Live albums are always a dangerous thing for a musician to
\ntackle. On one hand, you’re faced with the difficulty of topping
\nthe studio versions of the songs that you and your band made
\npopular with thousands of fans. On another hand, you have to try
\nand translate the power and energy of the live performance back
\nonto a piece of aluminum (or magnetic tape) and plastic and hope
\nthe listener can visualize themselves in the front row of the
\nshow.<\/p>\n
Phil Collins has taken a lot of heat over the years for his 1990
\nconcert release
\nSerious Hits… Live!<\/i> In a sense, I can understand why
\ncritics have had a field day with this release – after all, it
\ncomes off sounding rather sterile, and there are times when it
\nsounds like the crowd noise is either being removed or spread on
\nthe tracks with a trowel.<\/p>\n
But when the final notes fade out, this release really isn’t as
\nbad as the reputation it’s been given. I mean, I’d much rather
\nlisten to this than those robotic pieces of crap that Genesis
\ncalled
\nThe Way We Walk<\/i> — and I have yet to go back and review the
\nsecond volume.<\/p>\n
The first half of
\nSerious Hits… Live!<\/i> is the most difficult to get through,
\nas this is the portion that occasionally sounds like it could have
\nbeen recorded at a sound check and had audience noises dubbed in at
\nthe start and finish. (I can’t remember the last concert I was at
\nwhere people were totally quiet during a song’s performance — I
\nmean to the point of hearing nothing but the music.) This is a
\nstrike against Collins, and it leaves some of the performances
\nsounding bland and forced, like “Who Said I Would” and “One More
\nNight.”<\/p>\n
What also makes this portion of the album more difficult is that
\nit’s loaded up with most of the heavy-duty material, like
\n“Something Happened On The Way To Heaven,” “Another Day In
\nParadise,” “Do You Remember?” and “Separate Lives.” It might have
\nworked a little better had Collins balanced the darkness with the
\nlight.<\/p>\n
This is exactly what saves this album on the second half.
\nCollins creates a much happier-sounding atmosphere by striking that
\nbalance. For each “Groovy Kind Of Love,” there’s a “Sussudio” or
\n“Easy Lover” (a number that works well even without the
\ncontributions of Phillip Bailey) just around the corner waiting to
\nlife your spirits. This half of the release is actually fun to
\nlisten to – and you can hear the enjoyment of the crowd making
\nthings that much better.<\/p>\n
Your enjoyment of this album will depend on your view of
\nCollins’s four solo releases to that point. If you didn’t like the
\nmore intospective mood of
\n…But Seriously<\/i>, then
\nSerious Hits… Live!<\/i> is not going to do a thing to change
\nyour mind. If you go into the album looking for the happy, perky
\nsongs that put Collins on the map as a solo act, it will be a bit
\nof a trying journey, but your patience will eventually be rewarded
\nin spades. If you just want to unwind with a live album, this
\nshould do nicely.<\/p>\n
It says something that Collins was able to top the live discs
\nfrom his former group… but
\nSerious Hits… Live!<\/i> also was a warning sign of what was to
\ncome for Genesis fans. It ain’t perfect, but it’s not the time bomb
\nthat many people have labeled this album. Judge for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5661],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36544","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-phil-collins","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36544"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36544"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}