Genesis - did they really sell out?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by manco, Sep 10, 2019.

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  1. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    Ballads are technically a sell out for any band, if the term is even relevant, because the consistently biggest selling songs have always been ballads ... All through the sixties seventies and eighties, and possibly even the nineties, ballads ruled the waves as far as year end biggest sellers.
     
  2. Say It Right

    Say It Right Not for the Hearing Impaired

    Location:
    Niagara Falls
    Many of those who claim to be Hackett devotees pick a cutoff point of Wind and Wuthering. Then ATTWT is dismissed just because of "Follow You Follow Me." Yeah, Hackett was missed, but "Burning Rope" and "Deep in the Motherlode" are as good as just about anything on ATOTT.
     
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  3. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    No disagreement from me
     
  4. misteranderson

    misteranderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    englewood, nj
    Well...yeah, but they didn't exctly prog themselves all the way to the bank. I'll bet The Lamb tour put them in the red.

    I don't buy selling out either. Correctly guessing where the masses are going to go and actually making it pay is a gift very few artists have. It's a dangerous game that could cost you your career.
     
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  5. misteranderson

    misteranderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    englewood, nj
    No it doesn't, and it's not "progressive" either.
     
  6. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    No, it's a moniker that holds no ground....selling out is adapting to the times...If you want to look at it another way EVERY band sells out once they make it...it's what you do to not have to work a 9-5 day job...every bands goal is to sell out...and become rich and famous ...where do I sign?
     
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  7. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    Indeed...
     
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  8. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    Prog fans love hits, don't they? I do.
    I can't understand this. There are bands who do ballads as part of their original repertoire. Genesis is one, by agreement between you and me. So they sold out on day one? Or they can't sell out definitionally, because they "already have" ballads? It would be a lot clearer if ballads had never come into it I think. They aren't relevant to the OP.
     
  9. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

    Location:
    Devon
    I disagree. I want to live a rock music life away from the trappings of the 9-5, and for the most part I do. I have no desire to be famous as that's plugging back into the system. I guess rich is better than poor, but money's not a primary motivation for me to make music. Only music is. Can't speak for other folk though.
     
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  10. riskylogic

    riskylogic Forum Resident

    I kept buying Genesis LPs long after both Gabriel and Hackett left. But when I got around to replacing the LPs with CDs, I stopped with W&W, plus a compilation for the rest.
     
  11. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    Well they are fairly relevant.
    The old school says Gabriel era is cool and definitely not a sell out ... well why exactly?
    They made many many songs that could be considered nothing like prog. Gabriel wore outlandish stage costumes to get attention, just the same as Kiss did ... So they did some long songs... so what. So they did some odd time signatures ... so what.
    They did long songs and odd time signatures with Collins, all the way to the end.
    The three piece sounded very different to Selling England .... Lamb sounds very different to Selling England. I don't know what the big deal is. The band were constantly changing their sound, but for some after Hackett left ..."the band sold out" ... I really don't hear that. The band followed a steady path of change from the first album all the way through. If someone doesn't like a section of it, that's cool. I have no problem with that, but what is this selling out definition? The thing that really changed was the guitar to a further back seat more frequently, because Banks was the main instrumentalist .... and he played keyboards. Sure Mike was a guitarist, but he wasn't really a rip roaring top flight guitar technician ... so the natural way for the band to go was synth/keyboard led. Banks seems for all intents and purposes to be the leader of the band, even in their particular democracy ... when Banks wanted something he got it.
    There has been this ridiculous notion that has been regurgitated over and over about "when Collins took over the band" ... I'm not sure he ever actually did ... He was the arranger of the songs, but until Face Value he wrote very little. He mainly did the arranging.
    So he had a couple of songs on Duke. Abacab was an album that was essentially put together out of jams, as was the self titled album .... but anyone paying attention to what actually went down, and not just going all Rita Hayworth because Gabriel, and then Hackett left, realises and can clearly see, if they want to, that they hardly started making Duran Duran songs, or Culture Club songs.
    The whole line of thought is preposterous if one actually looks at how it unfolded.
    Do the folks that get all bent out of shape about the alleged Genesis "sell out", get all bent out of shape about the alleged Gabriel "sell out" ..... to me it's all a bunch of bollocks to be honest. High School territorial pi$$ings
     
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  12. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    OK. YOU have no desire to be famous ....case closed. most bands do...
     
  13. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

    Location:
    Devon
    I disagree. We only know about the famous ones. But amongst them there's been plenty of self destructiveness to see.

    When Bowie was asked if he thought it was all worth it, he said no.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2019
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  14. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    Well I'm not a finger pointer and don't support the sell out idea except as applies to almost all the musicians I love. They all do something like that some time.

    My problem is that they ran out of currency for me as a fan just then. That's me. No heat or fresh in the songs to me in the day. I was off to other things. I always loved turn it on again.

    IMO I just checked out burning rope (F, no intrigue) and motherlode (C+; might have passed as filler on TOT)
     
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  15. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    I completely understand that. There are many bands that I have loved that went somewhere I didn't, and that's always sad, especially when they are your main childhood, or teen band, but it happens. Sometimes years later I look back, and wonder why I didn't like it at the time, sometimes I know exactly why I didn't lol

    This was the song that led me into the Genesis camp ... I bought And Then There Were Three and Nursery Cryme for a dollar second hand (it would have been about 81/82), I think on the same day. I think I listened to this first, and then Nursery Cryme... and both first tracks sold me on both versions of the band.




    edit: it may have actually been this song that made synths acceptable to me, because early on I was very anti-synth lol
     
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  16. altaeria

    altaeria Forum Resident

    Let’s imagine if Genesis released -er, dropped- a new album today and actually tried to sell out! What the heck would that possibly sound like????
     
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  17. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    Well if Phil is wearing a wig and dropping some dope rhymes, I'm outta there lol
     
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  18. ostrichfarm

    ostrichfarm Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    I think a lot of bands don't sell out as much as get lazy with age. They begin relying on various pre-existing clichés -- either ones they invented in their own music, or stock gestures imported from other bands, genres or styles -- or just don't work as hard to craft their songs compositionally, relying instead on production techniques and other sonic elements to "sell" the song. It's understandable, of course: who can sustain the white-hot intensity of the young?

    In the "Why Genesis Started Writing Shorter Songs" article posted earlier, this was interesting to read:

    ****
    During Genesis' trio era, you guys eventually worked out an effective system where you'd all enter the process with a blank slate and rely on jamming. The songs would evolve organically from there.
    I think that's why the songs ended up a little simpler in many ways, because the three of us were there together without any ideas coming in. For things to work when you're playing together, you need a slightly more concise approach. More simplicity was necessary. We tried to catch ideas quickly on those last three albums we did with Phil, instead of laboring them and working them – which we'd done in the early days, which I like as well. We sometimes tried to leave a song almost how we first came across it, keep it as simple as possible. With things like "No Son of Mine" and "Driving the Last Spike," it was almost like we had the chord sequence I played and Phil sang a little line on top of it, and we said, "Well, that sounds really nice. Let's just leave that and build from there instead of hammering out something more exotic, like we would have done in the early days." It was an interesting way of working, almost like three people working as one. We had a good way of working: We all had our roles, I suppose, and there was very little conflict, and a lot of great results.
    ****

    This is a great summary of exactly what makes me lose interest in many bands' later work -- especially when those bands went through an earlier period of writing surprising, intriguingly unorthodox material.

    "Catching ideas quickly", "[not] laboring them and working them", "keep[ing] it as simple as possible", and relying on jamming as a form of songwriting -- more often than not, these things are the harbingers of disappointment (for me). For most musicians, it takes hard work not to be predictable and formulaic, and aiming for spontaneity (e.g. jamming) often results in cliché instead unless you've got some really high-powered collaborators with phenomenal ears, and are willing to do a lot of editing after the fact.

    I like music that's been labored and worked -- it's central to what I enjoy about prog (but not only prog).

    That said, my favorite era of Genesis is the early- to middle part of the Phil Collins era ("Turn It On Again" is probably my favorite song of theirs). And I actually like "Illegal Alien", albeit in a campy/this-is-unintentionally-absurd sort of way. It's a misfire of a song, especially the ill-advised lyrics, but that's what makes it interesting to me, and the tunes in it are catchy and a bit offbeat.
     
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  19. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    he would have said yes if he had to work for a living in a S*** job...
    but they still live better than the average bear ever will...poor, poor babies...I don't feel sorry...: )
     
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  20. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    an old man making a record? sorta like Paul McCartney who can no longer sing...seriously.
     
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  21. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    now that would be embarrassing for all! LOL!
     
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  22. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    They haven't sold anything to me after the self-titled LP in 1983.

    I think "sellout" is a little harsh; artists can do what they want. Maybe that's only a valid criticism for an artist who has ranted about the business aspects, etc. Maybe.

    But yes, I wish they had kept making proggy albums. Then I would have probably bought them.
     
  23. peteham

    peteham Senior Member

    Location:
    Simcoe County
    Except, of course they DID continue making proggy albums.
     
  24. kaztor

    kaztor Music is the Best

    [​IMG]
     
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  25. footlooseman

    footlooseman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Joyzee
    No. They did however migrate from my attention as a band . It’s ok I am happy for them. As solo
    artists they still managed to release some interesting work for the most part. Still it would have been fun to see another studio effort after the Milton Keynes show
     
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