Five Rivers Story (Siréne-145)
Music Hall, Boston, MA – April 24th, 1974
Disc 1: Watcher Of The Skies, Britannia story, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, Romeo & Juliet story, Cinema Show, I Know What I Like, rivers story, Firth Of Fifth
Disc 2: Henry story, The Musical Box, More Fool Me, old Michael story, Supper’s Ready. Bonus track, WCBN broadcast, April 24th, 1974: More Fool Me (end), interview with Mike & Phil
Genesis’ show in Boston on the Selling England By The Pound tour is one of the most popular recordings since it is one of the better sounding tapes in circulation. Five Rivers Story represents the third release of this show on silver bootleg. Highland first released this in 1996 as More Fool Me (HL 029/030#G3). It is a good release although they used a high generation tape but was very soft. The Heartbreaker label released Live In Boston 1974 (HB-920-1/2) which was mastered to emphasize the higher frequencies. The results were horrible with significant distortion that absolutely ruined that release.
Sirene copied the work done by the Hogweed remastering project, one of the many Genesis fan based production teams working with the tapes to bring out sterling sounding titles. Five Rivers Story uses Hogweed 10 with the identical track listing and the inclusion of the WBCN radio interview as a bonus.
The sound editor for the Hogweed project, Andrew Skeoch, writes about this tape: “This recording has been remastered from Steve Hopkins’ transcription of his master tape, which he generously sent me. The recording was made on a Sony TC-55 with built in condenser microphone. The tape was transferred using a Nakamichi DR-2 cassette deck to Sony TCD-60ES DAT recorder at 44.1KHz with Super Bit Mapping (which really improves the clarity of the sound), before being transferred to CD.
“The recording is mono, but clear and with significant detail. The only limitation with this tape is that it does not represent the entire show, as ‘The Battle of Epping Forest’, and possibly ‘Horizons’ (if they performed it this evening) are missing. There are also a few minor edits in the recording, and one of these may have omitted Phil’s one-handed drum solo, which one is tempted to think they may have performed given the amount of technical difficulties.
“This recording has been widely in circulation, most commonly through the Highland disc More Fool Me. I don’t have a copy of this, but my impression is that while it is a complete transcription sourced from a low generation tape, it is very bright in the upper midrange, and lacking in richness in the bass. The master tape by contrast, is more balanced overall, and with a rich bass presence.“
The afternoon before the show, Phil and Mike came into Boston’s WBCN studios, performed ‘More Fool Me’ and gave a short interview. This interview has not been previously in circulation, but Steve had a recording of it, unfortunately missing all but the last 50 secs or so of ‘More Fool Me’. But at least it exists and is included in this release.
“Boston is another of the many show on this tour where Genesis are fighting their equipment. When Gabriel starts telling the “Britannia” story after “Watcher Of The Skies” his microphone isn’t working and the audience yells out “louder” until Phil comes forward to explain the problem. Gabriel explains they are playing a game called “what’s happened to my fucking microphone. The hero of this particular sketch is dressed in 1974 roadie costume named Nick…this is his stage debut for this tour.” After the problem Peter apologizes and goes into the intro to “Dancing With The Moonlit Knight”.
There are some other problems in the intro to “I Know What I Like” and the band has to begin again. Otherwise the show proceeds without a hitch. The radio interview is very interesting as Mike and Phil discuss their current tour and feeling like a freak show because of Peter’s many costumes, and Phil promises not to sing! Sirene again use glossy paper for the inserts with many pictures from the tour making this another very good release.
