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Liner Notes: The Overlooked Night

For Genesis, the final three months of 1973 were spent touring and promoting their latest album Selling England By The Pound. The new show had been warmly received in Britain but the band's biggest challenge lay ahead as they set out to conquer the North American continent at last. Since their first appearance on American soil, in December the previous year at New York's Philharmonic Hall, some 17 shows during the subsequent Foxtrot tour had begun to create a cult around the Genesis name and American audiences were already falling under the spell of the band's music and Peter Gabriel's bizarre onstage antics. This time, with a brand new album under their belt, Genesis were keen to draw audiences from all over the continent in an effort to crack the American market. They were scheduled to perform 25 shows, kicking off in the eastern parts of Canada and the US, and leading them all the way to the west coast with a memorable stay at the celebrated Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles, California, where they played no less than six concerts in three nights.

During the short Foxtrot North American tour of 1973, Genesis had visited the city of Montreal, Canada, for the first time. The band would never forget this first contact with the province of Quebec and the warm welcome they had received there so they very naturally chose to play in Montreal again during the first leg of the Selling England By The Pound tour in the fall of 1973. They played the University Sports Centre on November 10^th, to a reception even greater than the previous year's, and they made a promise to return there before too long. After a short break over the Christmas holidays, Genesis set out on the second leg of the Selling England tour, with a lengthy series of dates in Europe, before crossing the Atlantic again to add some 43 new shows to their North American crusade, including two memorable evenings in Montreal. If the band members would recall the 1973 Roxy shows as being some of the finest Genesis performed, they would also remember Montreal's enthusiastic response, making this city a favoured stop for years to come.

By the time Genesis made good on their promise and returned to Montreal on April 20^th, 1974 for a two-night stay at the University Sports Centre, the Selling England By The Pound tour was nearing its end. As a bonus to fans of the band, the province's hottest rock radio station, CHOM-FM, had arranged to broadcast the second night's show. With this Montreal concert being one of the only two complete broadcasts of the Selling England show (the other being the famed London Rainbow Theater concert from October 20^th, 1973), home recordings of this show would become highly sought-after prizes among collectors and numerous LPs and CDs of this show have been released over the years. Nowadays, thanks to the wonders of the internet, a few high-quality versions have finally surfaced, one of the best of which is the FADE remaster release of 2003. At last, the fans can enjoy a recording worthy of this outstanding Genesis performance but should that be all we remember from the band's memorable stay in Montreal?

With the emphasis being on locating the best possible version of the April 21^st radio broadcast, the previous night's performance seems to have been overlooked over the years. Thanks to the efforts of a devoted fan, a recording of that first night does exist and it is this particular concert which we bring you here, at last in remastered form. As this was originally a much bruised audience recording, a great deal of hard work was needed to correct its many faults and we are sure that you will listen to this new version with keen interest. French-speaking fans will have a ball comparing the two nights as Peter Gabriel's spoken French noticeably improves from one night to the next…perhaps he received some heavy coaching on the afternoon of the second show? And let us not forget the unknown audience member who, right in the middle of 'The Cinema Show', proclaimed: “This is even better than Pink Floyd”! Apart from 'More Fool Me' which was replace on the second night with 'Horizons', the setlist was identical for both shows, as was the reception from the fans. And, if, as can be expected, there are tiny differences in the performances from one night to the next, noticing these will undoubtedly be a big part of the fun of discovering what happened on that “overlooked night”! Enjoy!

Harold Demure

Notes From the Re-Master

The only complete copy of this show known to exist is a 1^st generation cassette. For this project, we began with a CD version of this tape. There were two tape flip gaps present but otherwise the complete show was captured. This is generally considered a good quality recording but with the limited audience microphones available at the time, it is not surprising that there is no consistent signal much above 8,000 Hz.

The first major problem that needed to be addressed was the tonality of the show. The Bass was quite excessive and needed dynamic adjustment because the excess varied throughout the show. The location of the taper also caused an echoic, upper bass excess that was also reduced. This helped to make Peter Gabriel's stories more intelligible. At some points the tonality changed abruptly suggesting that the taper had to hide the microphones. In these situations, the midrange and treble were corrected as much as possible. Finally, the treble was quite hyper-dynamic but a de-esser filter was helpful in smoothing the response.

The other major problem was the noise. The baseline hiss was reduced using standard techniques. The settings to reduce hiss for the last segment of the show were difference suggesting that the tape used to record this segment had different characteristics. There was also some peak-specific noise in the left channel that occurred intermittently that required selective removal. Lots of clicks and pops occurred and were removed as were microphone bumps and excessive claps that suppressed the volume of the show intermittently. Dynamics were adjusted both to correct these suppression problems and also to enhance the listening experience. A speed check disclosed no need for speed correction and at that point the show was re-tracked and completed.

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