My brother, who is a professional musician and did some recording with a later version of Genesis, reworked the Slipperman song with a bunch of country musicians from Nashville. These guys had never heard "The Lamb" and were not at all familiar with Genesis, let alone the older stuff. They listened to it, charted it all out for a totally different sound, and the result is spectacular. Here’s some information from the Spocksbeard website:
Nick has teamed up with Nashville Engineer/Producer Mark Hornsby to record a truly unique version of an early Genesis song: "The Colony of Slippermen". Recorded at Java Jive Studio in Nashville, TN, the song features some of Nashville's best musicians, taking the song in a whole new direction. "We wanted to see what would happen if we exposed the song to a different climate of musicians," says D'Virgilio, "The early Genesis recordings are so musical and very bluesy when you get right down to it. They really lend themselves to some different interpretations." Although all of the original elements of the song are still there (drums, bass, guitar, and piano), it now takes on a more "acoustic" vibe. This, coupled with accordion, electric sitar, and a fantastic horn arrangement, takes the song to an entirely different place. "We had talked about doing something like this for awhile," says Hornsby, "With the recent success of the Genesis reunion tour and the re-release of the Genesis catalogue in 5.1, the time seemed right to see what we could come up with." "The Colony of Slippermen" is part of a larger project that has yet to be announced. The song is currently available as a free download at Nick D'Virgilio's Myspace page: myspace.com/ndvmusic.Check it out. I promise you’ll dig it. I certainly hope they find a way to do the rest of the album.
3 comments:
That's completely cool. I tend to find Genesis (even old Genesis, which is better) a little too soft-prog for my tastes, but they're still terrific musicians.
And I had no idea your brother was Nick D'Virgilio. I've been a fan of Spock's Beard ever since I saw them open for Dream Theater close to 10 years ago, and I ran into Nick last year at the NAMM show. Incredible drummer--and a very decent singer, too. Very cool. . . .
David,
Glad you enjoyed it. There are not a lot of D'Virgilios out there. In fact, our family is the only one with the apostrophe. Everyone else has an "i" (grandpa changed it for some reason in the 40s).
I'm 8 years older than Nick, so I turned him on to all the cool music when we were growing up. Unfortunately for me he got all the talent!
The only one, eh? That's interesting. John Derbyshire had a post on The Corner (corner.nationalreview.com) the other day to the effect that some 4 million (I think) Americans have unique last names, i.e., only one person has that particular surname. I wonder how many "one-family" names there are . . . .
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