Reading Festival, Reading, UK. 11th August 1972 The Concert This recording is the cure for anyone who believes that Genesis are a genteel English art band that can't rock. Its a gutsy performance and an appropriately gritty but detailed recording. The Knife in particular, is frightening in its power and intensity. Genesis were only on stage for around 50 mins, and this tape seems to capture the complete set. It sounds as though the recording was made from close to the stage, as the music is direct and clear - you can even hear some things happening on stage, not via the PA! Also it sounds as though the bulk of the audience are behind, not in front of, the microphone. The PA mix seems to be a bit wayward at times. Rutherford's bass is quite prominent, although this is primarily due to a 'wolf' note around 100Hz, which I think comes from the PA, not the recording. Gabriel's vocals get a bit lost at times, and possibly this is due to his cavorting with the mic stand, as described by Andy. The verses of Watcher of the Skies are a bit lamentable for this reason, not helped by the prominence of the backing vocals, which are somewhat wayward in tone. This sounds more like Rutherford singing, rather than Collins, but I'm not sure. But Steve Hackett's guitar is fantastic, one of his most aggressive and unrestrained performances. There is even a bit of unintentional feedback happening in Musical Box (tr 8, 6:50), which Steve uses to great effect. This show has been widely available for some time, both as traded tapes of varying quality, or the vinyl boot "Come Ancient Children". More recently, Highland's "Coastliners" disc contains The Knife and Twilight Alehouse from this recording, although not credited as such. If you have this disc, you may like to compare the sound quality with this Hogweeds version. It makes an interesting comparison :-) The Source My source comes from a CDR, thought to be from a 1st generation tape (thanks Mark :-). When I first heard it, I thought it was suprisingly good, not only sound quality, but quite hiss free for a tape of this period. Certainly 1st gen sounded very likely. Upon listening and working on this recording though, I have come to two hypotheses; Firstly, I believe this recording was made on a reel to reel machine. The sound quality, particularly the punch in the bass, is just too good for cassettes of the period. Also the noise frequency profile is more like that of reel to reel - more midrange than treble hiss, and very little rumble. Secondly, its possible the CDR I've worked from may come from the master reel to reel tape. There is some strong, low (around 30Hz) frequencies on this recording that are unlikely to have come from cassette, as the thin tape just won't carry them. One reason to doubt this theory, is that if this CDR came from masters(!), it would likely have retained this information in its travels. So the jury's out, but when all is considered, its a great source. There are a few edits in the recording, which sound as though they are on the master. 2 occur just before Knife, one at the beginning of Gabriel's introduction (tr 1, 1:31), which cuts in with "a brand new number...", the second cuts off the first 2 notes of the song. I have carefully restored these first notes, and I think the repair is pretty convincing, if I do say so myself :-). The last edit omits some audience ambience after the applause for Musical Box (tr 8, 10:18), and cuts in again just as Phil says "got a very important message here...". At first I thought this last edit may be a 90 min cassette tape flip, at 45 mins. However, I have several versons of this recording from different tapes, and all these edits are identical. The Restoration The recording is glorious mono, and I have done nothing to enhance that. The source was very stable and centralised in stereo, so I have left it that way. Denoising has been minimal, around 5Db of highs and mid frequencies. There are gentle swells in the background noise on this source throughout the recording. This is more noticable at some times than others. The denoising has not made this any more noticable, but neither could I balance it out. There were times, mostly at the beginning of the recording and between songs, when an amount of microphone fumbling was embarked upon. I have removed much of this, not by editing these sections out, but by filtering the bumps and scratches. There are several small dropouts, most of which don't detract. There is one which I have repaired, toward the end of Knife, when Gabriel sings "We have won!" the second time. Lastly, that 100Hz wolf frequency in the bass was attenuated 4Db, which just tames it a little, but you can still notice it, particularly during Watcher. __________________________________________________________________________________________ Reading Festival, Reading, UK. 11th August 1972 Memories of the show, by Andy Wilkinson. The annual Reading festival is held over August bank holiday weekend and is one of the most long and enduring festivals held in England, and goes back as far as the 60's. Originally known as the Reading Jazz, Blues, and Rock Festival, the organisers recognising the appeal of "rock" with more die-hard and willing devotees to attend the gatherings, concentrated the line-ups with an increasing number of known and less known rock "acts". By the early 70's Reading was seen as a showcase for up and coming British talent with a mix of the more established "name" bands as well as a diminishing smattering of blues and jazz. People like Rory Gallagher were perennial names at Reading year after year. The organisers were not slow to also include at least one or a couple of American artists too. So back to 72 and Genesis first appearance at the auspicious Reading festival: they were billed to play during the evening of the first day which commenced as usual around midday on the Friday. Still relatively unknown outside the club and college circuit of London and the home counties, this was to be an interesting test of their appeal in front of a very mixed bunch of festival goers, many present to see other more prominent headlining bands. If I recall rightly, they came on stage sometime around 8pm and were to be given little more than 40-45 minutes to play a relatively curtailed set. Being late August it was still pretty light at this time and they were to have limited use of any stage lighting during the early part of the set. With 40 odd minutes to play, it was going to be an interesting short set. They opted to go "hell for leather" from the start and kicked off with a frenetic "The Knife". They sure as hell grabbed a lot of people's attention as darkness fell, and PG was as usual the focus of everything up there on stage. Next "Twilight Alehouse" seemed to please the crowds with the slurred organ finale, then straight into "Watcher". For those who hadn't seen the band "live" before, this was a new song that had yet to be released on album at this time. Now getting pretty dark, the majestic choral opening really did catch the atmosphere of the evening, and the crowd was definately warming not to say mesmerised by a young band who sounded totally and radically different to anything that appeared before. "Musical Box" followed then it was to be the conclusion of a short but both ear and eye-catching set with "Hogweed". Always a great ending to the set with PG darting to the left then right of the entire stage, mike-stand held high above the head as if about to launch a javelin throw. They had stolen Friday evening musically and created a wonderful hour of festival atmosphere on a warm August evening. I recall a distinct puncturing of the mood after the set, created by the band Mungo Jerry who immediately followed Genesis. A one-hit wonder pop-skiffle outfit who only succeeded in exposing their own limitations following on the heels of such an upbeat set by Genesis. The line-up for that Friday evening was miscalculated and askew; however "G" were a relatively unknown outfit who could not be considered headline material at this stage in their career. They certainly turned heads by this performance and sure won many new friends.