Abacab excels at achieving balance while remembering one of rock’s diverse groups
Whenever Pete Lents takes the stage, he faces an unenviable challenge. Not only does he accept it.
He embraces it.
Lents and buddies Cliff Stankiewicz, Patrick Raymaker, James Nelson and Matthew Hedrick comprise Abacab: The Music of Genesis, a tribute band to one of England’s (and rock’s) most diverse bands, which was active for three decades.
Lents’ biggest obstacles: He must sometimes cover music sung by four very different artists including Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford (who never fronted Genesis, but Abacab also covers music from Rutherford’s side project Mike and the Mechanics) and Ray Wilson (who was the group’s frontman on Calling All Stations, its final LP in 1997.
All that would be hard enough but Lents and the boys must also cater to one of rock’s most polarized fan bases, if you are to believe critics of the late 1980’s and 1990’s.
When Gabriel fronted Genesis, the band, it was acclaimed by critics as creative prog rock icons. When he left after 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Collins, the group’s drummer took over as its leader and his early work continued in the group’s prog rock tradition.
But he and Genesis would later become pop-rock artists that churned out radio hit after radio hit between 1980 and 1991. Some of those tunes featured some of the elements of early Genesis work, but the band would eventually evolve into pop-music giants that enjoyed pop success while all but alienating critics.
Still Genesis has two very unique and very different generations of fans. Abacab also performs Gabriel’s and Collins’ solo work regularly in its live shows.
Lents (who also plays as Abacab’s second drummer along with Hedrick) handles the wide array of material admirably and he manages to please Collins, Gabriel, Rutherford and Genesis fans.
The group played Knoxville’s Open Chord on Saturday, March 30 and no one seemed to leave unsatisfied.
Sure, they didn’t do all the songs you wanted to here because they simply couldn’t in two-and-a-half-hours and then face a five-hour ride back home to Charlotte.
But the show had balance as Abacab performed “Sledgehammer,” Gabriel’s solo mega-hit, “Abacab,” “Throwing it All Away,” “No Reply at All” and other standards.
Raymaker (keyboards), Hedrick, Stankiewicz (guitars, bass) and Nelson (lead guitar) all perform Genesis Music as well as the band itself.
The show had a surprise finale with the title track from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. That was improved but it brought down the house.
“We weren’t going to do this tonight. We were going to save this for Atlanta,” Stankiewicz said. “But let’s do it.”
In addition to performing Genesis classics such as “Dance on a Volcano/Los Endos” and “Firth of Fifth and “Paperlate,” Abacab did “Invisible Touch,” “Land of Confusion” and ‘Follow You, Follow Me,” Abacab played “Easy Lover,” the Collins/Philip Bailey hit “Easy Lover” on which Raymaker handled duet lead vocals.
The band has performed Rutherford’s “All I Need is a Miracle” but that wasn’t on the set list this time around.
This show, however, exceeded anything a Genesis fan could ask for and I must admit that I found it to be a bit educational. I largely lost interest in the group after 1983 and looked on much of the group’s later work with great disdain because it appeared that Collins compromised the band for the love of the almighty dollar.
But hearing songs such as “I Can’t Dance,” “Invisible Touch” and “Turn it On Again” for the first time in years proved to be a pleasant experience.
The members of Abacab embrace all eras of Genesis and it showed.
