A chilly November morning in 1992. A man gasps under the weight as he carries heavy boxes into the sparsely lit storage room of a record store. Soon he vanishes with his grey minibus into the dense fog that covers the city. Harry, the record shop owner, drowsily begins to open the first of the many boxes. Upon seeing its content memories of the last twelve months shoot through his mind.
Yes, it was almost exactly one year before that this band had released a new album, and he had sold hundreds of CDs, LPs and MCs. That summer the band sold out the biggest stadiums in North America and Europe and played their music live to millions of people. Harry would have loved to go to one of those shows, he reflected, but they had all been sold out. Now, however, he can make up for what he missed out on because the CD he has just unwrapped is the first part of the new Genesis live album called The Way We Walk.
He puts the CD into the CD deck and presses play, and the show opener Land Of Confusion begins to blast out of the two small speakers on the ceiling. Harry is completely numb to anything else for the next 64 minutes, for one hit chases the other: No Son Of Mine, Jesus He Knows Me, Throwing It All Away, I Can't Dance, Mama, Hold On My Heart, That's All, In Too Deep, Tonight, Tonight,Tonight and Invisible Touch. He is ecstatic. The sound quality is absolutely perfect (though he does not get ‘that live experience’), and the selection of songs does not hurt the sales potential of this album in the upcoming Christmas trade. A CD-shaped cardboard bit points out that the second part of the CD is to follow in January 1993. It will be called The Longs and consist of Dance On A Volcano / The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway / Musical Box / Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like, Driving The Last Spike, Domino, Fading Lights, Home By The Sea and the Drum Duet. Reading these lines Harry realizes that there is a customer who will be even more delighted about the second album than about the first. He is a big Genesis fan who pines for the old days of the band and for whom the songs on the second CD were the real highlights of the 1992 tour.
by Helmut Janisch
English by Martin Klinkhardt
first published in German in it magazine #5 (Dec 1992)
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