The core of "The Genesis Archive" is its first two CDs, a complete performance of "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" recorded at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on January 24th, 1975. The "Lamb" show was a visual extravaganza, almost presented as a rock opera. Gabriel himself performed the role of Rael, adorned in face make-up and leather bomber jacket, racing around the stage during the album's long, complex instrumental passages, and transforming himself into many of the album's wierder characters, perhaps most notably the elephantiasis-suffering Slipperman. Around the stage three large screens showed psychedelic slides which at once illustrated the story - as far as anything could illustrate the story - and added another layer of strangeness, and giant props - huge plastic cones, a man-sized womb and so on - adorned the stage.
It was the most visually baroque the group's performances ever got (Collins was insistant that they scale things down when he took
over the lead singer's role) and put them alongside two groups often quoted in the same breath as Genesis: Pink Floyd and Yes. And yet, as these two CDs illustrate, at the heart of "The Lamb" was a bravura piece of music, music which twisted and turned from hair-raising anthems to weird experimentation, haunting balladry to virtuosic instumental grandstanding. That they could perform it so effortlessly live was a tribute to their individual musicianship and their collective, almost telepathic understanding: a tribute to the five years they'd spent together developing this extraordinary music.
