"Seconds Out Knockout!" - ReGenesis in concert at the Pacific Road Arts Centre Birkenhead Thursday 27th October 2005. Review by Alan Hewitt.

OK, so I admit I had reservations about this show. Apparently I was not the only one. Mine were based solely around the misconception that the band's singer was probably going to give himself the equivalent of a vocal hernia if he was going to attempt to sing any of the Collins era songs from this album with any approximation to the man himself. How did he fare? Read on and find out….

Seconds Out has always been a holy album to me; the final glorious swansong of the Hackett era band and the finest selection of material from the Gabriel era to boot - the best live album ever, in fact. And here I was in the Pacific Road Arts Centre (aka: tram shed!) to watch it being re-created or massacred depending on how the night went. Nerves? Not really but a certain degree of anticipation arose as the band took the stage and launched into Squonk. Those doubts that I have mentioned disappeared immediately to be replaced with the knowledge that this was about to become another classic ReGenesis night! I was immediately heartened to see (and hear) that Tony Patterson was playing it straight; no imitations of Mr Collins just a direct and emotional delivery of the songs.

Robbery, Assault And Battery and Carpet Crawl flowed effortlessly with special credit going to the combined talents of Andy Gray on guitar (who looks frighteningly like a young Mike Rutherford!) and Piers De Lavison whose keyboard arabesques were stunning. Afterglow came far too early in the show for me but this was the way the album ran so I suppose I had to put up with this aural orgasm happening sooner than I would have liked - flawlessly delivered though!

I Know What I Like saw the entire band having a great work out; especially Andy and bassist Andy Higham who took his part in Tony's tambourine tarantella in fine style. Speaking of work outs; kudos indeed to the awesome combined drumming talents of Nigel Appleton and Jamie Fisher who brought the sharpness and attack of their combined percussive powers to both Firth Of Fifth and of course, to Dance On A Volcano and Los Endos. Close your eyes and you could even be at the Palais Des Sports, it was that good!

Encoring with Cinema Show and a couple of surprises in the shape of The Return Of The Giant Hogweed and The Knife rounded off an excellent night which blew away any doubts and cobwebs from the mind and ears! The band are tight, visually the show is excellent and all round they gave 110% which was certainly appreciated by this listener - pity about the lacklustre audience but hey; you can't win 'em all!

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Er...you can take the mask off now, Alan!
Photo: Kevin Fearn/TWR