La Ferme Wulowe St. Lambert, Belgium 7th March 1971

Artists

Album Info

Label: Hogweeds Remasters Project

La Ferme, Woluwe St Lambert, Belgium. 7th March 1971

1. Announcer's introduction and Peter's intro
2. Happy the Man
3. Cheese-and-onion crisp man story
4. Stagnation
5. intro
6. The Light
7. intro
8. Twilight Alehouse
9. story
10. The Musical Box
11. intro
12. The Knife
13. intro
14. Going Out to Get You

The show

Well here it is, the fabled La Ferme show; renowned as both the most
appalling sounding Genesis recording, and also one of the most interesting,
as it is the first known live recording of the band, predating by nearly a
year the next known recording. It also documents their first overseas gig.

Concerning the venue, Michel Clares Grand from Belgium has offered this
background:

"La Ferme" means The Farm (like the one in Surrey...). The complete name
is "La Ferme Hof ter Musschen". It is a real farm that was in function
until 1960. The exact address is "Avenue Mounier n°2, 1200 Bruxelles".

In fact Woluwe-saint-Lambert is one of the 19 townships that form the
entity of Bruxelles (Brussels), the capital of Belgium. I live in
Anderlecht, which is also one township among the 19, two miles away from
Woluwe-saint-Lambert.

"Woluwe" is actually a small river that flows about 200 meters from the
Farm. Not so long ago, the whole region around the Farm was a huge marsh.
Hundreds of different kinds of birds, animals and plants lived in an
incredible wild environment. Now it's just a nightmare of highways and
buildings, with the Brussels International Airport a couple of miles away,
and businessmen everywhere!

Everywhere except around the Farm. Thanks to the efforts of a group of
people in love with the place, they forced the authorities to buy the Farm
around 1970. The municipality installed his Cultural Center there, which
also meant a theatre and concert room. The region around the Farm is since
then a protected reserve, where wild nature is kept just as it was in the
1970's. I can tell you this, even though I was only born in 1970, because
I know the people who voluntarily take care of the reserve since that
period.

In fact, every first Sunday of the month, a guided visit of the Farm and
the protected reserve is organised by those people. I have visited the Farm
several times, and they say the place is still as it was then. The Farm
nowadays has the same cultural function, but honestly, it is quite small.
Therefore, only contemporary theatre takes place there.


What insight into the world of early Genesis does this tape give us? My
first impression is of how good the band sound. Despite all the lad's
recollections of how atrocious their equipment was, and how amateurish the
performance arrangements often were, this tape documents a fine
performance. Bare in mind that this was also a very new band; they had
relatively recently lost Ant, one of their original inner circle, Phil had
joined some 7 months previously, and Steve only debuted 2 months before. So
one would expect things to still be in a settling in phase. Whilst that is
evident in some aspects, such as Steve's evolving guitar lines for Twilight
Alehouse, the band as a whole are cohesive and show why they turned heads,
even at this early stage in their career.

What is also interesting is that the setlist is very similar to the
setlists that they would still be playing a year later. Beginning with
Happy the Man, going on to Stagnation, Twilight Alehouse, The Musical Box
(still in its development, with the central section the same as they
recorded it for the 1971 BBC session), and concluding with Knife and Going
Out to Get You.

The unexpected and unique treasure on this recording is the only known
recording of a performance of The Light, a Collins song which never reached
the studio. Although it was dropped not long after, elements of it appeared
years later incorporated in The Lamb. Instantly recognisable is the main
song, the music of which became Lillywhite Lilith - even the song's title
seems to anticipate Gabriel's later lyrics; "2 golden globes float into the
room, and a blaze of white light, fills the air". There is also a keyboard
riff in the middle which resurfaced in re-composed form in Raven, and the
bass guitar intro of the song seems to be echoed in the intros to "In the
Cage" and "Back in N.Y.C.".

A friend of mine recently commented on hearing this song, how in so many
ways The Lamb was a conclusion for the band. With this final album they
used up any remaining creative material they had still sitting around from
previous years. The Gabriel-led line up had come full circle. From this
perspective it is interesting to listen to the Light and the early Musical
Box, and reflect on the final Lamb shows. In 1971 that short Lillywhite
Lilith melody moves into a rambling composed instrumental section that
threatens to loose momentum. Four years later, it is replaced with an
improvised piece with far more cohesion and impact - the terrifyingly
magnificent Waiting Room. And of course the whole live set is encored with
a mature Musical Box that had by then established itself as a masterpiece
of their repertoire.

At this time the band had only one album that represented them in any
developed way - Trespass. What is interesting is that despite their need to
promote the album, in this setlist they only played 2 songs off the album -
Stagnation and Knife. What seems fairly evident is that they felt the need
of the more dramatic musical material that songs like Going out to Get You,
Twilight Alehouse and even The Light provided.

And then there are Peter's stories. Some songs, such as the Musical Box,
have quite well developed stories that would change little as time went on.
Other songs had no narrative at all, just amusing absurdist comments; "La
lumiere, from out of the left nostril". And all told in Peter's haltingly
delivered English and pigeon French. It is touching to hear him laughing
self-consciously, a far cry from his austere self-confidence of later years.

The recording

Well, it's not the best is it? But it's amazing that we have it at all.

The recording documents the entire concert, beginning with the local
announcer, and concluding with him at the end of the Going Out to Get You
encore. There are however a few inexplicable losses that are greater than
one would expect with just a tape flip. The first minute of Musical Box is
missing, plus the tail end of Gabriel's intro to this number. And there is
a minute long chunk of Knife missing in the middle. It is possible that
these occurred due to taping problems at the time - perhaps the taper was
just lost in the performance :-)

There are a few other small gaps; one is during the first verse of The
Light, which fortunately I have been able to patch by grabbing a bit of the
second verse and pasting it in. This shows that the gap was only around
1sec long, and there are a few other such gaps during the ambiences between
songs that are probably of similarly short duration. In these cases I have
just crossfaded the edits together.

This recording is best known from two bootlegs; 'Besides the Silent
Mirror', and Highland's 'Twilight Francehouse' - a rather odd title since
it comes from neither France nor the twilight of the band's career. I don't
have a copy of the latter, so can only comment on BtSM. I understand that
the source I've used is two generations closer to the master than that used
for BtSM. The hiss on this bootleg is quite prominent in the midrange, and
would be a lot more noticeable if it were not for the savage frequency
roll-off that has been used above around 3KHz.

BtSM misses the Belgian announcer's intro, and begins with the applause
that greets the band onstage. Otherwise it is complete, and shows the gaps
and edits present on the master tape. Beyond the missing top end, and a
very boxy and bass-thin sound, it is a fair representation of the original
tape, although it is pitched slightly sharp, and has a few unexplained
volume drops, noticeably on the concluding chord of Knife.

The restoration

I began with a transcription CDR from a low (reputedly first) gen copy of
the tape. Running a spectrogram of the recording showed that this source
had a severe drop off in information above 4KHz, with cymbals and
tambourine slaps appearing around the 6-7KHz mark. The 3KHz roll off on
BtSM explains why hardly any cymbals can be heard on that version.

As anyone who knows this recording is aware, the hiss threatens to dominate
the music throughout. It sounds distant, tinny, and hissy as hell. So
dragging any information out of this sea of murk has not been easy. At
first I was dubious I could improve it at all.

If you are listening to this Hogweed 12, and thinking, its still pretty
hissy - well, it is. However it could have been a lot worse. I have taken
9Db of hiss out of the recording. To get an idea of how much that is,
imagine 3 times as much hiss *relative to the musical information*. Another
way of thinking of it is that if the hiss sounds comparable to BtSM, you
are actually hearing 3 times the musical information for the same noise
floor. Could I have taken more hiss out? I tried; it started to break up
badly and loose what subtle musical information remained. It started to
sound empty and lacking ambience. I chose to keep as much of the music as I
could. So enjoy what hiss remains, its part of the history :-)

This recording also has a prominent microphone resonance around 2.5KHz -
during the louder sections of songs like Twilight Alehouse you can hear
this as a continuous ring, almost like a distorted feedback. I have
attenuated this peak by 8Db, which is a lot, but as much as I could while
avoiding a frequency hole.

The tape also has numerous electrical clicks, particularly during the first
few songs. On BtSM these clicks (plus others in one channel only, which
have been introduced later) have hissy surges around them, suggesting that
a dolby decode may have been employed on that version. I have removed these.

There are also quite a few microphone bumps, fortunately occurring mostly
during the ambience between songs. I have endeavoured to attenuate or
remove as many of these as possible. There were a few that were much more
difficult though, such as the one that occurs just into the beginning of
Stagnation. This bump caused the auto record levels to drop the music
volume noticeably, which I've compensated for without having the hiss
levels suddenly surge.

Because auto record levels were used on this one, the volumes do fluctuate
a bit, rising noticeably during the quiet bits. I could have restored the
dynamics as I have on previous shows. But on this one, the amount of hiss
would have made such changes distractingly noticeable, so I have left them
as they were recorded. More history.

Finally, there are several occasions when a hum of around 150Hz is heard. I
am pretty convinced that this is a feedback from the stage, although
whether acoustic or electrical, I can't tell. There is also a 250Hz
harmonic as well, indicating that it originates with 50Hz mains power. So
it is probably authentic, but it sounds awful, and makes a few nice
passages of music, particularly during a quieter section of The Light,
sound very un-tuneful. So I've zapped it. Sorry all you purists and stage
feedback aficianados, but as this is the only version of The Light that we
know of, the least I can do is make it sound a bit more musical. If you
want to hear the hum, listen to BtSM.

So that is it. I fully expect that some newer listeners to Genesis's live
legacy may think I've lost my marbles releasing this sorry excuse for a
recording. I hope those who are familiar with the show will find it an
improvement - as one of my 'auditioning committee' commented, at least it
is now listenable, which is better than previously. And I hope you enjoy
hearing Genesis in their adolescence, especially The Light, although heard
somewhat dimly through the years.

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