The Musical Box presents “Selling England by the Pound with Special Lamb Set Encore,” 20 Monroe Live, Grand Rapids, Michigan, March 2, 2018.

Back in 1977, the Broadway musical revue Beatlemania‘s tagline was “not The Beatles; an incredible simulation.”  Little did anyone know that, 41 years later, Montreal’s The Musical Box would carve out a career applying that maxim to Genesis’ Peter Gabriel-fronted concerts of the early Seventies.

If the retro stage set (authentic down to the drum kit and keyboards) didn’t clue in uninformed patrons, the opening “Watcher of the Skies” left no doubt how hardcore The Musical Box is recreating the early Genesis experience.  Clad in angelic white, “Tony Banks” (keyboardist Guillaume Rivard), “Phil Collins,” (drummer/vocalist Marc Laflamme), “Mike Rutherford” (bassist/guitarist Sébastien Lamothe) and “Steve Hackett” (guitarist François Gagnon) built the harsh, Mellotronic tension of the opening riff to a shattering climax — only for “Peter Gabriel” (Denis Gagné) to grab the spotlight with his black jumpsuit, cape of many colors, bat-winged headgear, shaved head, luminescent eye-shadow — oh, and his committed, slightly crazed vocal narrative of an abandoned Earth seen through extraterrestrial eyes.  Right away, the bar was set high: this would be a night of prog-rock epics, meticulously performed by an ensemble that’s toured worldwide far longer than the original band, replicating the musical and theatrical quirks of legendary tours with painstaking precision.

Continue reading “In Concert — “The Clock … Tick, Tock:” Back in Time with The Musical Box” →