Adam Again
Live At Cornerstone 2000: Gene Eugene / Adam Again Tribute
(2000)
Reviewed by Michial Farmer
It was pretty much a given that, whatever tribute the late Gene Eugene's friends cooked up for him at Cornerstone, it would not be enough. Eugene accomplished far too much in his 15+ years in the industry to compress into a two-hour concert. Thus, the multi-artist homage held at midnight on July 7 felt painfully insufficient, and while artists like Riki Michele and Mike Roe delivered heart-stopping vocal performances, questions abounded when the show was finished: Why was it so short? Where were Terry Taylor, Michael J. Pritzl, Scott Siletta, et al? Why did Mike Knott get five songs?
Forgive me, then, if I find it hard to be satisfied with M8's three-disc coverage of the event. It's not their fault, really: their recording of the actual tribute show has excellent sound quality, they've included short snippets of interviews with Eugene's friends, and they've even given us two other (rather poor quality, but I'm not complaining) discs containing Adam Again's shows from 1995 and '97. As is typical of M8 products, the packaging is rather poor, featuring a four-page booklet with impossibly small type and one small photograph of the event, but I think the real problem here is that the material isn't enough, and could never be enough.
Still, let us be thankful. M8 has done a wonderful job with the materials they were given, and while not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, this boxed set tribute helps us, to some extent, to bid farewell to a true artist.
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