From Genesis to ReGenesis - a Genuine Revelation?

Concert Review: ReGenesis, The Robin 2, Bilston, Staffordshire, England, March 7th, 2016.

Until last night, I didn't know where I stood in relation to the ever growing phenomenon that is the 'tribute band', but what I did know was that ReGenesis were the fourth such prostitute I'd visited during my lifetime.

I once saw Whole Lotta Led (or was it Fred Zeppelin?) supporting the magnificent Man, a band that in my book would take top billing over the real Probert Rant or Jimmy Plaigerism on any day of the week (that Earl's Court night in 1975 excepted). Last year, whilst struggling to find anything interesting to do on Glastonbury Festival's sorry Sunday, I decided to wander up a rarely traversed hill to watch the Bootleg Beatles. Shit couldn't come close. Bombed, Bald, Gorged & Bingo. There was a third . . . possibly the little known Austrian Fink Ploydt, or was it The Bald Eagles? I don't know, I'm getting old. But, last night was the first time I'd specifically shelled out a sheckle to see a bunch of middle-aged, pot-bellied fakirs masquerading as true musical heroes of mine - heroes that were the Genesis of 1967 to 1975 (yes, I include Trick of The Tail alongside the Gabriel era genius - an album up there with Rohypnol (or anything by Leonard Cohen) as an aide to seduction.

I didn't know what to expect, but for £17.50, I was at least hoping for a blow-out job. I went because, for some strange reason, I missed out on seeing both the genuine Genesis and Eno era Roxy Music, two bands that still do it to me today like they did on any day prior. On top of that, I was going to hear a live performance of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, all fully coitus un-interruptus. Welcome to the orgasmatron.

The ersatz band entered the arena - and for a while, the assembled audience shuffled uncomfortably, as cataracts and astigmatism refused to solve the 'are these roadies or is this them?' conundrum. But it was them. And without hardly a to do, The Lamb began to arise down in the church of St. Robin, Bilston - our Filmore East, our Filmore West - it's just about all we've got left in the middle-lands now.

The first couple of minutes with any prostitute is always a nervy foreplay, or so I'm told, and it was no different with Regina's sis - but by the time the first, eponymous, refrain had lain down and opened its lungs, all was in flagrante delecto. And, as my cortex stiffened to the rise of my pumping blood, I had a little think to myself: this was just like the real thing. Just like sex, except it was going to last for far more than the 6 seconds that go kaboom after the more regular, mind-wandering fantasy bit. Lie back and think of Uzbekistan.

What I also thought was this: to me, so much incredible, acid-fuelled prog and art music emerged in the 65/75 decade, that it renders classical music such as Beethoven's 2nd, Mozart's 25th or Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of The Earth, inconsequential. A Saucer Full of Secrets, Close to The Edge, The Rotters Club, A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, Thick as A Brick and so many other prog classics such as Beethoven's 7th, Stravinsky's Rites, and most stuff by Mahler, all deserve to deliver an aural shafting to the ears of the many for millennia to come.

And I thought of when I was in Prague a few years back; I'd gone to see a performance of Mozart's sauce-filled secret, an opera called La Climenza di Tito, performed on original instruments in the very theatre it had been premiered in some 250 years-ish earlier. On that day back in 17thingummy, the diminutive nutcase we all now know as Voolfy, had stood right there, down in the pit, where I was then looking; yes, the real him, shakily waving his baton at his own anonymous band of nervous musicians and performers. And the feeling of history and majesty and magical music was unimaginably overpowering. Those old notes and tunes now being played in the 21st Century, betrayed nothing more than Mozzie’s timeless genius and yet, all of its originating perpetrators were, in 2008, nothing more than dust and nonsense. Yes, the so and so orchestra of Prague conducted by the Austrian, Hink Whoever, were, in actuality, nothing more than a tribute band; rehearsed, hired and whoring to keep that great work alive. And oh, how they did.

So, really, all we needed to know about ReGenesis was whether they could pull The Lamb off, so to speak - and would it be served up like the favourite Sunday roast you wish your Mum was still around to make? Well, as I surveyed a sea of slack jawed, grey-headed, grey-faced, mainly bespectacled dribblers, all stary eyes agog - and even Magog, some with a Lilywhite Lilith in tow, I had the answer. You see the band were nigh on note perfect; the astonishing music was now being embellished and empowered by the sheer potency of licentious, live performance. Drum skins tuned to Phil Collins perfection, guitars a-Hackett, Rickenbacker twin necked bass/guitar a-Rutherford and keyboard Banks, all capped off by the angel Gabriel in the guise of an 8-month pregnant Barney Rubble, aka the brilliant Tony Patterson.

And it didn't matter a jot. A masterwork was nailed and, apart from what looks like the inevitability of WWIII looming large like a new game show upon the can't be arsed public, I was comforted in the knowledge that in 250 years to the future, clued in humans will be able to experience this music 'Live in Concert' too, in all its timeless, classical-genius glory & it won't matter any more jots that Gabriel and co will long have been singing with the Angels by then.

Barney/Tony was in total control, even if he did look as though he'd been in his potting shed experimenting with old gunpowder and weed killer. There were moments when the Peter Gabriel of today would die to have a voice like that. There was another moment when our Tone calmed both his band and us, the still-agog living dead, from a singalong, whistle-along, grunt and squawk-along cacophony, back down to an almost absolute silence, a silence punctuated only by the faint gurgling of the odd colostomy bag somewhere off in Robin's distant bowels. But even those increasingly familiar sounds, sqweaked and sqwonked in empathetic, Genesisorial splendour.

This was a non-dressed up rehearsal for the main event - to be unleashed later this year, and it didn't really matter another jot. This was the joy of sects, a non-doctor of a vibrating night and, as the climax exploded like a lascivious ram amongst the throng of wrinkled gristle, we all prayed that there was enough pump left in the hearts of our magnificent cuckoos to give us some very unsloppy seconds - and give it to us they certainly did. Twice more in fact. Firth of Fifth, followed by I Know What I Like, all coming together to dish up a three-dogging dinner of a night that most of us in the mashed pit almost died for.

It didn’t matter in the slightest that Gabriel, Collins, Hackett, Rutherford and Banks are too far up themselves these days to please a billion fans by getting it all together again and rebirthing as Genesis - after what seems like a thousand, wildebeest years. ReGenesis could do it just as good – and that’s all that really mattered. If they could swap Hink Whoever and his fiddlers in for Mozart and co., then Tony P for Peter G was a doddle. We got to hear our opera, our symphony, our Lamb and all I can say is thank you baby Jesus. Thank you, and thank you again.

So, if you're suffering from the type of latter year, musical impotence that another bloody Coldplay album has no chance of eradicating, ReGenesis are guaranteed to re-tread the lead in your pencil. Well they certainly did it for me anyway. I couldn't have had a better night with a bucket of Viagra and the blazing saddles of Lili von Shtupp warming up my commode. This show hit 12 out of 10 on my rarely twitching clapometer. Here's hoping I can get to see the full costume drama when it's wheeled out later this year.

Footnote: Eighteen months on from this brilliant night, I am duty bound to report that you’ll have to find another Genesis pretender to entertain your arthritis; ReGenesis have thrown the towel in – and that’s such a shame. But, I’ve recently seen Steve Hackett’s ‘Genesis Revisited’ show – and I’m still scraping myself of the ceiling. More of that some other time.

KJF 15/10/2018