Great band, hefty back catalogue featuring plenty of absolute crackers. But does anyone really want/need another Genesis ‘best of’? Surely long-time fans with 40-plus years on the clock will already own just about everything the band have released, and part-timers will have long-since scooped up all the tracks they want plus a few more for luck.
Which leaves The Last Domino? appealing mostly to just late-comers to the Genesis party, and collectors/ completists compelled to scoop up yet another repackaged I Know What I Like, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Invisible Touch, Firth Of Fifth, Mama and the rest on this 27-track, two-CD/four-LP collection.
With three musically distinct phases of Genesis – the early, ‘underground’ years, the post-Gabriel mid-period and the even-grandma-knows-them hit-singles years – choosing the tracks for The Last Domino? must have been a bit of a bugger, to say the least.
But they’ve done a decent job, and the collection is reasonably representative, if somewhat skewed towards the more commercial tracks, although a puzzling omission is anything from Trick Of The Tail, arguably one of Genesis’s very best albums and also a pivotal one.
Bookended by Duke’s End and Abacab, the running order isn’t chronological, and seems to be based on musical dynamics. Coinciding with Genesis’s hot-ticket first tour in ages – and almost certainly their last – The Last Domino? will find buyers.
But with not much (certainly compared with today’s standards for bells-and-whistles collections) in terms of value-added packaging – a hardback gatefold book affair including some rare and unseen images – and better, more desirable Genesis compilation packages out there, they’re unlikely to be queuing round the block come on-sale day.
