Most of us, or at least most of those among us who
play one or more musical instruments, likely have had, at some point in their
lives, the illusion to be, or be able to become, their biggest idol. Some have
given up, some are still trying, and some have succeeded, in a way. Amongst the latter we find
Simone Rossetti,
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Simone Rossetti |
singer, composer, flutist of
The Watch. With the right vocal skills and the ability to play the flute, and
the luck that his voice resembles that of
Peter Gabriel, he founded
Night Watch.
With this band he released the album
Twilight in 1997 and
when the band disbanded he continued with a new line up under the name of The
Watch. Although this band has seen several changes in line up (the latest being the addition of Simone's son
Mattia Rossetti on bass in 2014), they are still around, and have released their latest album
Tracks From The Alps in 2014.
Apart from this, in 2010 the band did a long world tour playing a
Genesis tribute
show, which has made them known to a larger audience as a Genesis tribute band,
which they are not. Or rather, not entirely. On March 14th they played the
opening show of a new tour, to promote their latest album, but under the telling title
The Watch Plays Peter Gabriel And Genesis. So telling,
that the final setlist only contains two tracks from the last album:
The Cheating Mountain and the fabulous
Devil's Bridge. These two were hidden in a great, mainly musical spectacle. Mainly musical, because although
they visibly enjoy themselves, this is not a band of the kind that creates a huge stage show. Guitarist
Giorgio Gabriel and bass player Mattia Rossetti played sitting down, just like (more obviously) drummer
Marco Fabbri and keyboard player
Valerio de Vittorio.
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Mattia Rossetti and Valerio De Vittorio (front)
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This made band nestor Simone the only person moving around the stage, and he mostly left his microphone only to play on his keyboard. However,
as said, the musical spectacle made up for that - and a bit more.
The band opened the set with a mix of tracks from Peter Gabriel's first four albums, starting with a
The Rhythm Of The Heat merged with
I Don't Remember. Looking at the set list, Gabriel fans may
be a little bit surprised that the strongest of these four albums (
4, also known as
Mask)
did not play the leading role in terms of number of
songs. Instead, the band provided a more or less equally sized selection from
the four albums and played these very well - led by the powerful, emotional vocals of Simone.
Half way through this first half of the set, they made room for a nice rendition of
The Cheating Mountain,
of their own latest album, which was greeted with applause by the small but enthusiastic audience.
Then, to the surprise of the Background Magazine camera crew, the band left the stage after
the first set, but immediately returned to play the second set - there was no
break. Luckily, the batteries of all cameras were sufficiently charged to survive without recharging.
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Marco Fabbri |
The second set started off with a medley of tracks from Genesis'
Duke
(1980), which was received with cheering and applause
again. Not being too familiar with the band, and not a great fan of
Phil Collins-
era Genesis, I was a bit surprised by this choice. However, the way
The Watch played those songs, and the enthusiasm they showed in doing so (where
they looked very serious during the first set, both Valerio and Giorgio showed
a smile every once in a while now) makes that I am going to re-listen at least
Duke and
Trick Of The Tail
(1976)this because after the
Duke medley and a great track from The Watch's strongest album
Vacuum
(2004),
Shining Bald Heads, the band continued with
Dance On A Volcano and
Ripples.
Closing the set with
One For The Vine, from Genesis'
Wind And Withering
(1976), it could have been one for the road.
However, as we all know - every gig needs an encore, and so does a gig of The Watch. So, the band returned with
Devil's Bridge, a must listen from their 2014 album, and, much to the joy of the gathered Genesis fans, ended the
show with a brilliant performance of
The Cinema Show.
All in all, a great Saturday evening, which I had
almost missed because usually the ProgFrog gigs at 't Blok are on Sunday
afternoon. I can only conclude I'm glad I didn't miss it - proven by the fact that both
Tracks From The Alps
and
Vacuum ended up in my collection that evening.
Angelo Hulshout (edited by Astrid de Ronde)