Genesis: West Palm Beach 1975 (Hogweed Soundboard Remaster) FLAC

Convention Hall, West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
(Possibly Gusman Hall, University of Florida)
10th January 1975

Disc 1
01. Peter's Rael Introduction
02. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
03. Fly On A Windshield
04. Broadway Melody Of 1974
05. Cuckoo Cocoon
06. In The Cage
07. The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging
08. Rael Story pt. 2
09. Back in N.Y.C.
10. Hairless Heart
11. Counting Out Time
12. Carpet Crawlers
13. The Chamber of 32 Doors

Disc 2
01. Rael story pt. 3
02. Lilywhite Lilith
03. The Waiting Room
04. Anyway
05. Here Comes The Supernatural Anesthetist
06. The Lamia
07. Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats
08. The Arrival
09. A Visit To The Doktor
10. Raven
11. Ravine
12. The Light Dies Down On Broadway
13. Riding The Scree
14. In The Rapids
15. It!
16. Henry story
17. The Musical Box

The Show
The Florida Lamb shows are a source of some confusion for several reasons. Traditionally it has been understood that Genesis's first two shows in the US to recommence the Lamb tour at the beginning of 1975 were at West Palm Beach on Jan 10th, followed by the Civic Centre, Lakeland on Jan 11th.
However, Alan Hewitt has recently suggested, based upon his research, that they played the 9th of January also, and that both the 9th and 10th were performed at the Gusman Auditorium, University of Miami, Miami, Florida - a venue they were familiar with from the Selling England Tour. This information comes directly from a set of tour itineries given to Alan by David Lawrence, Genesis's Chief Lighting Engineer on the Lamb Tour.
I presume the West Palm Beach date comes from an official tour list, so in the lack of any corroborating evidence for either venue, it seems the jury is out on this one.
To avoid confusion, I'm going to stick with the West Palm Beach date for no other reason than that it makes the following confusion a bit more resolvable...
There are two known soundboard tapes which are reputed to be of these Florida concerts. Both are nearly complete, each missing sections around the 'Anyway-Colony of Slippermen' part of the concert, and the intro to 'Musical Box'. These missing sections correspond to the running out of the C90 cassette tapes that were used.
Apparently Genesis recorded every night of their Lamb tour off the mixing desk in this manner, with the exception of those evenings such as the Shrine Auditorium when a professional multi-channel recording was made. Most of these tapes have found their way to The Farm, Genesis's recording studios in the UK. Here they await cataloguing and possibly some of them may be released in the future officially, if the Genesis Archive Club project proceeds.
Meanwhile, the two Florida tapes have become well known and widely bootlegged. It remains a mystery how these tapes became available at all, but the story I have heard (from an experienced collector who was in contact with the person who owned these master tapes) is that they were obtained from Mike Rutherford at the time of the performances. It seems that he may have given them to, or inadvertently left them behind with, a friend or colleague in Florida. The alternative I guess, is that someone copied them at the time (unlikely, as the masters don't seem to be amongst The Farm's collection), or just plain 'acquired' them.
Whatever, they are wonderful examples of Genesis's Lamb show, certainly among the best sounding that are currently available.
There remains the question of which tape is which performance. The two tapes are generally credited as being from the following dates, which is corroborated from audience recordings of both nights, and are recognised by;

10th January West Palm Beach:
This master tape begins a few seconds into Tony's keyboard intro, and cuts out just before the guitar solo in 'Anyway'. Side 2 runs from the middle of Steve's solo in 'Slippermen', through to the applause after 'it!'. A 3rd side picks up about 2 minutes into 'The Musical Box'.
Peter's intro before Lilywhite Lilith begins: "At this point in time our hero is taken by a blind lady named Lilywhite Lilith, into a large, round, dark, cave. And, two hovering balls, a few feet above the ground enter the cave and fill it with this very bright light and Rael becomes overcome with fear..."
RoIOs include: 'The Lamb Descends on Waterbury' and 'Supper's Ready with a Little Lost Lamb'. 'Lamb Descends' has excellant quality sound, but uses extensive sections from the Providence, Rhode Island 74 audience recording to fill the gap in the middle of the show, and adds Lamb rehersal tracks from Headley Grange 1974. 'Lost Lamb' has poorer sound, and adds 'Suppers Ready' from the Rainbow 73 radio broadcast.

11th January, Lakeland:
Master tape begins similarly a few seconds into Tony's keyboard intro, but runs out earlier about 2/3 of the way through 'Waiting Room'. Side 2 picks up similarly during Steve's solo in 'Slippermen', going through to audience applause after 'it!'. Side 3 cuts in about 1 minute into 'The Musical Box'.
Peter's intro before Lilywhite Lilith begins: "At this point, our hero... no, not in... (pauses, someone in the audience calls out "Suppers Ready") No. Our hero is taken by a blind lady by the name of Lilywhite Lilith, into a large round cave, (bass pedal note from Mike), with a big, bass floor, and the floor of the cave is covered with wet rocks, and this little tunnel which lights up as two, golden, hovering globes, hover into the cave filling it with a big bright light. And our hero is overcome with fear..."
RoIOs include: 'The Lamb Lives', 'From One Fan to All Others'. These two discs are identical, and which plagiarised the other I don't know. Both edit sections from the Providence, Rhode Island audience tape to fill the omitted sections.
Both these dates are confirmed by the existence of audience recordings. And by the way, the 'Rael Imperial Aerosol Kid' boot is not a soundboard recording (as I mistakenly thought for quite a while) but the Providence Rhode Island audience recording, minus the second encore 'Watcher'.

The Sources
I have remastered this recording from a known 1st generation tape, thus made directly from the master soundboard tapes.
To fill the missing sections of the concert, I have chosen to use the audience recording of the actual concert rather than a better sounding recording from another night, particularly one such as Rhode Island which dates from a month earlier and a different leg of the tour. Whilst this provides an authenticity to the final edit, the sound quality of this audience recording is not the best. It has some pretty heavy overload distortion throughout, especially in the bass, and is a fairly distant recording which lacks detail. On the up side; it is in stereo, and is nearly complete, running out toward the end of the intro to 'The Musical Box'.
I know my decision to use this recording may be not to the taste of all, but it just sounded right. I did try other sources, and none of them blended in as well as the correct one, despite the poor audio quality. To be honest, all the audience tapes sound noticably poorer compared with the soundboard one, so which ever source I used you are going to hear a pronounced drop in fidelity. Also, the distortion problems prevalent throughout much of this recording didn't seem to be too abnoxious during the sections required, especially Peter's intros.
Also, to use another recording (and Rhode Island does stand out) would simply be to create another version of 'Lamb Descends on Waterbury'. With this remaster, you can hear the complete concert as it was originally performed. And besides, I hope to be remastering the Rhode Island tape seperately in the near future.
The W Palm Beach audience recording is sourced from a low, but unknown, generation tape.

Restoration
This soundboard tape is in stereo and is bright and clear, with good dynamics. Apart from doing a clean transcription, little needed to be done to it. I have taken care to get the stereo phasing correct, as it wandered a little during the playing of the tape (only noticable if you're playing this in mono).
The treble is very clean but a little bright, giving a 'thin' sound, which is evident on the 'Lamb Descends' boot. I have balanced this a little, and boosted the sub-bass harmonics, giving Tony's pedals the required oomph!
I have not denoised it, as the hiss levels seem to come primarily from the mixer. You can hear how they vary throughout the performance. Where tapes were used during the performance (such as the bridge from 'Cage' into 'Grand Parade', and the end of 'Slippermen') the hiss from these is quite noticable. There are also times when onstage equipment buzzes are quite prominent as well. To try to denoise a recording like this would just not work.
There is not a lot of stereo infomation. Most of the mix is near-mono, with Steve's guitar adding a few nice spacial moments (eg; Musical Box) or Tony's keyboards (Ravine). I have not added reverb or any other enhancements, so what you hear is the clean soundboard mix, complete with whatever effects were used on the night (and some are very noticable, particularly on Gabriel's voice and Hackett's guitar).
One puzzling feature of this tape is a strange high frequency noise during quiet sections such as Gabriel's intros. It sounds like a bird 'twittering'. I have no idea where this noise comes from, but may be interference from the mixing desk somehow. Anyway, I have carefully removed it because, whilst it may be 'authentic', it sounds downright wierd and distracting. If you want to hear this noise in its original state, listen to 'Lamb Descends'.
The audience tape was frequency balanced to blend in as best as possible with the soundboard tape. I have used it as little as possible, chosing to edit in the middle of songs to exploit the most of the soundboard tape that exists. This means some very obvious edits. I reason that any edit between these two sources would be obvious, so please use a little listening license :-))
I'm sure it pretty obvious, but the audience tape is heard at the very beginning as Gabriel introduces the show, during the missing Anyway-Slipperman section, and for Gabriel's intro to Musical Box. More subtely, I have also blended it into the applause and Gabriel's story interludes, so you can hear the audience's interaction, and the reverb from the hall.
The first 2 minutes of Musical Box is missing from both the soundboard and audience tapes. I have chosen to use the Rhode Island 74 tape to begin the song, blending to the Lakeland soundboard after that first minute and a half, and then editing into the West Palm Beach tape when it picks up a minute or so later.
There are two gaps in proceedings not represented on either recording; one at the end of the audience applause after 'it!' and before Peter begins introducing 'Musical Box', and the other when the audience tape runs out before Musical Box begins. Both these missing sections give the impression of being quite short, possibly only 10 secs or so, and I have simply cross faded the existing tapes together.
There is no recording of a second encore; 'Watcher of the Skies', if it was played during this concert.

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