The Musical Box is a prominent Genesis tribute band.
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Taking their name from the 1971 track of the same name, The Musical Box formed in Montreal, Quebec in 1993 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the 1973 album Selling England by the Pound. The original band was a seven-piece, and incorporated visual effects and costumes that were in the original Genesis shows of the 1970s.
With the addition of Denis Gagné as the new lead singer in 1995, the band reformed as a five-piece (mirroring the seventies-era Genesis) and put more emphasis on an accurate stage show, from the lights, costumes and in-between song banter of a classic Genesis concert. Gagné immersed himself in the role of Peter Gabriel, learning to play flute and shaving a bald spot in the front of his hairline to better emulate Gabriel's early-70s appearance. From 1993 to 2000 The Musical Box focused on the Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot and Selling England by the Pound shows.
In 2000 The Musical Box purchased the rights from Peter Gabriel and Genesis to re-create The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Genesis helped The Musical Box greatly with this show staging by giving them copies of the 1,200 original slides. They also had access to the original slide operators who helped them put them back (more or less) into the correct order. In addition the band was granted full access to the original album master tapes so they could correctly reproduce the sound live on stage, even though Genesis themselves did not do this. The band's decision to exactly reproduce the sound of the original studio albums in a live environment caused some controversy especially within the Genesis hard-core fan community.
Since 2001 The Musical Box has grown in popularity, and has performed large sold-out shows in Canada, the USA, Europe and South America.
The band announced another world tour on 12 July 2007. This covered several countries in Europe and a number of midwestern and eastern US cities. The European leg of the tour was a selection of shows based on the Foxtrot and Selling England By The Pound tours, with both the white and black shows on the England Tour. It was reported to be the last time that Foxtrot based shows will be performed in Europe. The North American leg of the tour did not consist of any Foxtrot shows, but rather one Selling England "White Show" and one Selling England "Black Show" in most cities. The black and white shows feature the same setlist but very different set designs.
In Summer 2008, the band announced its "Trick of the Tail" tour, based upon the tours first performed in 1976, was happening. The role of Phil Collins was played by Denis Gagné (as a singer) as well as Marc Laflamme (as a drummer). Gregg Bendian (who played the role of Collins on their recent tours) played the part of Bill Bruford on drums. The rest of the band remained the same. According to the band's website, the band worked with Genesis and others involved in the original 1976 production to recreate the show as much as possible. The band started the tour in Europe on the 27th of September 2008, playing a total of 27 shows. This was the first time that they have performed music from after the Peter Gabriel era. There were some rumours about the band performing other tours from the Phil Collins era, but apparently the band never had any intentions of going further in that direction.
Denis Gagné appeared in the 2010 film Soupernatural, and also sang on the soundtrack.[1]
The Musical Box took a break in 2010. In late 2011 and early 2012, the band will conduct another tour re-creating The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Keyboardist David Myers will not be part of the band this time around. They will tour eastern Canada and the United States from October to December 2011, and then tour Western Europe in February 2012.[2][3]
Genesis has supported The Musical Box in many ways. In 2002 their former guitarist Steve Hackett joined the band in London, England at the Royal Albert Hall, playing on a special encore of "Firth of Fifth". Drummer Phil Collins watched the Lamb show in Geneva in 2005, and joined the band onstage to play drums during the encore of "The Musical Box". He watched the entire show and told reporters afterwards that "they played it better than we did." Peter Gabriel, meanwhile, has taken his children to a show so "they could see what their father used to do."
When Genesis told the world about their plans to reunite, the Musical Box came up numerous times during their press conferences.