Wow...what a show. I'm still pretty fired up from being there and that was over 2 days ago now. The boys from Genesis may be a few years older now, but they can certainly still put on a show that puts many of these current day "pop" bands to shame. They energy they brought to the stage was so powerful and had it not been for the 11pm curfew time at the Garden who knows how long they would have played. You get your money's worth with these guys because you don't see many 2h:45m long shows these days. Phil Collins as a frontman is just amazing. How he can run back and forth between the drums and the main mic all night long and not fall flat on his face from exhaustion is beyond me. They'd finish one song and he wouldn't even take a deep breath before the next started. Talk about a hard charger.
As with any concert you go to there will be songs you wish they played and others you wonder why they played...no difference with this show. I do think they did a great job of picking songs that spanned the bands entire history and that has to make most people happy I'd think.
The drum duet by Phil and Chester Thompson that started out on a pair of stools and slowly moved back to the actual drumsets was breathtaking. You could literally feel the entire 15 minute duel inside your chest as they each whaled on the drums as hard as they could.
The one thing that I really wanted to touch on here, (that not only relates to this show, but most live performances one goes to nowadays), were the lighting and video elements that are part of the stage design. I think most people take them for granted, but if you stop to think about how much they have changed the entire experience of a live show in the past 5-10 years it's very remarkable. Before you had stationary lights, usually with a color filter slapped over them that would illuminate a section of the stage. It was the same lighting all show long...maybe a bit of dimming here and there, but that was it. Now there are LED's that can become any color of the rainbow in a tenth of a second and can swivel, pivot and turn 360degrees to create any effect imaginable. Every song can then have a feel or mood created by the lights, the direction they point and the intensity...all controlled by the artist. The video screen is another part that has changed over the years. Obviously there was noting at first but then these small, square, somewhat pixelated and grainy looking screens start to show up at some of the bigger concerts. Over the years they have evolved to something like what Genesis had the other night, a huge, curved screen that was able to display many different images at once or simply act as a monitor as they panned a camera through the crowd. The lights, the images, and most importantly the music make a live show all the more memorable, something you can't get when you buy a CD or download a song from iTunes.
Not the best photo, but you get the idea. And lastly...have you ever seen a concert t-shirt sell for $45 bucks? Honestly...we're talking about a t-shirt folks.
Big pow-wow meeting tomorrow morning to discuss our future plans for Team Xaverian and our commitment to the PMC in the years to come...should be very interesting. After that I have to get a few things done before I hit the road for NJ...as always, keep it real!
