Genesis: Manchester 1975 (Hogweed Remaster) FLAC

Palace Theatre, Manchester, 28 April 1975
original HW08 shn files >wav>flac via TLH by dave@qb October 2011

Notes by Colin Dodd: Take a little trip back. Not in this instance with Father Tieresius, but instead with Father Time. Back to late August of 1975, Thursday 21 August to be exact, the day the news broke of Peter Gabriel's departure from Genesis. I can recall the date so precisely as it was the day before the start of that year's Reading Festival and a friend and I were finishing getting our things together before setting out on the journey South. Before catching the train we dropped in at the newsagents to pick up the music papers, which came out each Thursday. The day had been going pretty well so far as we looked forward to three days of sex (unlikely), drugs (possibly) and rock and roll (definitely). It was about to take a turn for the worse.
Staring up from the front page of the Melody Maker was the headline we had been dreading: 'Genesis Seek New Singer'. So the rumours had been true. The MM had carried a front-page story some months before fueling speculation that Peter had quit the band following the completion of the Lamb tour. It was denied of course but even though we knew nothing of the tensions within the band at the time there was a feeling that there might be more to this than their management were admitting.
Throughout the weekend there was a lot of talk of the split and much debate on the future of the band without Peter. We were all still young and naive enough to believe that all bands were created in the image of the Beatles in Hard Days Night. They all lived together, were the best of mates and liked nothing more than making music together. Everybody loved them; they got filthy rich and lived happily ever after. Well maybe we weren't quite that naive but it was still a mystery why anyone would want to leave the band at this stage of their career when they seemed on the verge of achieving the success they had worked so hard for.
So in hindsight this second of their two nights in Manchester would be the final time we would see the classic line-up together. For that reason alone there is a certain poignancy attached to this show: this was the end of an era for the band and for me at least Genesis would never be quite so special again. They would still make some fine music together, but with Peter out of the band the pioneering spirit went with him and the slow but sure shift towards the mainstream began.
Again we had decided to record the show so the first task of the night was to negotiate the security on the door. A quick check at the merchandise stall and we took our seats and readied the recorder. Thankfully tonight there were no technical problems and the show started on time. Comparing the two nights at the Palace from a musical perspective would be nigh on impossible. Things were extremely well-drilled by this stage of the tour and despite the band's claims that only a handful of shows went without a hitch everything seemed fine from the audience. I don't even recall Peter forgetting his lines at this one.
The added bonus was that this time we did get the second encore of 'Watcher of the Skies'. The previous night's late start had meant that the show overran the Sunday night curfew time and the band had only been allowed to play a single encore. 'Watcher' was always one of their most dramatic live songs and this was possibly the finest version I remember seeing them do. A perfect meeting of the music and theatrics that conjured up an atmosphere that no recording could ever hope to capture. A truly majestic performance and a suitable memory of the final time we would see this line-up together.
Sadly the recording didn’t run quite as smoothly as the gig. Calculating the time remaining on cassette tapes was always an inexact science and unfortunately the tape ran out a couple of minutes before the end of 'it!' If that wasn't bad enough I then fell foul of the curse of the Philips C-120. Anyone who was taping shows at the time will remember these. On the face of it they were ideal for the job, giving a full hour between tape flips. However, the motor used in the average cassette recorder just wasn't up to pulling that amount of tape with any degree of accuracy. You only needed to get a tape that was a little tight and you were in trouble. The result was that the first twenty minutes or so of the new tape suffered from speed fluctuations, the remainder of 'it!' and most of 'The Musical Box' being rendered unusable. For this remaster Andrew has decided to replace both these tracks with the versions from my recording of the previous night. Thankfully by 'Watcher' the tape was running okay again.
Overall, these problems aside, I'm pretty happy with the results. The recorder was fairly basic by modern standards but did a decent enough job in capturing what was happening on stage.
Happy listening!

HW08
Palace Theatre, Manchester, 28th April 1975
This is the second of the two nights Genesis played at Manchester on the latter part of the UK Lamb tour, and also comes from Colin Dodd's tapes of the evening's performance. There is not really a lot to say about this remaster that I haven't said in my notes for HW02; the 1st of the Manchester concerts. The performance as ever was exemplary, with an awesome extended Waiting Room (Peter adding vocals), and the second encore with Watcher of the Skies. The master tapes of this evening are, if anything, slightly brighter than those of the 27th, which may be just an example of how tapes degrade inconsistently over time rather than anything in the original recording itself. The tapes (two Phillips C120s) were flipped during the applause after Chamber of 32 Doors, and when the first tape runs out about a minute into 'it!'. I have patched the applause in the first flip, but as Colin mentions in his comments, the second flip caused more of a problem... The tape speed wobbles that are present on the second tape are quite extreme to begin with, 'it!' is pretty unlistenable. 'The Musical Box' also has this regular lift in pitch, from the tape slowing, 'grabbing', during recording, although as the tape progresses the problem eases. On Colin's original transcription of his tape, which has been circulating on CDR, he only replaces 'it!', so you can hear the problems that remain on 'Musical Box'. I have chosen to totally replace both 'it!' and 'Musical Box' for this remaster. During the audience interactions between songs, these speed wobbles are not apparent. So I have retained the audience sections; the applause after 'it!' and Peter's intro to Musical Box, and the applause between MB and 'Watcher'. You can still hear the pitch instabilities slightly during Watcher, but of course, it is a feature of this evenings concert, being the encore that was missed the previous night. As with HW02, I have made a new transcription of Colin's master tapes, optimising for mono. I have then denoised the recording and lifted the treble out a bit more. The bass was nice and strong, and there was no need for eq balancing. Early reflections were added to the final audio to open up the mono soundstage a little. As with the 1st Manchester recording, I have had to place the disc side edit between Waiting Room and Anyway, to give 2 discs of roughly equal length. This annoys the hell out of at least one friend of mine, who likes to hear the whole of the 3rd & 4th parts of the Lamb uninterrupted. All I can say in my defence is that I agree on aesthetic grounds, but considering that audio versions of these discs will be weeded on from one person to another, having 80 min discs is inviting copy errors. Also, with this recording featuring 'Watcher', it would have overshot the 80min mark anyway. The artwork for this release comes from Kryzsztoph Welian once again, who designed the cover to companion the earlier Manchester recording. Spot the differences :-))
PALACE THEATRE, MANCHESTER Apr 28, 1975 (Palace Theatre - Manchester, England) 2cdr
Recording - Audience/Excellent
Label - Hogweed Remasters HW08
Comment - Remastered from the Master Tapes.

CD 1 - 68:13
1-01. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway 5:03
1-02. Fly On A Windshield 2:43
1-03. Broadway Melody Of 1974 2:18
1-04. Cuckoo Cocoon 2:26
1-05. In The Cage 8:01
1-06. The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging 3:27
1-07. Story To Rael (pt 1) 2:09
1-08. Back In NYC 6:02
1-09. Hairless Heart 2:35
1-10. Counting Out Time 3:51
1-11. The Carpet Crawlers 5:37
1-12. The Chamber Of 32 Doors 6:10
1-13. Story To Rael (pt 2) 6:18
1-14. Lilywhite Lilith 3:01
1-15. The Waiting Room 8:32

CD 2 - 68:17
2-01. Anyway 3:42
2-02. Here Comes The Supernatural Anesthetist 2:25
2-03. Lamia Intro 1:43
2-04. The Lamia 7:07
2-05. Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats 3:16
2-06. The Colony Of Slippermen (Arrival) 2:38
2-07. The Colony Of Slippermen (pt 2) 6:28
2-08. Ravine 1:45
2-09. The Light Dies Down On Broadway 3:35
2-10. Riding The Scree 4:06
2-11. In The Rapids 2:29
2-12. It 6:34
2-13. Story Of Henry & Cynthia 1:29
2-14. The Musical Box 12:54
2-15. Watcher Of The Skies 8:06

track looks like CDDA with probability 100%.) tested ok (file is decodable without error). no need for sector alignment.

rar files packed with a (winrar) recovery record -
links require copy and paste to browser
rapidshare.com:
http://lix.in/-afb76e
or
http://lix.in/-acaa36
http://lix.in/-ae30d7
http://lix.in/-afb778
http://lix.in/-a1fbd9
http://lix.in/-a3827a
http://lix.in/-a5091b
http://lix.in/-a68fbc
http://lix.in/-a8165d
or
http://zkzksz.link-protector.com
http://zkzksn.link-protector.com
http://zkzksc.link-protector.com
http://zkzksr.link-protector.com
http://zkzkss.link-protector.com
http://zkzmxx.link-protector.com
http://zkzmxw.link-protector.com
http://zkzmxv.link-protector.com

megaupload:
http://lix.in/-a50961
or
http://lix.in/-a1fc29
http://lix.in/-a382ca
http://lix.in/-a5096b
http://lix.in/-a6900c
http://lix.in/-a816ad
http://lix.in/-a99d4e
http://lix.in/-ab23ef
http://lix.in/-acaa90
or
http://zkzmxc.link-protector.com
http://zkzmxr.link-protector.com
http://zkzmxs.link-protector.com
http://zkzmwx.link-protector.com
http://zkzmww.link-protector.com
http://zkzmwv.link-protector.com
http://zkzmwk.link-protector.com
http://zkzmwm.link-protector.com

Comments welcome.