Let me set the stage for you: it’s 1990, and a young reactor technician has crawled into his rack (a metal shelf with a mattress on it) after a long day filled with cleaning, some routine maintenance, and two four-hour shifts monitoring equipment to ensure everything in the plant is operating smoothly. As exhausted as he is, he knows that the rocking motion – so soothing to many – is going to hinder his sleep, and that he needs to be up for another watch in four hours. He needs to be asleep quickly, so as he does on so many other nights he pulls out the cassette player and a pair of extra-sturdy headphones and slips on some music. It’s at a very low volume, to where he has to strain to make out the words being sung, and he’s out like a light in under five minutes.
The tech was me, and the album, every night, was The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis. The unusual musical choices and poetic lyrics combined to form an ideal springboard into sleep, and it enhanced my appreciation of the band. Still, I realized, there are many types of music and they all have their advocates; while it’s an excellent concept album, it seemed unlikely to garner intense devotion.
I was wrong.
The first indication of the magnitude of my misconception was the creation of the tribute band The Musical Box. Many successful and impressive tribute bands exist; the best of them rarely get the respect they deserve as musicians because they’re not playing their own material. The Musical Box deserves special attention because of the level of their recreations. Not only do they reproduce the songs as originally played, they use the same set lists as the original band and have worked to reproduce all of the costumes, props, and asides to the audience that Peter Gabriel used in the original shows… this, despite the fact that few good visual recordings exist of many of those shows; they had to examine available still footage, bootleg albums and the remnants of props and costumes. Their efforts were so exhaustive that members of Genesis gave The Musical Box access to their original master recordings to more accurately capture instrument work. The first time the Canadian band toured Europe, Peter Gabriel brought his children to the show so they could see what their father used to be like.
They’ve been touring for decades, recreating shows from both the Peter Gabriel era and the post-Gabriel era.
Recently a new contender for the most devoted fan has arisen. His name is Nathaniel Barlam, an artist from New York City who, in his spare time, makes “musical comics”… mixtures of illustration and video designed to accompany existing songs. Those songs are typically Genesis works, and for more than a year he’s been working on a magnum opus: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. In January, he finished it.
Concept albums (or album sides), where all of the songs share a coherent storyline or a general theme, can be difficult to produce, but when they’re successful they can earn lasting appreciation.
Question of the night: What’s your favorite concept album (or album side)?