CD Cover	CD Back	CD Tray
CD Inside Cover	Booklet Pages 3 & 6	Booklet Pages 4 & 5

CD 1 Label	CD 2 Label

Download printable artwork here

Download The Liner Notes Here

Liner Notes: Everything Alive

More than 32 years after its release, 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' by Genesis continues to stir passions among the band's devotees the world over. From the lucky few who saw the original stage show to the latter day fans who are only now discovering the mystery and magic of the group's magnum opus, the album has left very few Genesis fans untouched. To the die-hard or casual fan, 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' is still a much favoured subject of discussion and the amazing stage show which Genesis created to promote the album has also left its mark through time, rightfully hailed as one of the genre's finest. Live recordings from the 'Lamb' tour are still highly sought after by avid Genesis collectors.

Genesis performed 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' in its entirety on stage more than a hundred times over the course of the tour that ran from November 1974 to May 1975, and it is estimated that about 45% of these performances were taped, in full or in part, by fans in the audience. The quality of these recordings varies according to the recording equipment used at the time, the location of the taper and the acoustics of the various concert halls and theatres. Many of these recordings have taken years to surface but, thanks to the advent of the internet and the birth of worldwide fan trading groups, they are now widely available and relatively easy to track down.

Soundboard or multi-track recordings from the 'Lamb' tour were, for a time, a much rarer breed and shrouded in mystery. Unlike its predecessor, the 'Selling England By The Pound' tour, which was represented on the radio with live broadcasts from the London '73 and Montreal '74 shows, a complete performance of 'The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway' was never broadcast. Only a few highlights from concerts recorded by King Biscuit in LA and the BBC in London reached the airwaves, making for a meagre selection of high quality recordings for avid fans to add to their collections. For more than 20 years, the same broadcast excerpts were exploited and repackaged by bootleggers, giving birth to countless LPs and CDs of varying quality and content, some of them mixed with excerpts from earlier or later Genesis live recordings. This gave rise to a very simple question from the fans: “Are more recordings available somewhere?”

The answer is yes. It has now come to light that many 'Lamb' performances were recorded by Genesis staff, either directly from the mixing desk or using ambient microphones fed directly into the desk. Over time, some of these recordings have been 'lost' or 'given away', we will never know for sure, but in recent years these hidden gems have begun to surface. The much celebrated West Palm Beach and Miami shows from January 1975 were the start of a movement that saw quite a few recordings slowly creeping out of hiding and reaching a wider array of fans. With trading and remaster groups now firmly established on the internet, the Genesis fan community welcomed these remarkable finds with keen interest.

This amazing recording from Groningen, Holland, on 10^th April 1975, is the latest of these much sought after prizes. From both the performance and sound quality standpoint, this recording stands as one of the very best to have been unearthed thus far. This show was the object of a positive review in Paul Russell's book, 'Genesis: Play Me My Song - A Live Guide 1969 to 1975': “A stunning soundboard/ambience recording that misses the opening story and also some of the early lyrics to the title song, the latter due to the usual microphone problems.” (This particular quote has been challenged by some who claim that the reason for this is that, as he was racing from the stage right microphone to his centre stage position, Peter Gabriel slipped and fell flat on his face, before getting up and continuing as if nothing had happened. It seems Gabriel had something of a reputation among crew members for missing his footing when doing this!)

Russell continues: “'The Waiting Room' is again the star of the show, another marathon. Its nine-and-a-half minutes are packed full of surprises. The soundboard tapes are always kind to Hackett, a lot of the audience shows lose his delicate work in the crowd noise. Unfortunately, 'The Musical Box' gets as far as the story stage which means we miss a possible classic rendition. On this form, that is a real shame.”

Genesis were indeed in splendid form that night and this great performance is one to treasure. The recording itself isn't perfect but we at PRRP have repaired the small faults to provide the listener with what we hope will be a very pleasurable listening experience. Enjoy!

Brother John

Notes From the Re-Master

We started with the same source that all avid Genesis fans received back in December of 2006. Whether via weeding or torrent, the lossless source insured a quality copy. Sadly, the exact details of this source still remain a mystery so we can not provide information regarding the generation of the source or the tape transfer process.

Generally, this is a very good recording, but incomplete. Three small patches were needed to fill in missing sections at the beginning and middle of the show. Sadly, the encore performance of The Musical Box is completely missing. All we get is part of the monologue introduction to this song. We chose not to add a version of this full, missing song to the end of the recording because we thought that went beyond the remastering approach we take at PRRP. Admittedly, this is a philosophical issue and some may disagree but we feel it helps to distinguish a recording of a specific performance from a compilation CD. This is just our approach.

We began by tracking the show according to the Genesis Archive Live Lamb performance CDs. We felt that this commercial live source should be considered as a standard for tracking and song length and we felt comfortable with that decision. A direct comparison of this recording's track times with those of the Genesis Archive show identified no consistent tape speed errors that needed to be corrected. However, Genesis did take some liberties the night of this performance that resulted in a few songs being lengthened a bit. We identified the following:

Waiting room is 3 minutes longer.
Interlude is 25 seconds longer.
Silent Sorrow is 15 seconds longer.
Ravine is 18 seconds longer.

The version of Waiting Room in this performance is really special, and as you can see, extended well beyond the commercial, live version on Genesis Archive. Even Paul Russell comments on this in his book, as noted above in our artwork liner notes.

Tape noise did interfere with appreciation of the subtle aspects of the show and so it was reduced using multiple techniques. Tonality was off with a harshness in the midrange during loud sections and a touch too much treble. Both were adjusted. Channel imbalances in specific frequency ranges were fixed and dialogue was adjusted to make it more understandable. Finally, dynamics were adjusted to enhance the listening experience.

This is a great recording that we hope we have made a little better.

PRRP

Return to the PRRP GS Section

Return to the Homepage