Bernard was in town and phoned us up, out of the blue. Would we like to go see The Musical Box at the House of Blues? I actually knew roughly who they were but I had no idea they were in town.

As I understood it, their current tour was playing songs from Genesis’ “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” period.

I was familiar with a couple of the pieces of music on the album but most of it was going to be new to me. Of course we told Bernard Yes! we’d love to meet up with him and see the show, and we’d meet him at the box office and then go have dinner somewhere nearby prior to the performance.

The performance itself was kind of odd. My first impression was that it was cheap and tawdry looking, although there was nothing wrong with the music at all. The drummer was excellent, he looked and sounded just like Phil Collins, uncannily like him in fact. From our seats we couldn’t quite make out what keyboards the Tony Banks Sound-alike was using but they sounded very authentic.

I enjoyed the show more and more as it progressed (pardon the pun). In fact, I’d quite like to see it again.

Later on I looked up these guys on the web and found out that rather than just a cover/tribute band, The Musical Box are a group of French Canadians who specialize in performing (or “re-staging”) complete concerts from the touring history of the progressive rock group Genesis, complete with props and effects that are as-close-to-original-as-possible.

Now I understood why the stage looked the way it did. They really were trying to go back in time and reproduce something exactly as it happened. Well, I don’t know if this is more honorable than just playing cover songs and enjoying the music. It’s an admirable effort, and I don’t know if they succeeded in their goal or not but it was an excellent show.