Last night’s adventure was the first date on Italian progressives The Watch’s ambitious tour alternating performances of Genesis classics The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Foxtrot/Selling England by the Pound. And they pulled it off admirably, save for the occasional opening night glitch. The tour also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of The Lamb.

The Watch currently consists of Simone Rossetti (lead vocals, flute, keyboards, synthesisers), Valerio De Vittorio (keyboards, synthesisers, guitars, vocals), Mattia Rossetti (bass, guitars, vocals), Francesco Vaccarezza (drums, percussion, vocals) and Andrea Giustiniani (lead guitars). My friend Cheryl and I were stood right at the front of a mostly sold-out venue (Boerderij in Zoetermeer, a pretty friendly room that hosts a lot of prog/tribute acts) just to the right of Rossetti with Vittorio and Vaccarezza in clear sight.

Now, I listened to The Lamb a lot as a kid, though mostly the first two sides of this double-album set. I read the notes and lyrics assiduously, and the way Cheryl tells it, she listened a lot as well. It’s a daunting, musically ambitious album that had a lot of appeal to me for the crazy storyline (found in small print across the inside of the gatefold; if you only had the CD, it was impossible to read) and weird theatricality. For those unfamiliar with the plot, Rael, a small-time Brooklyn hood, finds himself trapped in a weird fantasy world, one step ahead of or behind his brother John. Each experience is told more than shown, but that’s fine, it’s prog rock. At certain points of the show, a voiceover gave the audience occasional snippets of that text.

The whole show was an admirable recreation of the album with no effects, save for lighting and a backdrop reminiscent of the album’s cover.

The sound mix from my perspective was good, but Giustiniani’s recreation of Steve Hackett’s intricate guitar work was too low. This may have had something to do with how close to the stage I was. Simone’s vocals took a little while to get up to the task – this might also have had to do with mixing, but he was also, I think a little nervous. After the third or fourth song, he was in full Peter Gabriel form. Extra shout-outs for backing vocals from Mattia and especially Francesco from behind the drum kit. Simone, as an Italian performing for a Dutch audience, didn’t do much of the between song banter that Genesis-era Peter Gabriel was known for. The exception was the introduction to Counting Out Time, a tale of teenage pre-sexual experience angst, solved with the help of a book on the the erogenous zones. This he read out from a sheet with admirable Dutch pronunciation. (This, however, was also an opening night glitch – he read it before Back in NYC, the song that precedes Counting Out Time. Whatever. He still gets points.)

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is an attempt at a rock opera (released not that long after Tommy and Quadrophenia), and makes attempts at theatricality in its bombast. The Watch held our attention from an otherwise bare stage for the duration. While the story might bog down a bit in the second half, the recreation was fantastic. And this music (prog, after all) is not easy. I spent much of the show watching Francesco’s drumming. There was a moment during The Waiting Room which brought me joy – he was concentrating on a pretty complex figure and when he completed it, his face had a huge smile. Whatever the phrase ‘nailed it’ is in Italian, he did.

After a fair amount of musical meandering, Rael emerges into daylight and the main show concludes with the pure 4/4 rock and roll joy of IT.

For the main set (broken by a short intermission), Mattia only played one instrument, a double neck bass/12-string (and several effects pedals). However, there were two more guitars on stage. What else are they going to play. After another short break, the band came back and Simone looked confused for a second, then tapped the tablet on his music stand before saying something like ‘ah, that’s the encore.’ Yes, he had a tablet and a couple of notes at his side, but barely looked at them through the whole show. Not that I blame any singer with a massive piece of music to sing the crutch of the occasional lyric sheet. The band kicked into The Musical Box, a multi-part epic from 1971’s Nursery Cryme (and possibly my favourite Genesis song, though there are other candidates) which they hit out of the park. (Here’s The Watch performing it at Boerderij two years ago.)

I left the venue with a massive grin on my face – Seeing this formative soundtrack of my adolescence performed in full by stunningly talented musicians who obviously also have a love for it was definitely one off the bucket list.