which tours its elaborate multimedia show across North America, offer earnest re-enactments. Others, less so. A New York band called Minikiss stages Kiss concerts with “little people” donning the famous makeup and platform boots.
Reggae rockers Dread Zeppelin have been refashioning Led Zeppelin’s metal scorchers as Elvis Presley numbers with a Jamaican backbeat since 1989. The replication of fading or vanished bands is a thriving industry, fed by unyielding nostalgia for familiar tunes from an era before Behind the Music and DVD commentaries corrupted many bands’ mystique. Modern acts, too, have their clones, like Shania’s Twin and Practically Hip, who sate the faithful until the real thing rolls back into town.
In the case of Genesis, however, the real thing may never return. The band has been on hiatus since its 1997 album ( ) and a tour with new singer Ray Wilson flopped. Should one of the frequent reunion rumours prove true, it’s unlikely the original musicians, who are all approaching their 60s, could recapture the vigour and virtuosity of their 20-year-old selves as the Musical Box does.
A Musical Box show is no mere tribute; it is a revival. The band evokes the experience of a Genesis concert from the misty past. The lighting, the sets, even the musicians’ gestures are choreographed from painstaking study of archival footage.
Though its lineup has varied through the years, the Musical Box has guarded its fidelity with care. Weren't the '70s trippy?: The Musical Box experience.
Photo courtesy the Musical Box. After their first singer left in 1994, they auditioned Peter Gabriel prospects long and hard. “That was an experience,” Morissette remembers.
“I guess it’s how people see themselves. Sometimes the voice was horrible or a guy was small and fat. [And we’d think] how can you expect to be Peter Gabriel in our show?
One guy said, ‘I’m your new Peter Gabriel,’ and he looked like my father!” The singer they chose, Denis Gagné, has absorbed all of Gabriel’s ticks his jerky movements and studied intensity. Even Gagné’s speaking voice has something of the dry Gabriel monotone.
“I think I can actually separate the two [personalities],” Gagné says, “but then again, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, so I may [imitate him] without noticing now.” Martin Levac was one of the singers who failed the audition. “They were looking for a Gabriel figure,” he says.
“I have the look and the swing and the voice of Collins.” So when the band’s original drummer quit, he got the call. “When I get on stage,” Levac explains, “I have to be like a comedian taking his role.
And I play Phil Collins.” Like many of the musicians who have passed through the Musical Box, Levac is a session man. “I still play weddings,” he admits.
“You gotta make a living out of this… [Though] when I play other gigs, I don’t play like [Phil Collins]. I play my style. Which,” he adds, “is not far from his.
” Levac has recorded with Quebec chanteuse Isabelle Boulay and has released a solo album. So has David Myers, the band’s keyboard player. It’s an acoustic piano record called which tours its elaborate multimedia show across North America, offer earnest re-enactments.
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