Genesis - The Album by Album Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Oct 15, 2018.

  1. The_Windmill

    The_Windmill Forum Resident

    Location:
    Italy
    Sorry, I meant Mark and as usual I wrote in a hurry.
     
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  2. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    That's actually hilarious because, with my accent, when I say Mark, everyone thinks I'm saying Mike anyhow lol
     
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  3. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I know what I lark.
     
  4. Victor/Victrola

    Victor/Victrola Makng shure its write

    The Battle Of Epping Forest
    About the only positive thing I can say about the track is that it is rather ingenious to write a song about a gang fight, and construct it in such a way that the music does serious battle with the lyrics. Other than that, I really dislike this song. It's my least favorite Gabriel-era Genesis song, and the one that keeps SEBTP from being my favorite Genesis album. Too wordy? Yes. Too busy? Yes. Too campy? Yes.

    Maybe the lyrics are too British and full of slang for me to understand, but unlike Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, the puns don't work here, for me at least. It's just way too frantic and messy for me to sit through. I have a similar issue with Harold The Barrel, but Harold isn't over 11 minutes long, so I tolerate it (actually it's not a bad track at all, but has similar qualities to this). I'd probably like Epping Forest a little better if it had been edited down to say, 5 minutes. I also wonder if I'd like it more as an instrumental. It's really Gabriel's delivery that makes me cringe.
     
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  5. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I'd like to know, exactly what do people mean when they say a song is "too campy"?
     
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  6. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    That's one of the funny and great things about Genesis, we can all love the band but have different highlights and lowlights. I actually love Gabriel's work on this, but I never used to
     
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  7. Peace N. Love

    Peace N. Love Forum Resident

    It's interesting, I don't think I've ever really enjoyed any of the vocalists hired by Mike or Tony to sing on their stuff. Just found them a little uninteresting. Steve, too, although Ritchie Havens and Randy Crawford were fantastic on Please Don't Touch.
     
  8. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I thought Fish was OK with some of the more proggy songs. Also I seem to be in the minority in that I think Jack Hues really nails the songs on Strictly Inc.
     
  9. Yakr

    Yakr Forum Resident

    Location:
    CO
    You're right - lighting guy with Hawkwind - wiki page here.
     
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  10. LeBon Bush

    LeBon Bush Hound of Love

    Location:
    Austria
    Selling England by the Pound... we're here. THE Genesis moment for me, an album that's going to stand out forever... at least for me, that is. Note that some portions of this text were originally published on my german-language blog. The original post can be found here: Genesis - Selling England by the Pound
    Those parts are written in italics.

    I don't really know how I found this album. Well, of course, the YouTube algorithms did a good job in letting me find the thing (after listening to Invisible Touch just a tad too often ;) ). But how exactly did the album dig deep into my heart, shattering my very being and making me feel like I had been reborn, now able to understand the greatness of music and to feel real, pure emotion? Well, I can't exactly recall. I DO know, however, that this was around the same time I happened to fall in love with somebody for the first time, a feeling that also accompanies me while participating in this Genesis thread - but I digress.

    Can you tell me where my country lies?, Peter Gabriel whimpers mournfully into the microphone as the album begins. Slowly, the guitar approaches before organ and the piano (marvellously played by Banks!) kick in as well. This pastoral atmosphere builds up until Collins' drums come along, turning 'Dancing With the Moonlit Knight' into a genuine rock piece. This first instrumental part shows the real goods of Genesis: progressive rock at its best! After the second verse, tension rises and rises as the Bass kicks in, duelling with the organ before the whole thing turns into a quiet folky piece, highlighting Gabriel's flute just before the fadeout. That was the moment I, for the first time, truly understood the song, "got" the musical genius behind it, being left speechless.

    Really, I never really liked much of the album until I paid attention to the musicality of Dancing With the Moonlit Knight. And that was the beginning of my musical catharsis, when I began to appreciate all the classical influences to be found on this album and started to dig into classical composers as well, especially Handel, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Wagner... you get the idea. This was also due to my music teacher who was very enthusiastic about this kind of music as well.

    Lyrically, the tracks seem to be interconnected by the theme of the loss of traditional british values (hence: Selling England by the Pound), for one caused by what could be seen as a successive 'americanization' of british culture during the 60s (visible in the motion picture sector, although it could also be argued that Britain managed to avoid cultural loss through mediums like 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' or much of the popular music of the day), on the other hand (possibly) caused by Britain's decision to join the European Community in early 1973 - I can't comment on Genesis' opinion on this particular topic, but the lyrics combined with the album's release date make this at least a plausible theory to me. This gets supported by the fact that Genesis never - before or after - seemed to sound as decidedly british as on this, their fifth album. Old folk songs from the 17th century seem to have been just as much a musical inspiration to the album as british late-60s hard rock, especially by the likes of Deep Purple.

    But there's more: ever thought 'I Know What I Like' sounded very familiar to american listeners? Well, that's because it very much resembles the 1972 smash 'The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia' by Vicki Lawrence - the chorus, certain intonations, it's all there. 'More Fool Me' seems to carry a distant CS&N sound, while Epping Forest could have been the musical sequel to Supper's Ready.

    The 12-string guitar sets in, creating a beautiful atmosphere, the acoustic purity which is so singular to this album, as the vocals start: 'home from work, our Juliet clears her morning meal' is worded like this for a reason. The lyrics take the traditionally british characters of Romeo and Juliet and gives them the roles of a woman who's got to work two shifts to pay her bills and a man who lives in a basement but acts like a rich celebrity in order to find girls for sex. Quite disillusioned, actually. [...] this album laments the existence of british culture as nothing but illusion, all substance being stripped off. It is the mythological character of Tiresias who shows them how little they actually know and how little value their existance actually possesses. He's being introduced by Gabriel as 'the old one', speaking 'of all he has lived through'.

    [...]
    [...]
    [...]

    Selling England by the Pound remains my favorite Genesis album, surpassing Duke and Foxtrot. The harmonies, the fantastic lyrics - in short, all the amazing music to be heard on here with all its tiny details one only fathoms upon multiple listens make this a fabulous listening experience. I would even say that this album is the absolute peak of human ability to create art, an album so richly textured and yet so clear and timeless in its central messages. This is an album that makes me feel what it's like to experience pure luck, a truly transcendent musical experience that's a must for anybody who considers himself a serious music fan.
     
  11. HiredGoon

    HiredGoon Forum Resident

    The Battle Of Epping Forest

    This is the Get Em Out By Friday's bigger, uglier brother. I've always enjoyed it, and although musically it's not interesting enough to justify it's length, lyrically it's superb. Kinda like those Bob Dylan epic ballads.

    And I love the various characters and puns. I suppose you need to be English or raised in English culture to appreciate a lot of it, though.

    "I followed a sign, it said beautiful chest / It lead to a lady who showed me her best." Now that's pure Benny Hill, that is.

    "I'm breaking the legs of the bastard that had me framed", sung in a yob accent ... that's something that you'd never hear from Jon Anderson :D

    Anyway, it's a sprawling, messy, ugly song about East End gangs. And that's how it should be.

    --Geoff
     
  12. mx20

    mx20 Enthusiast

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC
    I really liked Kim Beacon on A Curious Feeling. Can't help but wonder if he had auditioned during the Trick sessions if he mightvmi gotten the Genesis gig?
     
  13. Rigsby

    Rigsby Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I thought I read somewhere that he had and that's one of the reasons Banks came back to him but I may well be misremembering
     
  14. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    He was a Charisma label mate being a singer in 'String Driven Thing'. Just like Graham Smith was the violinist in 'String Driven Thing' who (after they broke up) joined label mates 'Van Der Graaf' for their final albums 'The Quiet Dome/The Pleasure Zone' and 'Vital Live'.

    Also Lindisfarne were Charisma label mates whose members made up half the backing band (along with the other VDGG members) for Peter Hammill's first solo album 'Fool's Mate'.
     
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  15. MisterSquishy

    MisterSquishy Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Chicago
    Epping Forest is insane. Sometimes I can't handle it. Yet every phrase is melodic & interesting on its own. How did this even get finished on an already rushed recording with all that going on? The whole story with its characters & voices is like a manic Shakespearean scherzo. Plus the rhythms are amazing - listen to Mikes's against-the-grain 12/8 chug on the chorus or Tony's 3-on-2 hemiola in the coda. It's definitely not feel-good, passive listening. But if you engage with it during the course of the album, you might appreciate its special madness. Definitely the extreme of a certain side of the band.
     
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  16. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    After The Ordeal
    "After the Ordeal" is an instrumental written by Hackett; the song originated as more of an electric piece but neither he nor the other band members could adapt it into something that they felt worked, so it was transformed with an acoustic introduction with an electric guitar solo to finish.[35] Banks and Gabriel did not want to include the song on the album, but Hackett insisted it should be kept; Banks expressed little interest in its "pseudo classical" style.[36][32] It was ultimately left on after Gabriel and Banks argued about the length of "The Cinema Show", which meant everything was included as a compromise.[13] Banks later said the compromise led to the album overrunning its desirable length on vinyl, resulting in a sound quality he thought came out as "pretty rough".[36]
    ---------------------------------------
    I think this is an important breather after the epic Epping Forest ordeal. I think it is cleverly named to follow that track. Whether considered an intro to Cinema Show or an Epilogue to Epping Forest I think it works beautifully.
    This track starts with a very nice piano and acoustic guitar section. and is melodically strong in my mind. I'm not exactly sure why Gabriel and Banks were against its inclusion, but I disagree with them, as I think it gives the tracks balance in an album context.
    I parts it sounds very baroque.
    I like the way the drums come in to announce that Hackett is picking up the electric guitar and I think the change up works well musically also.
    For me another good track in an album context, even though perhaps not a track I would pull out individually.
     
  17. Giant Hogweed

    Giant Hogweed Senior Member

    Location:
    Exeter, Devon, UK
    I know Tony Banks hates 'After the Ordeal' (or at least dislikes it profoundly), I think it's lovely - and a fine addition to the album - so that has taught me not to take much notice of what Tony thinks about his own music! They put on 'More fool me' and this is loads better than that....
     
  18. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    Breather or not, I think After the Ordeal is magnificent, the first part more than the second part. Much as I like Epping Forest, this track is a bit of a welcome break after all that chaos.
     
  19. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I didn't mean "breather" to be thought of in a derogatory manner
     
  20. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I'm sure you didn't. It's just that some people, including possibly the members of Genesis themselves, seem to think that while it might be nice enough, it's main purpose is to serve as a buffer between two longer more epic songs. I think it's more than that, and is a worthy inclusion in its own right.
     
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  21. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    agreed
     
  22. mx20

    mx20 Enthusiast

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC
    After The Ordeal has always seemed like a work-in-progress to me. I love the guitar solo, but just when we're getting somewhere.... it fades out. Not an important track to me, but would have made a(nother) great non-LP b-side, imo. But then you'd have an off-balance album by excluding Ordeal & including More Fool Me... I'm happy with what we ended up with, but I wonder if Ordeal had a proper ending that just got faded because of time constraints?
     
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  23. HiredGoon

    HiredGoon Forum Resident

    After The Ordeal

    A lovely little instrumental, in two sections (acoustic and electric). I'm pretty sure this was played at the Steve Hackett gig that I attended.

    The electric guitar melody always reminds me of Peter Allen's I Still Call Australia Home ("I've been to cities that never close down")



    ... pretty sure After The Ordeal came first, though.

    --Geoff
     
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  24. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic

    Here’s something I bet a lot of you have never heard...

    After the Ordeal- the “Rock” demo.

     
  25. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    nice! No I have never heard that before. Thanks for sharing!
     

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