SACD / CD tracks:
No Son Of Mine
Jesus He Knows Me
Driving The Last Spike
I Can't Dance
Never A Time
Dreaming While You Sleep
Tell Me Why
Living Forever
Hold On My Heart
Way Of The World
Since I Lost You
Fading Lights
DVD content:
Full album in Dolby Digital 5.1 (audio only)
Full album in dts Surround (audio only)
No Son Of Mine (video)
I Can't Dance (video)
Hold On My Heart (video)
Jesus He Knows Me (video)
Tell Me Why (video)
Making of We Can't Dance - 2007 Band interviews
"No Admittance" - documentary about the making of the album
1992 UK tour programm photo gallery
Technical data:
The music videos are available in stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 and dts (as on the Video Show DVD). All other contents are Dolby Digital 2.0. There are no subtitles.
The album
24 weeks – that is how long We Can’t Dance topped the German album charts in 1991 and 1992. Ten of millions of records sold, a stadium tour, lots of single hits, funny music videos. In the early 1990s Genesis were a marketing machine sponsored by Volkswagen. Behind the façade of seemingly unapproachable musicians who had the recipe for the big success stands a varied album that also happened to become their last with Phil Collins. No, folks, we really can’t dance…
We Can’t Dance is over 70 minutes long. The former structure of the LP has long been broken up by the new medium. It is not always for the better, and We Can’t Dance has its longueurs, but it also has its long songs. Genesis like to challenge their increasingly pop-oriented audience again.
First there is pure mainstream, though. No Son Of Mine is a highly esteemed song in fan circles, but it was also the single that paved the record’s way to mega-success. The song is powerful, emotional, the drums are huge, Genesis are back with another sound than on Invisible Touch.
After that there is a colourful mix of pop songs and rock epics, but also a perfect arrangement of the combination of drums, keyboards and guitars. The production is classy, warm, occasionally dreamy and melancholy, but also rocky. Hold On My Heart, a Banks ballad, incurs the wrath of most fans, the finale, Fading Lights, is revered even by the staunchest prog purists. Between these are songs like Living Forever and Driving The Last Spike, songs only Genesis could write this way. Dreaming While You Sleep points out how Genesis may have developed with Collins, but that did not happen, of course. We Can’t Dance is not a classic album like Selling England By The Pound, but it is a mature work. Such an album can only be recorded by a band that has a long history and a broad range of musical styles. Fading Lights reveals it cannot get any better. Which is why the chapter of Genesis with Phil Collins was closed for the time being.
Read our full review of We Can’t Dance here.
The new mixes
Nick Davis said that he found the albums he had originally produced himself more difficult to remix than the others. You wouldn’t realize that on We Can’t Dance. Though you only notice a couple of details were changed the overall sound of the album was transformed into 5.1 surround sound perfectly. It is less the pop songs Never A Time or Way Of The World but rather gems such as Dreaming While You Sleep and Driving The Last Spike. Jesus He Knows Me sounds cheekier, too, more ambitious, as it were. And you will realize that there are a couple of changes from the original. Dreaming While You Sleep, for example, has a different vocal track at the end with an additional “oh”.
But these things are only an issue if you want to make one of it. We Can’t Dance has been produced well and the new mixes do not change a thing about that. The 5.1 version is even better, and it is a pleasure to amble, as it were, through the album.
Bonus material
The band interviews are not standard fare. The most interesting part on the DVD is the Making Of We Can’t Dance that was broadcast on VH-1 as part of the No Admittance series. We witness how the band try to relax on a bike tour, how Collins cannot get his vocals right and how the band debate in the studio. Never before had the band admitted a camera team into the studio while they were recording an album – another hint at how easy recording the album was for the band.
by Christian Gerhardts
translated by Martin Klinkhardt
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