Serious Hits... Live!
Phil Collins
Atlantic Records, 1990
REVIEW BY: Christopher Thelen
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 03/18/2000
Live albums are always a dangerous thing for a musician totackle. On one hand, you're faced with the difficulty of toppingthe studio versions of the songs that you and your band madepopular with thousands of fans. On another hand, you have to tryand translate the power and energy of the live performance backonto a piece of aluminum (or magnetic tape) and plastic and hopethe listener can visualize themselves in the front row of theshow.
Phil Collins has taken a lot of heat over the years for his 1990concert release Serious Hits... Live! In a sense, I can understand whycritics have had a field day with this release - after all, itcomes off sounding rather sterile, and there are times when itsounds like the crowd noise is either being removed or spread onthe tracks with a trowel.
But when the final notes fade out, this release really isn't asbad as the reputation it's been given. I mean, I'd much ratherlisten to this than those robotic pieces of crap that Genesiscalled The Way We Walk -- and I have yet to go back and review thesecond volume.
The first half of Serious Hits... Live! is the most difficult to get through,as this is the portion that occasionally sounds like it could havebeen recorded at a sound check and had audience noises dubbed in atthe start and finish. (I can't remember the last concert I was atwhere people were totally quiet during a song's performance -- Imean to the point of hearing nothing but the music.) This is astrike against Collins, and it leaves some of the performancessounding bland and forced, like "Who Said I Would" and "One MoreNight."
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