Empire Theatre, Liverpool

I just did an A/B comparison between this and "Empire Theatre Liverpool" which has lots of nice reviews...and it's not even close, THIS is the best Liverpool '75 option out there. NO noise reduction, more detail, more dynamics. [mactheknife]

Compilation of sources, primarily Liverpool unless stated otherwise [Simon_Funnell]

Possibly the best version of the legendary Empire Theatre show, although it's not a pure performance, the Intro and the first part of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway are from The Shrine gig, the stories and the first part of Lilywhite Lilith are from Toronto... [Jack_Floyd]

The encores are from The Shrine too, with the exception of The Knife, the Old Man River Playout is unlisted... [Jack_Floyd]

Is the Empire Theatre show in a amazing form, unfortunately, the recording, as in all versions of this show, is incomplete... Although, the boot "FL04 - The Chamber Of 32 Lambs" has a better sound and work on this, having fillers from The Shrine and Toronto gigs for the missing parts So, instead of getting this one, get FL04, unless you're a completist like me... [Jack_Floyd]

Disregarding the previous comment completely, since it was written back in the time I was still pretty much ambivalent towards this particular recording, in my opinion, the performance here included presents the band in top form, smoking hot during the entire concert and providing the definitive versions to several songs such as "Fly On A Windshield", "Hairless Heart", "The Waiting Room" and "The Knife". So forget about The Shrine performance and don't regard the Empire Pool much higher, this is as good as it gets! About the recording itself, it's probably the best version in circulation, with Noise Reduction still applied but punchier and clearer than the previous ones. P.S.: If rumours are to be believed, this show was also filmed. [Jack_Floyd]

Like ALL other versions of this show currently in circulation, this version has Noise Reduction applied [Simon_Funnell]

For me, even though TLLDOB is without the beginning and LL is a short cut AND it has a heavy nr applied, I still find myself enjoying this performance and recording more than any other out there, including the Shrine. Slippermen is faultless and TWR is the best I have yet to hear... [aquiel]

I would say this performance has the weirdest version of The Waiting Room i have ever heard.Completely different from the rest of the tour... [yild4genesis]

Despite the couple of cuts and a more than likely missing Musical Box, this is a great one. These 5 awesome musicians were firing on all cylinders on this night. Of all I have heard, this one would get a spin more often than all the others. The performance is superb and The Waiting Room is very powerful. Gets an A+ from me. [duke23]

Love being able to hear Phil's backing vocals (while playing an amazing drum set). The Waiting Room is a true gem for sure - unlike any other rendition. Plus, The Knife! Definitely worth a listen. If only this gig were multi-track recorded instead of Shrine. Arguably the best gig of the tour. [jrromman]

The Shepperton 73 footage never looked any better! [Jesper Moonen]

Genesis - Rome, Italy 5 February 1974 (6:26) - Includes short clips of Watcher, Moonlit Knight, IKWIL, Musical Box, More Fool Me, Battle of Epping Forest, Supper's Ready, and The Knife This recently "discovered" film was filmed by Claudio Fracasso. It has excellent close ups and some of the best images of The Knife. Unfortunately the clips are very very short, so instead of using the actual Rome audio, I used soundboard audio since audio from the same concert would not help these tiny clips. The film runs very fast (bad batteries, probably) about 20% fast, so I slowed down the film to correctly match the audio. The film captured 8% widescreen (1.44) which is nice. I inserted camera flash "photos" to link short segments together, to create longer segments where I thought it would help. Overall a nice film with impressive close-ups and good lighting. Genesis - Liverpool April 1975 (21:47) - Includes painfully short clips of all songs from the lamb as well as the musical box encore This film was a mild form of torture to work with. The image quality is great at times, but it seems the film itself was not catching properly inside the camera. The result is a stuttery film of inconsistent timing with sections that run slow and skip fast at the same time. There is simply no way to make an accurate sync, and even in parts where a sync is possible, often just 2 syllables are captured which makes for a less than enjoyable result. The filmer also spent a lot of time zooming and shaking and panning all over the place. In order to reduce this effect, I kept the view planted on the stage as much as possible, while deshaking and dezooming the edges. The stage for the lamb tour is on the dark side and the transfer aperture had to be open pretty wide in order to see decent images, so the HD transfer made a big difference to capture all possible resolution. I also used a blending effect in areas where the stuttering/flickering was very pronounced. The results were much more pleasing to watch, compared to the source which can be very tiring and dizzying to watch. I also found some great sync points that matched perfectly. Note however that this film is a mix of (at least) two nights in Liverpool, though since they played there 3 nights, there is no way to know for sure which nights were filmed. I used the amazing quality Liverpool soundboard (as well as pieces of other soundboards where necessary) throughout.

This and Volume 3 (Bern 1975 8mm) are my favourite Genesis Museum Masters. Even though the sources are quite chopped (when in a VERY generous mood), the visual quality of them is very sharp, so much so that even glimpses of slides can be discerned sometimes. Regarding the dates concerning the Liverpool 8mm, I think none of them include the night of April 19th: when the well-known soundboard from that night is used for a dub, several elements from both the far center and stage right shot fail to properly sync, a likely evidence that none of them belong to the audio in question. We already know the 8mm represents two nights, in this case, April 18th and 20th, though which is which is not known. [Jack_Floyd]

MPEG / DivX video. Erratic zooming during filming. Video date confirmed by A. Hewitt

When you get a concert of 110 minutes in 13, you can bet the results are not very good. This footage is not comforatble to watch, but it serves as good document of the tour and is, in a certain way, the only video of the entire concert so far. [Jack_Floyd]