Genesis!

Well - what a brilliant weekend!!

 

My regular readers will be aware that I like a bit of rock music every now and again (like every day...J), usually of the "classic" variety - my favourite bands tend to be the one's I was listening to as a youngster, so Rush, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin etc. and this weekend was the long awaited appearance of one of my other favourite bands, Genesis.

 

They were playing at Twickenham (which is a huge stadium in London usually used for rugby) on their "Turn it On Again" tour ... I can't tell you how long I've waited for this, I've had the tickets for about 6 months now, but that pales into insignificance when compared against the fact that I haven't seen them play live in 15 years (I saw them at Knebworth in 1992) so as you can imagine I was a little excited! What was also rather nice was that my other half had also expressed an interest in going (she likes Phil Collins the lead singer, from the solo perspective), so we were both going...

 

Having packed the sprogs off to my Mum's for the day/evening we headed up to the bright lights at about 4pm, arriving there at about 15 minutes before the show! It should only take a couple of hours but traffic was dreadful which I had planned for, but I got side-tracked onto a secondary road, which I hadn't planned for, so in the end it took us about three and a half hours... not too bad, I can't see 50,000 people getting to a stadium in the middle of London without transport, and so it turned out!

 

The show was brilliant, despite rain in the middle of it, these guys are such musicians, the set list was extensive and included huge chunks of my favourite albums ("And Then There Were Three", "Wind and Wuthering" and "Trick of the Tail") plus enough of the more modern stuff (which I also like) that my missus was pleased as well... the light show was superb, and the huge television screens they had put up at the side of the stage were the clearest I've ever seen.... which is just as well when your other half is as small as mine!

 

Perhaps the most inspiring thing was how the band, and especially Mr. Collins, managed to make it so 'inclusive' - I've never been to a big stadium before and Twickenham is by far and away the biggest I've ever been in - it is absolutely HUGE. Somehow or another though Phil had us laughing, waving, singing and doing all the other stuff, very good, very clever, a consummate entertainer!

 

Our seats were on the pitch, so we were surrounded on 3 sides by the banked seating, and the stage at the other end - as mentioned it was an absolute sellout, and when the people in the seating behind and on each side sang, clapped or shouted (which they did a lot of, and usually, like me, at the same time!) the noise was quite extraordinary.. fantastic atmosphere then, superb music, nice people to chat to, and all-in-all an absolutely brilliant show, well done to the guys, and please don't leave it another 15 years!