The Way We Walk, Vol. 1 - The Shorts (Live)

The second of two matching live albums pulled from Genesis' 1992 tour, The Longs is, at its title suggests, a compendium of the band's longer (and generally more fan-oriented) material. The shorter pieces which had kept the band so well supplied with hit singles over the past decade were then held over for the equally aptly titled The Shorts, gestures that might have widened the albums' appeal among those people who only wanted a souvenir of their favorite moments, but which left fans wanting to revisit the entire concert with no alternative but to purchase the accompanying The Way We Walk Live VHS. Half-a-dozen tracks include fine recountings of "Driving the Last Spike" and "Fading Lights," and the two-part "Domino" and "Home by the Sea," and all remind us that, for all their success as a singles act, it is with the symphonic epics that Genesis really hit their stride. However, one could possibly take exception to the fact that one of the remaining numbers is, in fact, a medley — which, when the songs are broken down into their composite parts, are scarcely any longer than any of the cuts on The Shorts (more pertinently, these are the songs that longtime fans probably cheered the loudest for — "Dance on a Volcano," "Lamb Lies Down," "The Musical Box"). The final cut, meanwhile, is a Phil Collins/Chester Thompson drum duet, which might have been most exciting in concert, but really grows tiresome on the home stereo.