"The Charbor Chronicles": Genesis - The Last Domino? at UBS Arena, Belmont Park, Elmont, Long Island, NY

It’s strange. I never quite got around to reviewing the Foo Fighters show. They suddenly were in the headlines, albeit for a sad reason, with the passing of drummer Taylor Hawkins. So I finally got around to the blog entry reviewing that show.

Now, Genesis made news headlines, with the final show that they would be performing over this past weekend. And so now, I am finally getting around to publishing the blog entry of the show that my son and I went to back in December.

So, I have pretty much always liked Genesis. When I was growing up, they were one of those really popular bands that dominated the radio airwaves. But what attracted me to them was that they always sounded different than everybody else, and they had a distinctly modern sound to them. It was hard to explain exactly how, just that it felt right.

Later on, in the nineties, I began to hear some great things about early Genesis. So, I decided to go ahead and listen to some of that early stuff. Sure enough, it is fantastic. Just like with the more modern stuff that anyone in the eighties would be familiar with, their stuff from earlier in the band's history also sounded distinctive, like no one else. I loved "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" and, for a while, set that as the song for my alarm clock, to wake up to that beautiful piano tune right in the beginning, as it builds up in volume and intensity. Still think it was a nice way to wake up in the mornings. Also, I still love " A Trick of the Tale." It's just one of those albums that I find very pleasant to listen to, especially when driving somewhere very green, preferably (bot not necessarily) on a beautiful, sunny day.

Anyway, all of that is besides the point. Indeed, I am a fan of Genesis, and became more of a fan over time. It is just that they not only have good music, but music that sounds like no one else. That was true of early Genesis, and that was true of the band when they were at their most popular, in the eighties and early nineties. Even the Congo album, with a new frontman, sounds unique and different to my ears, even though that had very limited commercial success. What's more is that they are one of the truly few bands out there where I can feel different after listening to their music. It can change my mood, which again, is something true of only a few musicians. More often, there is that sense of "not being in the mood" for this or that kind of music, or band or musician. It takes a rare band to be able to actually alter my mood, but Genesis is one of those bands.

My son and I have been to quite a few concerts together. I have tried to get him to see as many great artists (particularly the aging ones) before it is too late. Genesis was always on that bucket list, if you will. So obviously, it piqued my interest to see that they were going on tour again.

The thing was that the tickets were expensive. Prohibitively expensive. They were asking $150 or so per ticket for nosebleeds, at least initially. So there was hesitation on my end, and I waited. And waited. Then, about two weeks or so from the show date, the tickets had been cut in half, to about $75 per ticket for nosebleeds. I decided to get tickets, with the understanding that Phil Collins was having health problems, and that this might very well be his last major musical tour.

Here's the thing: the tickets were supposed to be email to me on the day of the show, but the email never arrived. So by around 2pm, I got an email from the ticket company, giving me instructions on what to do with the email from the seller, which I never got. long story short, I spent 45 minutes or so explaining that I never got an email like that, and after trying to contact the seller unsuccessfully, they gave me a refund. Meanwhile, I had had enough time while on hold to look at tickets, and saw that the prices had dropped again. Nosebleeds were now $25, and there were some floor seats for $45. I decided to go for the floor seats, and got them for significantly less than the original price of the nosebleeds that I had first gotten.

We were going to the Genesis show.

By now, however, I was running late. Between the long phone call and then obtaining new tickets, I was well over an hour past the time I had wanted to leave. Then there was traffic, which likely would not have been the case if I had left when originally intended. Then, my son's vaccination card was somehow missing, and that proved to be an ordeal. Finally, we got going, but I realized that I likely would need some cash. Before long, all of those extra five or ten minute setbacks added up, and we left when it would be the height of traffic.

The commute to the Long Island show was a bit annoying, admittedly. I figured that public transportation, which is normally my preferred way to go to events – especially in New York – would be very difficult for this show. I am not all that familiar with Long Island, and while it may have been possible, the idea of taking a train to New York City, and then another train or bus of whatever out to Long Island, would have taken just so long as to not really be worth it. That meant driving, but there are tolls and traffic. Also, this arena was brand new, which meant that it was brand new to me, as were the directions. Not likely a huge problem with GPS, but yeah, it takes quite a while to get there from our neck of the woods in Jersey.

Once we got close, the traffic was horrible. Unfortunately, we left late, as already mentioned. But it felt like the closer we got, the heavier the traffic got, and the slower our progress. We still left early, just not as early. But as it turns out, we arrived when everyone else was arriving. I was a bit nervous that we were going to be late for the show.

That, however, did not happen. We got into the venue, went inside and got our seats, which were floor seats. Tickets for the nose bleeds had been quite expensive just weeks earlier, but as the date approached, the tickets seemed to get cheaper and cheaper. Finally, there were floor seats that were selling for maybe half the price that the nosebleeds had been selling for just weeks earlier, and so I finally committed to getting the tickets to this show. And the best part was that we went inside and got to relax. Not only had they not started the show yet, but we actually had something like twenty to thirty minutes before the show finally actually began.

So despite the stress in getting there, everything seemed to be smooth once we finally were there, at the venue.

Still, according to GPS, we were scheduled to be there almost an hour before showtime started. But serious traffic, because of accidents or other things (including construction at one point) set us back more and more. By the time we parked, it was about ten minutes before the show was slated to begin.

My stress level was pretty high by that point.

There was curiosity for the new arena, but not being familiar with it also had it's setbacks, too. We followed the crowd, trying to be sure to take good mental note of where we parked. Then we went in, past security, and had to find our way to the floor seats, which proved not to be as easy as I had hoped. But we found them, and arrived a few minutes after eight.

Luckily, they had not started the show yet. In fact, it would be after 8:30 by the time that they actually started the show. So I relaxed, glad not to have missed any of the show. It had been a busy day, and between not getting much sleep, the the stress of the ticket situation coupled with the new stress of actually getting to the arena as it seemed we were later and later, had given me a headache or, rather, renewed the one that I had more or less gotten rid of earlier in the day. But once we were there and waiting for the show to begin, it felt a lot better, and far more relaxed.

Genesis came on, and right off the bat, they started with some of their older material, which seemed fitting.

The show itself was, of course, fantastic. They sprinkled old material with their newer stuff. Well, it's kind of strange to say "newer" stuff when you are talking about releases that, generally as a rule, date back about three decades or so. But admittedly, that is how I view it still. Not sure why.

They performed my personal favorite song from them, Land of Confusion, a song that really meant a lot to me back in the eighth grade, when I recorded the top 10 best videos of 1987 on Friday Night Video, and had that old VHS tape for a long time. It was one of my very favorite videos, and I remember finding the imagery of political figures of the time amusing. They also performed another favorite, albeit from their older era, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. It was different than the studio version, but I like that. That's also why you go to see a band live, to see familiar songs done a bit differently, right? And the opening guitar riff for I Can't Dance was just awesome, getting everyone in the arena excited. Somehow, I never noticed what a wicked and rocking song that was, even though it was very familiar to me already decades before this show.

In short, it was a great show. I was glad to have managed to get my son to see another legendary band, while the chance was there for it.

Below is the setlist for the evening, as well as some pictures (admittedly, many are a bit repetitive, but I have not yet found the time to sort through them and pick the very best, so I incorporated far too many, admittedly, and just added them all here). Some of the pictures turned out great, I think! Glancing through them, a couple at least are reminiscent of the cover of the Seconds Out album, while others are fairly iconic, such as I Can Walk, as well as the visual of what appear to be the sleeves of cassette tapes of their albums, which I appreciated and wanted to take a number of pictures of (and did).

Enjoy!

DEC 10 2021 Genesis Setlist at UBS Arena, Elmont, NY, USA Tour: The Last Domino?

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/genesis/2021/ubs-arena-elmont-ny-238be813.html

Setlist:

Behind the Lines / Duke's End

Turn It On Again

Mama

Land of Confusion

Home by the Sea

Second Home by the Sea

Fading Lights (First two verses)

The Cinema Show (Instrumental)