No. It was just a brief two minute segment during the encore of an extended version of “Turn It On Again”. As I mentioned above, it was both tribute and tongue-in-cheek. Your presumption is just silly.
£4.00 ticket price in 1980 is £16.85 today using the Bank of England's inflation calculator. Puts today's ticket prices for big names in perspective.
The Blues Brothers medley insert was 7.5 minutes long on this video from Wembley, 1987. I assumed it was similar for the rest of the tour. I think disturbed is not the correct word, but I would have been certainly disappointed to end the show with random unrelated songs. Either way, they choose the setlist they want to play.
On the video linked earlier they do the medley for over four minutes, plus Phil farts around introducing the band for three minutes. Seven minutes may not be much out of a concert but it’s long enough they could have played something else of substance. (And because it’s lame it feels twice that long.)
Ah, where to begin on how awful “The Lady Lies” is. Let’s start with the music. There’s the annoying sleazy sounding intro. Then we have an even more annoying melody on the verses. Then we graduate to a slightly less annoying (but still annoying) chorus. Then we have a tuneless and loud instrumental section. Gawd make it stop. Oh, and the lyrics. After a nice progression away from myths and legends into the real world, we are back in juvenile Fantasyland. So, what tale do the boys choose to regale us with this time? Why, it’s the story of a demon female who lures an innocent man to his demise via sex. Can we get much more cliche or more misogynistic? Really, guys, maybe you should have had a girlfriend check out these lyrics first. About the only nice thing I can say about this song (other than that they at least kept it under 10 minutes in length) is that there is some nice drumming and ensemble interplay on the fade out. Overall, one of Genesis’ worst songs.
Yeah, The Lady Lies. I’d never thought of the intro as being “stripper-y” but now I can’t hear anything else. Thanks, guys! What to say about the song, though? - well I like the music and the playing on the track enough that the lyrics don’t bother me (unlike Ball-meh-d of Big) I guess the lyrics are what happens when Tony stops trying to be metaphorical and obtuse and writes something more literal. (As much as a hackneyed old fairy tale can be literal, anyway...)
Well, I don’t know how convincing it is. I can’t explain why I find the melody to this song so annoying, and others will disagree of course. It’s like nails across a chalkboard to me.
The medley, IMO, was a hoot. For the most part it was a collection of rock standards. How does one get unnerved by Genesis laying out a bit of “Pinball Wizard”? Off the top of my head, I recall that the more standard pop tunes in the medley, like The Police and Culture Club songs, were hits that particular year, and they only played a snippet of each, just as a cheeky passing reference. Yet that’s all people tend to remember.
I always thought that TLL's was perphaps a metaphor for marraige or a relationship that might not be in your best interest, but the physical aspect keeps you drawn in....
Yes, the formal name of the country is The United States Of America. People use variations of that as a reference. As a self identifier, citizens commonly use the term “American”, much like people from Italy would refer to themselves as Italian. A person from Canada refers to themself as Canadian because that is the name of their country. Calling themselves “Americans” would make as much sense as people from Brazil calling themselves “Americans”.
Those were the days when tours were loss leaders; the money was in the sales of the albums on LP, cassette, or from about 1983, CD. It's only relatively recently that the money's been made from the gigs.
Why would that matter? They can play whatever they want. Many other established artists perform covers in their shows. Why should this particular band be an exception? Gabriel could have performed a Genesis song (and he did), and he could have easily performed another (which he didn’t), substituting a cover, that probably used up as much time as Genesis did with their medley. Why does Gabriel get a pass? Double standard? There are no rules here. You’re just making arbitrary standards. Can we include Gabriel’s silly, long-winded stories as time wasting twaddle? See? I can play that game too. The extended drum duet and medley barely add ten minutes to what is typically a 2 1/2 hr concert. It seems that this has less to do with the issue of playing covers, or time management, and more to do with your personal perceptions of what the band should or shouldn’t be. The band loosened up and had a bit of fun during the encore. No reason for anxiousness and pearl clutching.
Never liked the snippets of cover songs stuck in the middle of TIOA. Diluted one of their best singles, did too little with any of the cover bits to be interesting, and came off as a dumb shtick that failed to amuse and missed the mark. Bathroom break time I guess.
But those are not nationalities, which was the point I was attempting to make. A person can be referred to as South American or North American, in the context of being from a geographical region. When someone refers to another as being an “American”, it implies nationality, therefore a Canadian is different from an “American”. Is it common to refer to a native of Scotland or Ireland as British?
I thought "Beatles vs Stones" and "John or Paul" were tired arguments, but they seem positively novel and inspired topics for conversation compared to debating the propriety use of the term "Americans" to refer to US citizens.
Did you read one single word I wrote after this bit you quoted? If you did you'd see I went into great detail on my views. They didn't start including covers until they had nearly a dozen group albums to draw from (not to mention about a half dozen additional solo albums they chose to ignore completely) so it was time taken away from playing what the fans paid their hard earned money to hear. Also they are not a "jamming band". They were best known for and prided themselves on composition/arrangement/precision in performance - in other words they sucked hard at playing other people's music. Bands tend to move away from cover songs the longer their career goes on since they don't need them to fill out a setlist anymore. Its truly bizarre that a band who had dropped any cover songs from their concerts over a decade earlier (pre-Trespass) would begin to re-introduce them nearly a decade and a half later - not to mention first introducing long boring drum solos at least a half decade after every other band in the world had finally came to their senses and dropped them. Also above I mentioned the five and a half minutes of "crowd participation" time wasting garbage in that IT tour concert, but I forgot about the additional several minutes of "crowd participation" time wasting garbage he did also in that video as a prelude to performing Domino. For a band (with a much larger percentage of long songs than most bands have) to waste that much concert time on covers, drum solos and "repeat after me - Wooooooo" garbage for at least two separate five minutes blocks of boring embarrassment is just wrong. I'm afraid to watch/skim through that video again in case he did an additional third five minute "repeat after me - wooooooooooooo! woooooooooooooooooooooo! woooooooooooooooooooooo! woooooooooooooooooooooo! wooooooooooooooooooo! woooooooooooooooooooooo! wooooooooooooooo! woooooooooooooooooo! woooooooooooooooooooooo! wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! wooooooooooooooo! wooooooooooooooooooooooo! wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Sure they can do whatever they want, but if that's what a band (ANY BAND) wants to do, they won't be getting my money!
AGAIN - not reading what i said! If you did you would have read: "...didn't otherwise have enough songs to fill his set," How is that Gabriel "getting a pass" or "a double standard"? Again I said "...but Genesis had not only something approaching a dozen albums at the point they did their "Blues Brothers" medley..." How exactly is it a "double standard" to say Gabriel could be forgiven for using covers (and not that many of them either - he also previewed an original song or two from his as yet unrecorded second album - and performed Here Comes the Flood twice - to open and close the set - one solo and one full band) to fill out an hour and a half set while supporting only one 45ish minute album, but it somehow unreasonable to expect Genesis (having nearly ten hours of original recorded music to draw their setlists from by that time) to not play covers? (not to mention drum solos, or having a screaming match back and forth with the audience for at least ten minutes per concert - no wonder he blew out his voice by the 'We Can't Dance' tour)
Gabriel's stories served an actual purpose - at least in the beginning. Would it have been preferable for him to stand on stage motionless and quiet, whenever there was a power cut, or a technical gremlin (the mellotron was notoriously prone to malfunction) or while the anally meticulous guitarists (sometimes all three of them - including Banks) would insist on tuning up their twelve string guitars between every number? Anyway I'd certainly prefer that to Phil's screaming at/with the audience for at least ten minutes per show. At least a story could be mildly entertaining. Sure the drum solo and medley dont eat up very much more than ten minutes, but add the ten minutes of Phil screaming at/with the audience to that. That's time they could have played - oh I dunno - "SUPPER'S READY" Or perhaps 'Firth Of Fifth' AND 'name your other favorite 10 minute Genesis song' or instead just four shorter songs....
