Dance Right On Through The Night (Highland HL317/318)
Ford Auditorium, Detroit, MI – April 16th, 1974
Disc 1 (41:40): Watcher Of The Skies, Dancing With The Moonlight Knight, short story, The Cinema Show, I Know What I Like
Disc 2 (55:01): Firth Of Fifth, The Musical Box, Horizons, “Peter & Phil” performance, Supper’s Ready
Although Genesis visited North America several times in 1972 and 1973, it wasn’t until the latter part of the long Selling England By The Pound tour that they paid their first visit to Detroit, one of the important cities for rock and roll. Their debut in the motor city was booked at the acoustical graveyard of the Ford Auditorium for April 16th, and Genesis found an active and wild audience appreciating their music.
A very good to almost excellent audience recording circulates for the date. It was first used on My Mother Doesn’t Eat Shit (BH4-16-74), a title that also includes tracks the March 2nd, 1972 BBC broadcast and “Can-Utility And The Coastliners” from a Foxtrot tour date. Dance Right On Through The Night is the only silver pressed edition of the show available. It’s very good sounding although with good remastering embellishments might improve.
The entire show is present on the tape. The band dropped “The Battle Of Epping Forest” as they did on several other stops on the tour, and “More Fool Me” was dropped in lieu of “Horizons.” There are two cuts in “The Musical Box” at 3:15 and at 6:52.
The tape starts off with the surreal “Watcher Of The Skies” and afterwards Gabriel tells the long Britannia story but there is a problem with the equipment before they can start playing “Dancing With The Moonlit Knight.” Gabriel introduces the Nick The Roadie “what happened to my fucking lead” skit, a common occurrence on this tour.
“The Cinema Show” as a deep tragic quality in this performance that is much more heartbreaking than uplifting. When Gabriel introduces “Firth Of Fifth,” he gives much emphasis to the fact that the human body is “95% water…suitable for drinking” and the meaning of the words in the title. Tony Banks plays the delicate piano introduction from the studio recording, a section that would be dropped in later tours.
While Gabriel is telling the Henry and Cynthia story for “The Musical Box,” someone in the audience becomes very uneasy and rude and shouts: “Your mother eats shit, shut the fuck up.” Gabriel’s response is a deadpan “My mother does not eat shit.” Phil Collins get into it as well by telling that person “there’s also a bar.” The Nursery Cryme tune is followed directly by a quick, electric version of Steve Hackett’s “Horizons.”
Peter and Phil sing “Jerusalem” during the Old Michael story preceding “Supper’s Ready.” The twenty-five minute epic has its climax in the “Apocalypse in 9/8” with the loud explosions plainly audible on tape. And as with many shows from this tour, there is no encore. Dance Right On Through The Night is one of many Highland titles documenting this era and is worth having.
