earliest known Genesis recording
La Ferme, Woluwe St Lambert, Belgium. 7th March 1971
1. Announcer's introduction and Peter's intro
2. Happy the Man
3. Cheese-and-onion crisp man story
4. Stagnation
5. intro
6. The Light
7. intro
8. Twilight Alehouse
9. story
10. The Musical Box
11. intro
12. The Knife
13. intro
14. Going Out to Get You
The show
Well here it is, the fabled La Ferme show; renowned as both the most appalling sounding Genesis recording, and also one of the most interesting, as it is the first known live recording of the band, predating by nearly a year the next known recording. It also documents their first overseas gig.
Concerning the venue, Michel Clares Grand from Belgium has offered this background:
"La Ferme" means The Farm (like the one in Surrey...). The complete name is "La Ferme Hof ter Musschen". It is a real farm that was in function until 1960. The exact address is "Avenue Mounier n¡2, 1200 Bruxelles".
In fact Woluwe-saint-Lambert is one of the 19 townships that form the entity of Bruxelles (Brussels), the capital of Belgium. I live in Anderlecht, which is also one township among the 19, two miles away from Woluwe-saint-Lambert.
"Woluwe" is actually a small river that flows about 200 meters from the Farm. Not so long ago, the whole region around the Farm was a huge marsh. Hundreds of different kinds of birds, animals and plants lived in an incredible wild environement. Now it's just a nightmare of highways and buildings, with the Brussels International Airport a couple of miles away, and businessmen everywhere!
Everywhere except around the Farm. Thanks to the efforts of a group of people in love with the place, they forced the authorities to buy the Farm around 1970. The municipality installed his Cultural Center there, which also meant a theatre and concert room. The region around the Farm is since then a protected reserve, where wild nature is kept just as it was in the 1970's. I can tell you this, even though I was only born in 1970, because I know the people who voluntarily take care of the reserve since that period.
In fact, every first Sunday of the month, a guided visit of the Farm and the protected reserve is organised by those people. I have visited the Farm several times, and they say the place is still as it was then. The Farm nowadays has the same cultural function, but honestly, it is quite small. Therefore, only contemporary theatre takes place there.
What insight into the world of early Genesis does this tape give us? My first impression is of how good the band sound. Despite all the lad's recollections about how attrocious their equipment was, and how amateurish the performance arrangements often were, this tape documents a fine performance. Bare in mind that this was also a very new band; they had relatively recently lost Ant, one of their original inner circle, Phil had joined some 7 months previously, and Steve only debuted 2 months before. So one would expect things to still be in a settling in phase. Whilst that is evident in some aspects, such as Steve's evolving guitar lines for Twilight Alehouse, the band as a whole are cohesive and show why they turned heads, even at this early stage in their career.
What is also interesting is that the setlist is very similar to the setlists that they would still be playing a year later. Beginning with Happy the Man, going on to Stagnation, Twilight Alehouse, The Musical Box (still in its development, with the central section the same as they recorded it for the 1971 BBC session), and concluding with Knife and Going Out to Get You.
The unexpected and unique treasure on this recording is the only known recording of a performance of The Light, a Collins song which never reached the studio. Although it was dropped not long after, elements of it appeared years later incorporated in The Lamb. Instantly recognisable is the main song, the music of which became Lillywhite Lilith - even the song's title seems to anticipate Gabriel's later lyrics; "2 golden globes float into the room, and a blaze of white light, fills the air". There is also a keyboard riff in the middle which resurfaced in re-composed form in Raven, and the bass guitar intro of the song seems to be echoed in the intros to "In the Cage" and "Back in N.Y.C.".
A friend of mine recently commented on hearing this song, how in so many ways The Lamb was a conclusion for the band. With this final album they used up any remaining creative material they had still sitting around from previous years. The Gabriel-led line up had come full circle. From this perspective it is interesting to listen to the Light and the early Musical Box, and reflect on the final Lamb shows. In 1971 that short Lillywhite Lilith melody moves into a rambling composed instrumental section that threatens to loose momentum. Four years later, it is replaced with an improvised piece with far more cohesion and impact - the terrifyingly magnificent Waiting Room. And of course the whole live set is encored with a mature Musical Box that had by then established itself as a masterpiece of their repertoire.
At this time the band had only one album that represented them in any developed way - Trespass. What is interesting is that despite their need to promote the album, in this setlist they only played 2 songs off the album - Stagnation and Knife. What seems fairly evident is that they felt the need of the more dramatic musical material that songs like Going out to Get You, Twilight Alehouse and even The Light provided.
And then there are Peter's stories. Some songs, such as the Musical Box, have quite well developed stories that would change little as time went on. Other songs had no narrative at all, just amusing absurdist comments; "La lumiere, from out of the left nostril". And all told in Peter's haltingly delivered English and pigeon French. It is touching to hear him laughing self-consciously, a far cry from his austere self-confidence of later years.
The recording
Well, it's not the best is it? But it's amazing that we have it all.
The recording documents the entire concert, beginning with the local announcer, and concluding with him at the end of the Going Out to Get You encore. There are however a few inexplicable losses that are greater than one would expect with just a tape flip. The first minute of Musical Box is missing, plus the tail end of Gabriel's intro to this number. And there is a minute long chunk of Knife missing in the middle. It is possible that these occured due to taping problems at the time - perhaps the taper was just lost in the performance :-)
There are a few other small gaps; one is during the first verse of The Light, which fortunately I have been able to patch by grabbing a bit of the second verse and pasting it in. This shows that the gap was only around 1sec long, and there are a few other such gaps during the ambiences between songs that are probably of similarly short duration. In these cases I have just crossfaded the edits together.
This recording is best known from two bootlegs; 'Besides the Silent Mirror', and Highland's 'Twilight Francehouse' - a rather odd title since it comes from neither France nor the twilight of the band's career. I don't have a copy of the latter, so can only comment on BtSM. I understand that the source I've used is two generations closer to the master than that used for BtSM. The hiss on this bootleg is quite prominent in the midrange, and would be a lot more noticable if it were not for the savage frequency roll-off that has been used above around 3KHz.
BtSM misses the Belgian announcer's intro, and begins with the applause that greets the band onstage. Otherwise it is complete, and shows the gaps and edits present on the master tape. Beyond the missing top end, and a very boxy and bass-thin sound, it is a fair representation of the original tape, although it is pitched slightly sharp, and has a few unexplained volume drops, noticably on the concluding chord of Knife.
The restoration
I began with a transcription CDR from a low (reputedly first) gen copy of the tape. Running a spectragram of the recording showed that this source had a severe drop off in information above 4KHz, with cymbals and tamborine slaps appearing around the 6-7KHz mark. The 3KHz roll off on BtSM explains why hardly any cymbals can be heard on that version.
As anyone who knows this recording is aware, the hiss threatens to dominate the music throughout. It sounds distant, tinny, and hissy as hell. So dragging any information out of this sea of murk has not been easy. At first I was dubious I could improve it at all.
If you are listening to this Hogweed 12, and thinking, its still pretty hissy - well, it is. However it could have been a lot worse. I have taken 9Db of hiss out of the recording. To get an idea of how much that is, imagine 3 times as much hiss *relative to the musical information*. Another way of thinking of it is that if the hiss sounds comparable to BtSM, you are actually hearing 3 times the musical information for the same noise floor. Could I have taken more hiss out? I tried; it started to break up badly and loose what subtle musical information remained. It started to sound empty and lacking ambience. I chose to keep as much of the music as I could. So enjoy what hiss remains, its part of the history :-)
This recording also has a prominent microphone resonance around 2.5KHz - during the louder sections of songs like Twilight Alehouse you can hear this as a continuous ring, almost like a distorted feedback. I have attenuated this peak by 8Db, which is a lot, but as much as I could while avoiding a frequency hole.
The tape also has numerous electrical clicks, particularly during the first few songs. On BtSM these clicks (plus others in one channel only, which have been introduced later) have hissy surges around them, suggesting that a dolby decode may have been employed on that version. I have removed these.
There are also quite a few microphone bumps, fortunately occuring mostly during the ambience between songs. I have endeavoured to attenuate or remove as many of these as possible. There were a few that were much more difficult though, such as the one that occurs just into the beginning of Stagnation. This bump caused the auto record levels to drop the music volume noticably, which I've compensated for without having the hiss levels suddenly surge.
Because auto record levels were used on this one, the volumes do fluctuate a bit, rising noticably during the quiet bits. I could have restored the dynamics as I have on previous shows. But on this one, the amount of hiss would have made such changes distractingly noticable, so I have left them as they were recorded. More history.
Finally, there are several occasions when a hum of around 150Hz is heard. I am pretty convinced that this is a feedback from the stage, although whether acoustic or electrical, I can't tell. There is also a 250Hz harmonic as well, indicating that it originates with 50Hz mains power. So it is probably authentic, but it sounds aweful, and makes a few nice passages of music, particularly during a quieter section of The Light, sound very un-tuneful. So I've zapped it. Sorry all you purists and stage feedback afficianados, but as this is the only version of The Light that we know of, the least I can do is make it sound a bit more musical. If you want to hear the hum, listen to to BtSM.
So that is it. I fully expect that some newer listeners to Genesis's live legacy may think I've lost my marbles releasing this sorry excuse for a recording. I hope those who are familiar with the show will find it an improvement - as one of my 'auditioning commitee' commented, at least it is now listenable, which is better than previously. And I hope you enjoy hearing Genesis in their adolescence, especially The Light, although heard somewhat dimly through the years.
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