The Musi­cal Box is a Cana­dian group that stages elab­o­rate recre­ations of entire con­certs given by the Eng­lish pro­gres­sive rock band Gen­e­sis in the early 1970s. They per­form closely-observed note-for-note cover ver­sions of the orig­i­nal songs, in the orig­i­nal set list order, with full recre­ations of the set design, props, cos­tumes, vin­tage instru­ments, and even the man­ner­isms of the orig­i­nal Gen­e­sis. So while it is tech­ni­cally true that they are essen­tially a cover band, how many of those tour the world sev­eral times over and land gigs at sig­nif­i­cant venues like The High­line Ball­room? It speaks to both the integrity of the orig­i­nal Gen­e­sis music and to The Musi­cal Box’s own skills that they are not a mere trib­ute band gig­ging through bars and frat houses.

At the High­line Ball­room, The Musi­cal Box per­formed Gen­e­sis’ famed “Black Show,” orig­i­nally in sup­port of the 1973 album Sell­ing Eng­land By the Pound, and widely boot­legged as the “Rain­bow Show”. Gen­e­sis’ typ­i­cal “White Show” was more elab­o­rately staged, but due to venue require­ments and the trou­bles of ship­ping their gear inter­na­tion­ally, they would some­times play the stripped-down Black Show, so known for its low stage light­ing and sim­ple black back­drop. The Musi­cal Box’s per­for­mance had amaz­ing sound fidelity, and was one of the best-sounding live con­certs I’ve ever heard. No doubt the actual Gen­e­sis (many of whom have seen The Musi­cal Box live and have even sat in with them on occa­sion) wish they had such mod­ern audio tech­nol­ogy at their dis­posal in the early 1970s.

The mem­bers of The Musi­cal Box are as much actors as they are crack musi­cians. Fit­tingly, Peter Gabriel him­self was mostly act­ing onstage; the famously shy young man masked his dis­com­fort with an out­landish stage per­sona full of cos­tumes, masks, and mime. Denis Gagné is per­haps a touch too old to play a stringbean-thin Gabriel in his early twen­ties, but does an extra­or­di­nary job of cap­tur­ing his vocals and stage pres­ence, right down to the hilar­i­ously filthy sto­ries Gabriel used to tell between songs as the rest of the band retuned their instruments.

The only per­former out of 70s bell-bottom cos­tume was Gregg Ben­dian as “Phil Collins.” He was, how­ever, para­dox­i­cally one of the most authen­tic per­form­ers, recre­at­ing Collins’ unmis­tak­ably mus­cu­lar and enthu­si­as­tic drum­ming. After becom­ing famous as a tele­vi­sion actor and cheesy pop super­star in the 1980s, It’s easy to for­get that Collins is first and fore­most one of rock’s best drummers.

The rest of Gen­e­sis was very seri­ous and reserved, and relied on Gabriel to engage the audi­ence as they played. Sébastien Lamothe enlivens the bearded, seri­ous Steve Hackett’s gui­tar embell­ish­ments (not one of Gen­e­sis’ core song­writ­ers, Hack­ett was how­ever a bril­liant gui­tarist and one of the inven­tors of the two-handed tap­ping tech­nique). Sébastien Lamothe straps on a gen­uine double-necked Rick­en­bocker to play Mike Ruther­ford, with the ded­i­ca­tion to verisimil­i­tude to grow a full beard and flow­ing locks. David Myers plays Tony Banks, the stoic unsmil­ing anchor on stage right, but sadly relies on mod­ern syn­the­siz­ers (noth­ing com­pares to the raw sound of an actual Mel­lotron).

And finally, a cheap shot: the audi­ence was far from the usual sort seen at New York City venues. A notice­ably older set, with a very strong dork fla­vor (with shirts tucked in over pot bel­lies), but there was a sur­pris­ing num­ber of women (not tra­di­tion­ally an audi­ence for pro­gres­sive rock).

A few notes on the songs:

• Cin­ema Show — it’s dif­fi­cult to fully appre­ci­ate the very long (approx. 5 min­utes!) instru­men­tal power trio sequence fea­tur­ing Collins, Banks, Ruther­ford until you wit­ness it live. Wow! Gen­e­sis was a lot “heav­ier” than I ever real­ized from sim­ply lis­ten­ing to the albums.

• Firth of Fifth — Steve Hackett’s hair-raising melody line must be one of the best gui­tar moments in rock, ever, and no doubt Lamothe rel­ishes play­ing it live.

• The Musi­cal Box — the coda sequence (dur­ing which Gabriel famously wore a grotesque “old man” mask) drove the crowd bananas. Clearly the band is aware of the song’s power, for they took their name from it.

• The Bat­tle of Epping For­est is the rare clas­sic Gen­e­sis song that I haven’t already mem­o­rized over the years. Gabriel affected lots of char­ac­ter voices in the orig­i­nal, and thus this is per­haps the one point when Gagné’s imper­son­ation fails him.

• Supper’s Ready — had The Musi­cal Box not already pro­vided a pre­ma­ture cli­max to the show, the clos­ing “Apoc­a­lypse” sequence to Supper’s Ready would have been it.

• The Knife (encore) — why aren’t Gen­e­sis cred­ited more often for record­ing one of the ear­li­est hard rock songs? The Knife is so dark, loud, and aggres­sive, it could pos­si­bly even be called metal.

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Offi­cial site: themusicalbox.net

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