Track Listing

1. Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
2. Riding The Scree
3. In The Rapids
4. It
5. Fly On A Windshield
6. Broadway Melody Of 1974
7. Cuckoo Cocoon
8. In The Cage
9. Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging
10. Back In NYC
11. Hairless Heart
12. Counting Out Time
13. Carpet Crawlers
14. Chamber Of 32 Doors
15. Lilywhite Lilith
16. Waiting Room
17. Anyway
18. Here Comes The Supernatural Anaesthetist
19. Lamia
20. Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats
21. Colony Of Slippermen (The Arrival)
22. Colony Of Slippermen (A Visit To The Doctor)
23. Colony Of Slippermen (The Raven)
24. Ravine
25. Light Dies Down On Broadway

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38594 in Music
• Released on: 1994-08-01
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.co.uk Review
When it comes to making albums of epic proportions, few rival this magnificent production that a trip the band took to New York City inspired in 1973. The underlying story is of a street kid named Rael who, thanks in part to the realities of big city life, undergoes a weird and mystical transformation. Containing extended instrumental sections showcasing the extraordinary talents of Tony Banks, Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, as well as the expressive vocals and often disturbing lyrics of Peter Gabriel, this is the album that located Genesis truly on the map. --Paul Clark

CD Description
Peter Gabriel's conceptual lyricism reached its apex on thedouble-length LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY. An epic undertaking even for a band used to 10- and 20-minute songs, LAMB weaves over 20 songs into one long suite ostensibly about the tribulations of its urban protagonist, Rael. The group achieves an unprecedented level of focus and force here. No matterhow complex the guitar and keyboard themes get, they're driven home with enough force and conviction to make them instantly memorable.
The panoramic scale of Gabriel's lyrics is easily equal to the grandeur of the music, making this at once Genesis's most hard-edged and most complicated album. From the lush sweep of the opening title track to the almost Beatles-esque Britpop of "Counting Out Time", Genesis is at the top of its compositional game throughout LAMB. Having thoroughly topped himself with this release, Gabriel subsequently quit the group, leaving Phil Collins to take over as vocalist for the next phase of the Genesis story.

Customer Reviews

THE LAMB STILL STANDS UP
A curious one this; a mass of contradictions. A sprawling, pompous prog-rock concept album packed with taught, snappy tunes. A showcase for the virtuoso musicianship of this most British of progressive bands, but featuring some of the most awesomely tight ensemble playing you will hear this side of a Bartok string quartet. This was the sort of music that punk rock was invented as an antidote for, and yet its obession with the phenomenology of inner city street life was two decades ahead of its time (rap is still going down the same graffiti-strewn alley today).

The story behind the stylish, surrealistic lyrics is that of Rael, a young Puerto Rican graffiti artist on the streets of New York, who finds himself catapulted into a symbolic underworld (a sort of Jungian Hades) where the meaning or possibly the meaningless of his former street life is played out in a series of surreal cameos involving a cloning (The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging), religion (Carpet Crawlers), various sexual urges and anxieties (The Lamia, The Colony of Slippermen, The Doktor, etc.), disorientation (The Chamber of 32 Doors), and death (Anyway, The Supernatural Anaesthetist). The final message about saving one's own self through self-sacrifice is almost but not quite religious, and its curiously cautious optimism does not at all clash with the rest.

This was the last album Genesis made with Peter Gabriel as principal lyricist and vocalist, and the last but two featuring the astonishing Steve Hackett (now a successful solo artist in his own right) on lead guitar. Provided you can cope with the odd few minutes of self-indulgence it ranks as one the band's best albums. It certainly contains some of the best playing and one of the best studio productions of their career. In fact many would see it as the high point of Genesis' career as a real rock band (i.e. before it became a matching accessory for Phil Collins' solo career).

A particularly interesting feature of "The Lamb" is how modern it still sounds. Apart from a few cheesy moog noises that clearly date the work to the days when synths were an exciting novelty, it is all tasteful and clean. The rhythm section of Collins and Rutherford shows an almost uncanny rapport - they seem to work better together than on some much later cuts, while Gabriel's vocals and lyrics are a good advert for the stellar solo career that was about to be launched.

As usual it is Banks who provides the matrix that holds everything together - one of the enduring mysteries of rock is why his solo projects never quite gelled with the record-buying public. The classically trained keyboard virtuoso provided much of the unique quality that set Genesis apart from other progressive bands in the seventies, and that keeps their early material sounding fresh and challenging today, viz. a grasp of musical architecture. They knew how to use space, different instrumental textures and compositional structure in a way that no other rock band ever equalled let alone surpassed.

To me and to many others, the band's subsequent inch-by-inch descent into the swamps of adult-orientated radio rock is one of the great musical tragedies of the late 20th century. "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" is not perfect and is arguably not their best album. Nevertheless, in this mixture of good and average, punk and classicism, indulgence and discipline, experimentation and pop, "The Lamb" captures everything that almost made Genesis the greatest rock band ever. And as with all true classics, much of sounds even better now, nearly 30 years on, than it did on first release.

Totally wonderful
I have loved this album since I first heard it about ten years ago. Parts of it are well ahead of its 1974 sales tag, and much of it still sounds fresh today. I am not a huge fan of Genesis as a whole, though the Gabriel era stuff is mostly great, however this album is a true classic that anyone of any age could enjoy.

The Lamb provides its listener with a truly unique soundscape, a double album which never seems too long, a concept album, yet unrepetitive and unpretentious. It is totally emotive, ranging from sadness to euphoria, mourning to anger, desire to impotence. In its own surreal and beautiful way this album deals with the dilemna of humankind struggling to assert its identity in a commercial era. The story of Rael, the protagonist New Yorker, is difficult to comprehend yet a joy to experience. This is a fantastic album.

The best concept album ever created!!
Brilliant! Moody, dark, mysterious and humerous all in one fine prog package. Even for those who can just take or leave Genesis this is a worthwhile purchase for anyone into prog or the concept album. Check out the keyboard work on 'In the cage' and 'Broadway melody' This album is timeless and strangely didn't sell to well on it's release in 1974. This is the last album Gabriel made with the band and in my view the best thing he has ever done.