Tour Edition 2CD of the Genesis HITS album

Information and tracklist:

On June 01 [, 2007] EMI/Virgin Records will be releasing a tour edition of their Turn It On Again – The Hits CD. The original single CD had 18 tracks from between 1973 and 1999 and was released in 1999. The new 2CD Tour edition contains 34 tracks from between 1970 and 1999. It also has a slightly different cover.

The double CD is to be released in two versions that only differ in the cover. As of now we do not have any details on these versions, but the tracklist has already been confirmed:

Tracks CD1:

Turn It On Again

No Son Of Mine
I Can't Dance
Hold On My Heart
Jesus He Knows Me
Tell Me Why
Invisible Touch
Land Of Confusion
Tonight Tonight Tonight
In Too Deep
Throwing It All Away
Mama
That's All
Illegal Alien
Abacab
No Reply At All
The Carpet Crawlers 1999

Tracks CD2:

Paperlate
Keep It Dark
Man On The Corner
Duchess
Misunderstanding
Follow You Follow Me
Many Too Many
Your Own Special Way
Afterglow
Pigeons
Inside And Out
A Trick Of The Tail
Counting Out Time
I Know What I Lik
Happy The Man
The Knife (edit)
Congo

It may not look the part, but the tracks and their order are definite.

Nick Davis has confirmed that the versions on the album will be the new remixes, except for Carpet Crawlers 1999. Even the edits that were already on the original HITS collection were done afresh using the new mixes.

It is worth noting that the band were involved in the selection of the songs (Tony Banks has been very active here).
This tour edition will be available until the end of the year [2007] only!

Album review

A reprint is not really unusual in times of big tours without a new album. Genesis already made good use of the opportunity with the 1976-1982 boxset. Turn It On Again – The Hits – we have already had that, too, in 1999. A compilation of their biggest hit singles along with a new recording of The Carpet Crawlers with Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel – eight years ago that was quite a sensation.

Much time has passed since then. Genesis are touring again and even a reunion with Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett seems not entirely unlikely anymore.

Even they way Genesis treat their own back catalogue has changed. The band’s whole history was reworked and lovingly remixed by Nick Davis, the outcome of which can be heard on the first boxset with the records from 1976-1982.

Now there is a tour edition of the Hits collection. 34 songs instead of 18, on two CDs and selected by none other than Tony Banks himself. And all the songs (Carpet Crawlers 1999 excepted) are new versions, or shall we say, fresh versions.

The tracklisting shows a somewhat inconsistent order of the songs: The album begins with Turn It On Again, moves on to We Can’t Dance and then works its way backwards through time. This order is interrupted by the final track on CD 1, The Carpet Crawlers 1999, Paperlate is placed strangely and the songs from the Spot The Pigeon EP would have been released before Wind & Wuthering if this were chronological. Calling All Stations is the unloved step child once more. It is represented by Congo only – right at the end, after The Knife. The Knife is actually a remake of the single edit – this actually goes for all single edits: They were reconstructed by Nick Davis. Remarkable is the inclusion of Happy the Man in this compilation as previously this song had been available only on the first Archive set.

As one would expect, the songs sound better than on previous releases. It is interesting to note that the Invisible Touch songs have much more oomph while on the material from We Can’t Dance more details become audible. The older the song the more substantial the improvement. Listening to Counting Out Time you could get the impression that it was not Peter Gabriel but Phil Collins who sang the lead vocals.

The new mixes leave the listener looking forward to the second and third boxsets. Opinions may differ as to whether or not this Tour Edition was necessary. It is not a bad thing at all if you want to get to know the music of Genesis, but the Platinum Collection may serve this purpose even better.

In the end Turn It On Again – The Hits (Tour Edition) is a sort of gimmick of the 2007 reunion tour as this limited edition will be withdrawn from the stores after December 31, 2007.

Author – Christian Gerhardts
Translation – Martin Klinkhardt