I don't think it actually changed like, say, Twilight Alehouse, there is possibly one version recorded and that was as it was written. It's the editing of it that is puzzling. Sometimes it removes a verse, sometimes it fades out the ending... and without an apparently solid good reason to do so.
There are a couple of improvisations from the Headley Grange tapes that have been labelled as It's Yourself/In The Rapids/It or simply It's Yourself Take 1, but to tell those rehearsals are actually It's Yourself, even in its earlier incarnation, is quite forced in my opinion.
It has been probably since the first year I got into the band. The 4 piece albums are always number 1 and 2 when I rank them, but I'll also say that it's very arguable Genesis as a band was never more apart in songwriting during 76-78, whether this is a good thing as I like to say, depends on how much you enjoy Tony's writing - both musically and lyrically.
For a band who lost their front-man (erroneously thought to be the band by a lot of people), rebounding with ATOTT was about as perfect as they could have done. It might have been a step back style-wise in terms of lyrics (or maybe picking up where they left off with Selling England since Gabriel penned 99% of them on the previous album) and music. I've seen ATOTT often top "your favorite Genesis album" polls. As others have pointed out, the sonics on this album are excellent. The cover is fantastic. Lyrically, I think it's some of the best stuff they've ever done. I suppose I'm on the outside with my fondness of R,A&B. --- To me there's not a weak track on this (yet another) amazing album.
Regarding "It" While I can't say that it's a "great" way to end the album, I think it works just fine. There may have been better ways to end it, but I'm just glad that they didn't do some overblown, melodramatic flourish to end the album. Genesis had already done that. Also, doing so here would not have been in the character of the album in general. I like that Peter had the self-awareness to have a crazy rock and roll concept album like this, and then call it out for what it was, which is a crazy rock and roll concept album. It's not epic literature, and the anti-romanticism of much of the music was in opposition to the romanticism of previous albums. Doing a big bombastic ending would have cheated The Lamb of its unique place in the Genesis discography. So, that said, which I'm grateful that It is not a big bombastic flourish, I can't say that it was necessarily the *best* way to end the album on a non-bombastic flourish. But, I do like it. In particular, the drums are pretty darn cool, and presage the fusiony character that he would adopt on future Genesis albums and his Brand X work.
I would agree with you if someone said, for instance, that "It" is total rubbish. Then your "try coming up with something like that yourself" would be fully fitting. However those of us making comments here, for the most part, are very fond of the music these guys made and just happen to not like some individual tracks or sometimes just trying to collectively figure out why an otherwise good tune feels out of place.
I love It, and think it’s a great ending to a fantastic, but flawed, masterpiece. Probably my favorite concept album. In regards to the Headley Grange It’s Yourself tapes, I think it’s quite obvious that it’s It’s Yourself. The way the chord progression from the chorus flows so seamlessly into the next verse is one of the more distinct parts of the song, and you can hear it in these rehearsals.
When I first got this album, I loved it. I got it at the same time as And then Then There Were Three, and I preferred it. I really loved ATOTT at first; it was the first "full-on prog" Genesis album that I owned. Many years and the rest of the catalog later digested, I now rate Trick as being a very good album, but not up to what the band had done with Foxtrot, SEBTP and Lamb. It was clearly (from my perspective) an attempt to make an album that sounded like Genesis, since the face of the band (Gabriel) had departed. Collins sounds kind of like Gabriel on this album. The songs themselves draw on pre-Lamb Genesis for inspiration, and in a way Trick feels like the follow-up to SEBTP. There's a 12-string song (Entangled). There's a song about a mythical creature (Squonk). There's a weepy Tony Banks song (Mad Man Moon). There's a character-driven song (Robbery Assault & Battery). The album art, while not in the same artistic style as the pre-Lamb Genesis albums, appears to be of similar inspiration. IMO, the new band is as good as they get with Dance on a Volcano, Squonk and Los Endos. Collins is not front-and-center yet with is singing or presence, but his drumming here is phenomenal and the band does what IMO they do best, which is adventurous, imaginative music that is also quite melodic. Things get wobbly with Robbery Assault & Battery. It's got one of the most awkward choruses I've ever heard, and that chorus gets repeated a lot However, the instrumental section is pretty cool. Mad Man Moon is just kind of... mmm. l usually skip that one - I have to be in the mood to hear it and rarely am. The title track is nice and hummable and Entangled has some of the feel of Nursery Cryme with the 12-strings, but the jokey lyrics kind of wreck the atmosphere. All in all, a very good album, IMO. Some all-time classic Genesis songs here. It wasn't certain that such thing could get made after PG left, but Genesis proved that, for now, they still were Genesis.
I don't think they were trying to make anyone think Peter was still there. There was simply a consistency in the songwriting because Tony and Mike, and to a lesser degree Steve and Phil, had written much of the music and some of the lyrics on the earlier albums... more than maybe some people realized. It's the whole reason they believed they could carry on beyond Peter's departure. In Peter's time they credited every song to the entire band, regardless of who wrote it. The shared credits didn't indicate anything about how the songs were written, it was just a group policy. Nothing changed in their songwriting methods before or after Peter left... some songs were very collaborative and some weren't. It was Tony's idea that they should credit the songs specifically and it's not hard to puzzle out why he wanted to do that -- he wanted people to know how much of the material came from him!
for a few minutes after buying Seconds Out (upon becoming a rabid Genesis fan in the mid-1990's thanks to wonderful DJ Joe Benson - KLOS 95.5 Los Angeles California - playing the entire "Duke" album on his "Seventh Day" radio program), I preferred the live version of Dance on a Volcano. Soon, the studio version supplanted the live version, and has never let up since. The reverberation of Phil's drums is rendered 10x more powerful in the studio, and Hentschel's ace production (mixing?) really brings all instruments to life. Dance on a Volcano would be Phil's most aggressive vocal track until ATTWT's "Down and Out", and remains arguably his most aggressive vocal take from Genesis' 1970's material.
What do you think of this album? I think it's a good album. In many ways, it picks up where "Selling England..." left off. Lyrically, nothing comes close to Gabriel's clever writing - the lyrics of "Dance On A Volcano" sounds like the work of a 10 year old compared to all the references and obscurity of the previous album, and "Robbery, Assault And Battery" would probably have more interesting lyrics if Gabriel provided them - but the band managed to keep their storytelling strong on most of the album anyway (I love the romanticism of "Mad Man Moon"). As for the tunes, I like them all and it's amazing to see how inspired the guys were after such a big loss. Crisis is indeed a good source of inspiration. So, good lyrics, great tunes....it had everything to be my favorite Genesis album if it wasn't for the awful production by Dave Hentschell. I just can't stant the thin sound of the drums (the snare drum sounds like tin cans) and the mixing privileges the keyboards over the electric guitars (though Mr. Banks is probably to blame in this case). The 2007 remix didn't do much to fix these issues. How I wish I could get my hands on the multi-track tapes of this album... When did you first hear it? I first heard it in 1995 when I was 14. I was then a year and a half into exploring the band's catalog (Internet was just a nice sounding word to me) and I already knew half of the songs because of Seconds Out which I already had. It really felt strange listening to the studio versions of these songs, specially "Dance On A Volcano" and "Robbery, Assault And Battery", which I still prefer on the live album. Has your opinion about it changed over the years? A bit. Now I like the studio versions of "Squonk" and "Los Endos" as much as the live versions, and the production/mixing issues are something I learned to live with. Still, I dream of finding the multi-track tapes of the album and doing these songs some justice!
I'm in your camp on this. The music just doesn't seem to fit the rest of the album and the lyric/plot point seems to me to be analogous to the cliched "and then I woke up" ending. The story had proceeded at such a deliberate pace up to that point, it's as if they didn't know how to really end it and realized they only had one song slot left on the double LP to wrap it up. it.'s a big reason that the Lamb doesn't quite make it to my top 4 Genesis albums.
The snare sound on ATOTT never affected me as being strong or weak - however it doesn't tire my ears when I crank it up, so that's a good thing. I like the Tom sound a lot, perhaps the strength in the Toms makes up for any weakeness in the snare sound throughout this album? Mad Man Moon is my enduring favorite from this album also.
Try getting a copy of 38101-2 - best sounding mix I've heard of that album And, if you hate layered keyboards... well you already know that problem got worse! Though, I think this one sounds the best out of the four.
I do like layered keyboards, the problem is Steve's electric guitar that sounds buried in the mix most of the time. If you listen to a Yes album from that time (Relayer, Going For The One) there's a balance between the keyboards and the guitars. Why couldn't Genesis do the same? Now, tell me more about 38101-2. What's that?
So, we've arrived at what I consider Genesis' masterpiece. A Trick of the Tail is nearly perfect. It's the album that first really established them here in America, at least to album rock aficionados. The sound quality far surpasses all of their previous albums; the music leaps out of the speakers. The intro to "Dance On A Volcano" is the most arresting album intro they had yet come up with, even surpassing the excellent musical intro to "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" and the swelling mellotron of "Watcher of the Skies". There's not a single weak cut on the album and the beauty of songs like "Entangled" and "Ripples" is breathtaking. Is Peter Gabriel missed? Eh, maybe? But not that much, to be honest. Phil Collins proved himself a very capable singer, and his vocal register seemed to fit these songs and imbue them with an emotional content that I think Peter would have struggled to attain. In my view, Phil was at his best as a vocalist from 1976-1980 or so; after that, he began over-singing as a means of conveying emotion. A Trick of the Tail was the second Genesis album I owned after first getting into the band with Duke. I received it as a Christmas present, I think, back in 1980. For me, A Trick of the Tail would be the album I'd play to initiate someone who is new to Genesis. It has the melodies, the instrumental dexterity, the production, the lyrics, and the singing all in one package. There are electric tracks and acoustic tracks alike. As I said, it's their masterpiece.
This is the CD I own (I haven't yet investigated the 2000s-era remix) and I don't believe it is a remix; it sounds like the same mix as my original Atco LP.
First of all - I love this thread. The passion and knowledge for this band is quite impressive. Mostly I stay quite because there's little I can add. What do I think of ATOTT? - Love it; top tier Genesis for me. Easily in my top 5, if not top 3. When did I first hear it? - College, mid-eighties. Has my opinion about it changed over the years? - I think my appreciation has grown deeper for Side One, with Two tending to leave me more cold, except for "Ripples" and "Los Endos."
I agree and these three songs also highlighted the much improved engineering that finally caught some of Mike's bass square in the chest when played loud. Mike also had lead writing credits on Volcano and Squonk so maybe it's not a coincidence they're so impressive in that regard.
I like it well enough. That said, I do personally like all the earlier albums better. It must be to do with the elements in the music that I relate to most. And I realise that the later Genesis was far more successful Tim
