2-06 Mama (6:51)
2-07 The Dividing Line (13:28)
2-08 Invisible Touch (5:15)
2-09 Turn It on Again (5:04)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (7:27)
2-11 I Can't Dance (8:49)

Type/Quality: Audience/Very Good-Good

Comments: At the International Arena in Cardiff, Wales, this was the second of two gigs at this venue. Ray mentions this fact in his first talk with the audience, and also promises they'll be playing something different tonight (they played "Alien Afternoon" instead of "There Must be Some Other Way"). This is a nice audience recording which doesn't seem to have any cuts in the songs and doesn't seem to remove any of Ray's regular intros, though the recorder was turned off and on on a few occasions. There is a break and a cut after "Alien Afternoon," and the sound also fades out before "Congo." There is a small break after HBTS and one before "Throwing It All Away." Ray's normal lighting rig story for HBTS seems to sort of fall flat with the crowd, who either don't understand what he's talking about or don't care. Ray deals with this in his own way. When he mentions that he has nobody, the crowd roars and Ray comments, "I could shag a few guys by the sound of it." He starts going into his spiel about how he could settle down with somebody that usually ends with his working in the song title, but instead he just gives up and says: "Fuck it. Home by the sea."

When Ray introduces the acoustic set, he jibes that at the next gig Tony is going to appear naked for charity. The woman that he grabs out of the audience for "I Can't Dance" must do something weird, because Ray is cracking up as he sings the first couple verses of the song, and when she departs he says, "That was a first." I don't know what she did, but I'm curious...

Manchester '98

6/3/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (7:21)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:06)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:09)
1-4 Calling All Stations (7:50)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:02)
1-6 Alien Afternoon (9:04)
1-7 Domino (10:03)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:39)
1-9 Congo (6:38)

2-01 Home by the Sea (8:17)
2-02 Second Home by the Sea (6:34)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (2:11)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (beginning)(0:07)
2-05 Follow You Follow Me/Lover's Leap (5:28)
2-06 Not About Us (3:26)
2-07 Mama (6:47)
2-08 The Dividing Line (10:39)
2-09 Invisible Touch (5:10)
2-10 Turn It on Again (5:22)
2-11 Throwing It All Away (5:37)
2-12 I Can't Dance (7:36)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good

Comments: At the NYNEX Arena in Manchester, England. I almost gave this show a "Good-Fair" in the quality department, because I've heard so many CAS tour recordings that really sound good. This one though isn't that bad, and it is really very complete. There is only one cut that I noticed, and that is that the first few lines of "Domino" are missing: it begins at the line "Rain keeps running down the window pane."

Nothing else really special to say about the show itself: very typical of the tour, with Ray saying all of his usual things between songs. There is an odd tracking issue on disc two, tracks four and five. This does not match the tracking of Simon's version of the show, though it is clearly the Manchester gig. I understand there is also an amateur video of this whole show, so it's possible that my version or Simon's was transferred from that.

The Red Dress Returns

8/3/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (6:59)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:00)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:48)
1-4 Calling All Stations (7:26)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:59)
1-6 There Must Be Some Other Way (8:48)
1-7 Domino (10:25)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (4:58)
1-9 Congo (6:37)

2-01 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (14:55)
2-02 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (2:04)
2-03 Follow You Follow Me (2:45)
2-04 Lover's Leap (2:26)
2-05 Not About Us (3:13)
2-06 Mama (6:32)
2-07 The Dividing Line (12:43)
2-08 Invisible Touch (4:56)
2-09 Turn It on Again (6:30)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (5:29)
2-11 I Can't Dance (6:56)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good

Comments: Played at the Point Theatre (or Point Depot?) in Dublin, Ireland. The name for this show is in reference to a much earlier visit to Dublin by the band, in which Peter Gabriel put on his first stage costume--the red dress with the fox head (I have that show, by the way...). However unless the stadium changed its name this is not the same venue. Another version of this show is called A Single Lonely Voice. This was one of the CAS shows where many bootlegs named track 1-8 "Old Medley." I can tell you after listening to this that it is not a medley at all, but simply the middle section of "Firth of Fifth." This boot has good sound, no real pops or static or hiss, and the audience doesn't talk over the music at all (there is some talking over the beginning of "I Can't Dance," when Ray is wandering through the audience looking for a young lady, but it's low and it goes away soon). There were additional useless seconds added to the end of each disc with lots of pops in them--these have been removed on my version.

The main problem with this boot came in the transitions between songs. Some clever bootlegger decided that they would make this recording sound smoother and more professional by cross-fading the tracks into one another. All this succeeds in doing is causing confusion and deleting bits of the song intros. This was even done between the two parts of "Domino," which was a just plain stupid thing to do as they are parts of one single song, and should have been played straight through without the damn fading between them. "Domino" was originally broken into two tracks, as seems to have been the norm on boots of this tour, but in my version I've made it one track again (as it should be).

Somewhere along the line as well pauses have been added between the tracks--and not silent pauses, but pauses with pops in them! I have deleted the pauses and most of the pops, and the cross-fading transitions aren't really all that bad. As I say, you miss the ends of some of the song intros, which is not that great, but you don't really lose any of the music. Fortunately the full, hilarious intro to HBTS (in which Ray tells of the band's problem with women and how they use their lighting "trusses" as surrogate lovers while on tour) is present, as it comes at the beginning of a disc. Ray is in fine form on this show and seems quite comfortable with the audience, and they seem quite accepting of him. I'm always surprised at how much I enjoy listening to CAS shows (I was honestly not a huge fan of the album itself), and this one is no exception. Again for me the highlight is always "The Dividing Line," where Nir gets a lengthy but blistering drum solo.

Lille '98

13/3/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:08)
1-02 Land of Confusion (5:06)
1-03 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:03)
1-04 Calling All Stations (7:42)
1-05 The Carpet Crawlers (6:26)
1-06 There Must Be Some Other Way (9:01)
1-07 Domino (10:45)
1-08 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:46)
1-09 Congo (7:07)

2-01 Home by the Sea (7:56)
2-02 Second Home by the Sea (6:56)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (2:43)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (2:53)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:36)
2-06 Not About Us (3:25)
2-07 Mama (6:45)
2-08 The Dividing Line (13:06)
2-09 Invisible Touch (5:08)
2-10 Turn It on Again (4:57)
2-11 Throwing It All Away (5:28)
2-12 I Can't Dance (7:52)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good

Comments: Played at Le Zenith in Lille, France. This is actually a fantastic audience show which can hold its own against the other, more famous gigs from this tour (such as Strictly Mechanic and the Point Depot gig, above). It seems that almost all of the gigs from this tour are available in good quality. Here the sound is excellent and there are only a few small problems (you've heard that one before, haven't you? ;). One is that there's a guy in the crowd who likes to sing along with the songs. However he keeps it pretty low and doesn't do it that much, and when he does, it's actually not that bad!

Another problem came as usual in the track transitions. It appears this show was somehow tracked "on the fly," as it were, or at least sloppily, so that sometimes the beginning of a song was at the end of the previous track, or the track shifted long before the next song began. There were also multiple very, very small gaps at the track edits. I have repaired these and totally re-tracked the show much more to my liking. I also moved "Home by the Sea" from the end of disc one to the beginning of disc two; originally HBTS and SHBTS were divided across the two discs for some reason. Unfortunately HBTS fades out and SHBTS fades in, and there is a bit of a cut in the middle which I was unable to repair.

Ray talks a bit of French at the beginning of the show, but basically gives it up after that and tells all of his normal stories in English. Someone, probably the taper, has an odd way of clapping that almost sounds like horses galloping--this is probably simply due to their proximity to the recording microphone. In the intro for HBTS, Mike's "girl" or lighting rig is gay. Tony's girl is supposedly from France and Ray calls her "Claudette." After "Invisible Touch," Ray just starts introducing the last number and the recording cuts a little into the beginning of "Turn It on Again." There is a bit of a break after "Turn It" and "Throwing It All Away" fades in.

I've always been rather surprised at Ray's courage for walking right into the middle of the crowd for "I Can't Dance" to pluck out a girl to dance with. True, when I saw a video of a gig I saw that he had two security guards walking with him, but still--it amazed me that he never had any problems with people grabbing at him or anything. At this gig, something interesting seems to happen. After Ray gets back up on stage he says "Well, I'm still alive!" and makes comments about what an interesting experience that was. While in the crowd he seems to have to tell some girl to put her clothes back on!

This is a great quality recording with no appreciable cuts.

Munich '98

27/3/98

1 Land of Confusion (5:01)
2 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:07)
3 Calling All Stations (6:46)

Type/Quality: Radio/Very Good

Comments: At the good old Olympiahalle in Munich (or Munchen) Germany, this is not the first or the last of the radio shows from the CAS tour, but it is almost definitely the shortest. Let's see how long I can spend talking about it. There are really only a few things to say about this. One is that there is a weird degree of reverb on this recording: the opening beats of LOC are doubled up and confused. The other radio show I have from Germany has a similar problem. The other thing is that (again, as on the other radio show--Dortmund, 10 February) I was surprised to find Ray's full intro to the audience before "Calling All Stations." A nice little disc, but there's nothing particularly interesting about it, and it's very short.

Hamburg '98

30/3/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (7:21)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:04)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (5:59)
1-4 Calling All Stations (7:24)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:00)
1-6 Alien Afternoon (8:44)
1-7 Domino (10:29)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:40)
1-9 Congo (6:37)

2-01 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (14:52)
2-02 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (3:14)
2-03 Follow You Follow Me (2:52)
2-04 Lover's Leap (2:32)
2-05 Not About Us (3:14)
2-06 Mama (6:37)
2-07 The Dividing Line (13:23)
2-08 Invisible Touch (4:57)
2-09 Turn It on Again (7:12)
2-10 Throwing It All Away (5:32)
2-11 I Can't Dance (7:46)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good

Comments: Played at the Sporthalle in Hamburg Germany, this is a nice, complete audience show from late in the CAS tour. I got the feeling at around "Domino" that it might be a bit fast, but I would have thought that with our current recording technology, speed problems would be a thing of the past (ie, the seventies), so maybe it's just my imagination. There were no cuts that I heard. As he did at other shows, Ray does his first audience greeting intro in German, but doesn't even try to use it after that and does the rest of his stories in English--though based on the audience's excellent reaction to his HBTS story, most of them understand him anyway. The audience seem pretty happy with the whole thing, and (again, as he did at some other shows on this tour) Ray lets them take a few lines during the acoustic set, especially on "Lover's Leap."

A final word on authenticity: my track times don't quite match Simon's for this date, but Ray clearly says at one point on this recording that it is "Monday night in Hamburg," and 30 March was a Monday in 1998 (I checked), so I'm sure this is what it's supposed to be. Not a bad show.

Stockholm '98

3/4/98

1-01 No Son of Mine (7:24)
1-02 Calling All Stations (6:55)
1-03 The Carpet Crawlers (5:20)
1-04 Domino part one: In the Glow of the Night (4:23)
1-05 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (11:57)
1-06 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (intro)(2:11)
1-07 Follow You Follow Me (2:56)
1-08 Lover's Leap (2:22)
1-09 Turn It on Again (5:04)
1-10 Throwing It All Away (4:26)

Type/Quality: Radio/Excellent

Comments: At the Globe in Stockholm, Sweden, this is a totally excellent radio show. It is apparently available in multiple versions, some of which have some songs from the Birmingham radio show earlier in the tour. This one seems to be all from Stockholm. The only problem with this show is that it has been heavily edited. Only partial song intros are here, if at all, and only half of "Domino" is present. In fact, it has been edited down even from the original length of the radio show: the DJ starts saying the credits during Ray's finale of "Throwing It All Away," and then the credits fade out. Still what's here is really great. Coming late in the tour, this is a very well-played set and a memorable performance.

Helsinki '98

5/4/98

1-1 No Son of Mine (7:41)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:15)
1-3 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (6:43)
1-4 Calling All Stations (7:44)
1-5 The Carpet Crawlers (5:08)
1-6 Alien Afternoon (9:03)
1-7 Domino (10:56)
1-8 Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) (5:32)
1-9 Congo (6:45)

2-01 Home by the Sea (8:23)
2-02 Second Home by the Sea (6:28)
2-03 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (2:46)
2-04 Follow You Follow Me (2:55)
2-05 Lover's Leap (2:38)
2-06 Not About Us (3:23)
2-07 Mama (6:51)
2-08 The Dividing Line (13:58)
2-09 Invisible Touch (5:14)
2-10 Turn It on Again (5:19)
2-11 Throwing It All Away (6:48)
2-12 I Can't Dance (6:50)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Very Good

Comments: At the Hartwall Arena (not Hartwell; at least according to Simon) in Helsinki, Finland, the band at least considered this to be the last show of their tour. Ray makes references to this several times in the show, as well as to the fact that he has hurt his back (he must not have been able to do even what limited gyrations he was wont to perform on stage that night). Actually, in his initial introduction to the audience, he greets them with a hearty "Good evening; we are the Backstreet Boys!" Phil probably never would have said this, but it's quite funny all the same. In his first introduction, Ray produces some bits of the native language that he has learned by heart, commenting that "This is the toughest language yet" (sadly, I am ignorant of the identity of the native tongue of Finland--Finnish??). True to this assertion, Ray does not use the difficult language again; hopefully most of the audience could understand English. They do seem at least to grasp what Ray is telling them in his lighting rig intro for HBTS--the story goes down well, especially with the people near the taper, who find it quite funny.

The intros are pretty standard here, with no surprises, but the show quality is really quite good. There are no noticeable cuts and the performance is fairly polished. I'm even tempted to up my rating. One strange unique feature of this performance is that instead of pulling a girl from the audience to dance with, for the final encore of "I Can't Dance" Ray dances with a roadie in drag (this is confirmed by Alan Hewitt's comments on the gig on the Movement). On the recording you can hear Ray make amused comments like "Isn't he gorgeous?" and, later, "He's the chef!" In his excitement, Ray seems to skip an entire verse of the song: the verse beginning "Young punk spilling beer on my shoes" is not there. A memorable show, and another in a long line of very well-recorded audience shows from this tour.

Rock Am Ring

30/5/98

1-1 Calling All Stations (7:22)
1-2 Land of Confusion (5:04)
1-3 No Son of Mine (6:51)
1-4 Domino (11:14)
1-5 Congo (6:30)
1-6 Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea (12:50)

2-1 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (1:59)
2-2 Follow You Follow Me (3:26)
2-3 Not About Us (3:14)
2-4 Mama (6:43)
2-5 The Dividing Line (12:09)
2-6 Throwing It All Away (5:58)
2-7 I Can't Dance (7:37)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good

Comments: The last two gigs of the CAS tour were played nearly two months after the previous show (which was on 5 April in Helsinki--see above entry), and both were at German rock festivals. However it seems difficult to pin down exactly what those shows were called and where they were held. Boot sites call this festival "Rock Am Ring" and say it was held at a place called "Nurburgring." The official site dubs it "Rock in Ring" and cites "Nuremburg" as the venue. It's possible that these naming differences have to do with the way you'd pronounce the location in German and English. Who knows? I'll tell you who: 40,000 drunk Germans, which is how Ray describes the audience at this show.

These last two gigs were strange ones, not regular Genesis gigs, so the set list is abbreviated and somewhat rearranged. The close observer will notice that a lot of the older numbers ("Lamb," "Carpet Crawlers," "Lover's Leap") have been dumped, but also newer ones like "There Must Be Some Other Way" and "Invisible Touch" and even "Turn It on Again" are gone (the next day's set was very similar, though the beginning songs were rearranged and the latter two songs I just mentioned were added back into the set). This is a particularly short set for the band.

The sound is OK--good, but not great. Other boot sites seem to rate the quality of this show very high, which makes me wonder if they're listening to some other version (it seems at least one alternate version exists with bonus tracks from the Budapest warm-up gig). The audience has a habit of talking which can be somewhat distracting. There are split second pauses between tracks, though you don't really notice them (they're very short--1/30 of a second). Ray does hardly any talking to the audience; the first time he addresses them is after "Domino," when he says "It's fucking freezing!" and commiserates with the crowd, hoping that they all have plenty of alcohol. He introduces "Congo" as the first single they released from the new album, which is a bit odd as he never really had an intro for "Congo" during the regular tour. The lighting rig story for HBTS is removed--perhaps they didn't have the lights--and Ray just says that he'd like a nice German girl to spend romantic weekends with (at his home by the sea, of course). For some reason the introduction to the acoustic set has been left at the end of disc one--bad tracking. It's after FYFM that Ray makes the memorable comment: "You sing well for 40,000 drunk Germans." Apparently this audience was a bit too daunting for Ray, as he does not seem to venture into the audience to pluck out a dancing girl for "I Can't Dance." Maybe there weren't any girls there...

There are no cuts in any of the songs, which is very nice. One can assume that by this time the new Genesis line-up knew their stuff. The performance is a good one.

Rock In Park

31/5/98

1-1 Land of Confusion (5:22)
1-2 Calling All Stations (7:05)
1-3 No Son of Mine (7:09)
1-4 Domino (11:09)
1-5 Congo (6:47)
1-6 Home by the Sea (5:54)
1-7 Second Home by the Sea (6:29)

2-1 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight (3:16)
2-2 Follow You Follow Me (3:01)
2-3 Lover's Leap (2:24)
2-4 Mama (6:44)
2-5 The Dividing Line (13:15)
2-6 Invisible Touch (5:13)
2-7 Turn It on Again (6:10)
2-8 I Can't Dance (8:21)

Type/Quality: Audience/Good-Fair

Comments: This is the very last show of the CAS tour, played at some kind of festival somewhere. Both the name of the festival and the venue seem to be under question, as different sources have different answers. The more reliable sources (Hewitt and the official site) call the festival "Rock in Park." However, The Movement and at least one other boot site call it "Rock Im Park." (As you see, I have decided to go with the title that makes more sense in English.)

Ray mentions that the crowd might see them again next year, with a new album (how wrong he was...). Being that this was a big festival with a number of bands involved, the set here is much shorter than at other gigs in the tour. For some reason, the normal opening number of "No Son of Mine" has been moved to the third position. The quality is fairly good--very understandable, though a bit rough. There is a hitch during "Lover's Leap." To add to the standard Genesis mystique of the occasion, there is rain at the festival. Before the encore, Ray sings a bit of some song that talks of rain--he then asks the audience why it is raining. I assume it was a rhetorical question. Needless to say, an interesting show to have. Ray particularly seems very casual at this performance--he was really growing into his front man position (either that or he was a little tight), and his vocals are a bit inventive.

The Singles, 1997-1998

Congo (Data CD, "Enhanced" portion) (1997)
Features various interview clips, video for the single, and 3D animation set to part of "Second Home by the Sea."

Congo (1997)
1 Congo (edit) (3:13)
2 Papa He Said (4:07)
3 Banjo Man (4:20)

Not About Us (1998)
1 Not About Us (radio edit) (4:04)
2 Anything Now (6:58)
3 Sign Your Life Away (4:44)
4 Run Out of Time (6:07)

Not About Us (1998)
1 Not About Us (radio edit) (4:04)
2 Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (2:06)
3 Follow You Follow Me (2:56)
4 Not About Us (extended version) (3:35)

Type/Quality: CD/Excellent

Comments: The inexpertly taken photo above (taken by me, of course) shows the covers of three of the singles listed here. I found them all at the Princeton Record Exchange in Princeton, New Jersey, my favorite record store in the world, because they have really weird stuff and great atmosphere (I once heard "Supper's Ready" playing in a back room!). Anyways, most of this entry is little more than me showing off that I have these, because all of these tracks are already featured on the previous CDs--with the exception of the radio edits of the album tracks, and I don't see why anybody would want them, since they have less music in them than the official songs you probably already have. However, if you're a real completist, I've got them, and I'll swap them. The "extended version" of "Not About Us" is, you'll notice, shorter than the radio edit, and is in reality only the acoustic live version of the song played at the RTL Studio (quite a good version of the song, IMO). I think the reason it was called "extended" may be that the normal acoustic version of this song played later in the tour was indeed shorter than this one.

Now, let's explain the singles: it was the common custom of music companies in the late 90s to release a single in two parts, each part a different disc with different b-sides. For CAS, three different songs were released as singles, each in two parts, making for six different possible discs. There were, thus, three other singles from this album in addition to the ones I have pictured above; two of them were "Shipwrecked." On one version the b-sides were two instrumental tracks ("7/8" and "Phret"), and on the other version they were live acoustic versions of "No Son of Mine," "Lover's Leap" and "Turn It on Again" from the Cape Canaveral album launch. All of those tracks are on the first two entries in this section. The other single was a very limited edition of "Congo" which was backed with an edited version of "Second Home by the Sea" (from the Phil era, either the WCD or IT tour). It also had CD-ROM stuff, including a video for the a-side. What I have listed as the first single in this entry is the multimedia material from this "Congo" single.

Featured on this disc are a lot of quicktime movies, first and foremost of which is the actual promo video for the single--it has so much water in it that just watching it will make you want to get a towel. Also the idea of putting Tony and Mike in black leather and sunglasses is more laughable than "cool." The video is in widescreen format. Another big movie file contains a 3D animation which is kind of a concept of how the live show would look. The virtual camera flies over and around the animated stadium while the studio version of "Second Home by the Sea" plays. On the jumbotron screens in the back of the stage it plays some of the same footage that was used during "Domino" and "Driving the Last Spike" on the WCD tour. The rest of the movies are little clips from interviews with Mike Tony and Ray, all of them talking about the new band, album and tour and the circumstances around it. A lot of the video for these clips is just the guys on a couch, but sometimes they splice in clips of the band on location, probably doing the video shoot for "Congo." There's a particularly, painfully ironic one about Ray being really excited to play in North America--it just hurts to watch it. All the movies are rather tiny and the quality is not excellent, but they had to fit them all onto the CD somehow.

Now I have a Mac so I'm unable to do anything with this disc but watch the individual movies, but if you have a PC like my wife (and you probably do), you can stick this into your drive and watch the movies using the designed interface which allows you to pause, fast forward, rewind, etc. The interview movies are broken up into topics which you can skip to, and for each topic you can click on a photo of one of the band members to skip to their particular comments on that topic. Also the video of "Congo" has the lyrics written out on the screen and does a sort of karaoke thing where a line appears under each line of lyric as it is sung. It's a nice interface that they created, although it may take a little bit of tinkering to figure it out. I'm happy to have this, it being a limited edition thing in the first place--although I wish I had the audio tracks as well...By the way, if you stick this disc into an audio CD player, it reads one track which is 16 minutes of total silence. Weird, eh?