There was a time many years ago when I fanatically collected Genesis bootlegs, but this early gem never showed up on any of them. “The Light” was reportedly a staple of the band’s live shows circa 1970-1971, but they evidently never recorded a studio version of it. Small parts of the music were later incorporated into “Lilywhite Lilith” and “The Colony of Slippermen” from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
This 1971 recording from La Ferme in Woluwe-St Lambert, Belgium, is the only known recording of the song anywhere, ever….
Continuing the Peter Gabriel weekend theme, I had a vinyl bootleg of Gabriel live in New York in 1978 with Robert Fripp playing guitar on an absolutely blistering version of “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.”
Well guess what? That’s on YouTube as well:
This is another track I’d happily purchase from iTunes…
(Still in a brownout, Internet up for nowdown again. Who knows how long it will last…)
I think today is going to be a Peter Gabriel Day here on Futuramen.
In my youth every day was Peter Gabriel day. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Peter Gabriel III were the soundtrack of my youth in late high school and early college. I had pretty much every song Gabriel ever recorded, including such non-album rarities as “Curtains,” “Soft Dog,” and “No More Apartheid.” Not to mention a fair number of bootlegs.
In my day, you couldn’t just download bootlegs from the Internet. You actually had to buy them on these round slabs of petroleum byproducts called “records.” And you couldn’t even find them in most record stores. You had to find them in the back room, or record conventions, or even more obscure venues. I remember that there used to be someplace in Austin, down on (I think) 12th Street, that was a used clothing store, except they had a small section where there were like four bins of nothing but bootlegs. And you paid more than regular price for them, only to get them home and find out half the time that the quality sucked.
Good times, good times.
Anyway, while looking for something else, I stumbled across two different videos of a completely unreleased Peter Gabriel song called “Why Don’t We.”
I would happily toss some money Peter Gabriel’s way if he would put a clean recorded version up on iTunes.
I plan to post a lot more Peter Gabriel discoveries today, power and Internet permitting…