219. The Musical Box
Hammersmith Apollo
3 March 2024
Last time, they’d brought The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway back from the dead, a note-for-note, prop-for-prop, costume-for-costume recreation that would’ve had even Peter Gabriel himself checking the mirror to make sure he was still him. This time, it was Selling England by the Pound, arguably Genesis’s most quintessentially English moment, a record so steeped in nostalgia, whimsy, and public-school surrealism that it practically smells of Earl Grey and pencil shavings.
The band emerged to rapturous applause, dressed like refugees from a prog pantomime: double-neck guitars, waistcoats, and expressions of studied concentration, and then came “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight.”
The moment those opening a cappella lines rang out: “Can you tell me where my country lies?”, you could almost see the Union Jacks fluttering in the collective imagination of the crowd, taking us back to a time when the notion of “England” didn’t have the undertones of division. The accuracy was jaw-dropping. Every shimmering Mellotron chord, every pastoral guitar flourish, every cymbal shimmer had been lifted directly from the original tapes and placed lovingly in front of us. This wasn’t a tribute; it was a séance.
And at the centre of it all was their frontman, in full Gabriel plumage, with a sense of theatrical commitment that bordered on lunacy. He didn’t just perform Gabriel’s parts, he inhabited them, right down to the peculiar English annunciation and otherworldly gestures that made the original shows such glorious fever dreams.
My prog-rock friend and I had seen this before, we knew what to expect, and yet it was still stunning. The sheer fidelity of it, the reverence, the precision. These weren’t mere musicians; they were forensic musicologists.
The visual detail was extraordinary too: the vintage slide projections, the lighting cues, the peculiar stage movements, all resurrected with almost religious devotion. It was like watching history, but with better sound and no threat of a power cut.
Between songs, there was the usual reverent hush from the crowd, a mix of balding heads and black tour shirts, the faithful assembled for their ritual. But what really struck me was the love. The Musical Box don’t just replicate Genesis; they adore them. You can feel it in every chord. They’re not just playing “Selling England”; they’re preserving it, an act of cultural conservation so lovingly detailed that it borders on archaeology.
By the time they reached “The Battle of Epping Forest”, the stage was ablaze with colour, masks, and improbable narrative. It’s a song so complex it could double as a tax return, but they nailed it, every weird lyric about rival gangs and Cockney absurdities delivered with gusto. And when “Firth of Fifth” arrived, with that transcendental keyboard solo soaring through the Apollo, I realised my mouth was open. The encore, naturally, was “Supper’s Ready.” Of course it was. The seventeen-minute apocalypse hymn to English eccentricity.
Walking out into the cold night air, I was struck with the wonderful absurdity of it all, partly at how brilliant it was. The idea that a group of Canadians have dedicated their lives to recreating early-’70s English prog rock would seem ridiculous if it weren’t so utterly magnificent. However, The Musical Box make it transcendent. They don’t parody; they honour.