From paperlate-owner@atom.ansto.gov.au Sat Dec 10 23:19:50 1994
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Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 22:51:40 -0500
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Subject: December 1994 Q Article on Remasters (sort of)
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The following article is reproduced without permission from the December 1994
Q; I don't think I've seen this on P'late, but I apologize if it's already
been posted.  All typos are my own, and, is it just me, or does Q just hate
to say something nice about Genesis and/or Phil, but just has to do some
stories on them since they do seem to have a few fans in the UK?  Of course,
this article run two pages, with two pictures (a WCD shot, and one from the
mid-70s of PG, TB, PC, and MR) and the word Genesis does appear fairly
prominently on the magazine cover, so perhaps Genesis manages to sell a few
magazines on occasion as well, hmm?) - Linda Darling

Viable

Genesis: the loathed and the loved. (by Stuart Maconie) 

[asterisks = stars; Per Q,
 
***** = Indispensable. Truly exceptional.
**** = Excellent. Definitely worth investigating.
*** = Good, not for everyone but fine within its field.
** = Average. Caution advised.
* = Poor. Best avoided.]

Trespass **
Nursery Cryme **
Foxtrot ***
Genesis Live ***
Selling England By The Pound ****
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway *****
A Trick of the Tail ***
Wind And Wuthering **
Seconds Out **
Duke **
Abacab **
3 Sides Live *

In late 1977, the New Musical Express ran a cartoon by Ray Lowry depicting
four or five longhairs, some of them seated, playing a cavernous arena to an
undernourished throng of punters, either asleep, moribund, comatose, or just
too feeble to move.  One such figure rouses himself to speak to his neighbour
saying, "Hey, it's rock'n'roll mayhem down at the front."  The band's name,
emblazoned on a huge banner high above the stage, was GENESNOOZE.

In all likelihood, Genesis didn't laugh (though the lately departed Peter
Gabriel might have stifled a giggle) but, as John Cleese so memorably
remarked, of course by then they were getting used to it.  Rock groups have
fallen from favour before, some with the same stomach-wrenching speed of
plummet as Genesis.  Few, though, can have remained so uncool, so impervious
to the restorative and kindly hands of Dame Fashion.  Led Zeppelin became
trendy, Abba became trendy, Tangerine Dream became trendy.  Even Bob
Monkhouse and the lava lamp are enjoying a kitsch comeback.  But hipsters
still laugh at Genesis.  The timing of the Lowry cartoon is crucial to
getting the joke.  Genesis had the great bad fortune to lose their "wacky"
frontman shortly before punk swept the land.  It was a kind of double
emasculation.  Gabriel was seen as a punk rebel by default and Genesis have
forever been tagged as corporate AOR for young mathematics teachers.

Only one crumb of consolation remains.  They have sold records by the
pantechniconful.  They have had the record sleeves translated into languages
rock'n'roll has no business being translated into  They have shipped units
galore and this must surely soften the blow.

Formed at Charterhouse public school and having old boy Jonathan King as
their first mentor, they were never really destined for street cred.  At
Charterhouse, they were a strange mixture of '60s pop, R&B, and the
burgeoning progressive sound.  Their first album, From Genesis to Revelation,
is regarded as juvenilia now.  The real story, told here in "digitally
remastered" re-issues, excluding that first album and the most recent three,
begins with Trespass.

Trespass was recorded for Charisma at Trident studios in the summer of 1970,
with original members Anthony Phillips on guitar and John Mayhew on drums.
 Even the most die-hard fan must find it now somewhat weak, fussy, and
undercooked, but it did mark the arrival of the Genesis sound for the next
half-decade and thus irritate the hostile listener: limpid 12-string
acoustics, grandiose mellotron and organ passages and Gabriel's rasping,
hyperkinetic vocal performance.  At worst, it was a rather fey mess but at
best, as in The Knife, which became a live standard, it had something.
 Something peculiarly English and unique to the group who were amassing a
healthy fan base on the college circuit.

Before Trespass was released, Phillips had left, Mayhew had been sacked, and
a chirpy Cockney child actor/drummer and a nervous guitarist from a council
flat in Victoria had been recruited.  With Phil Collins and Steve Hackett's
arrival and the formative bruisings of extensive roadwork, their next album
was the mildly superior Nursery Cryme (1971).  The sound was more robust and
many songs leant towards a sinister burlesquerie.  Harold The Barrel
concerned a suicidal hotelier, The Musical Box the sexual longings of a long
decapitated schoolboy, and The Return Of The Giant Hogweed was a kind of
Dickensian Day Of The Triffids.  It was a long way from the priapic bellowing
of Robert Plant, something which endeared it to gentler souls who still
fancied a bit of a "rock".

Its successor, Foxtrot (1972), proved even more viable, musically and
artistically.  Watcher of the Skies and Get 'Em Out By Friday continued the
Genesis tradition of combining a scones-and-punting prissiness with some
thumpingly appealing rock dynamics.  Supper's Ready, the 20-odd minute suite
that occupied all of Side Two, looks worrying on paper but still holds up
rather well, chiefly because it's a well-made collection of short episodes
rather than a vast swathe of noodling.

The next two studio albums are the band's creative peak. Selling England By
The Pound and The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (both 1973) made the best
marriage of musical ideas with Gabriel's increasingly Byzantine personal and
lyrical statements.  The former begins with him plaintively wondering, "Can
you tell me where my country lies?" and, via Arthurian imagery, a comic
gangster operetta and melancholic love lyrics, becomes a sustained meditation
on these islands.

Selling England By The Pound was the title of the Labour Party's manifesto of
the time and whilst it's putting it strong to call it a political record,
it's deeper than anything they'd previously tried.  Dancing With The Moonlit
Knight and The Cinema Show (an ambitious attempt to evoke the mood of T.S.
Eliot's Waste Land in the pop vernacular) are genuinely moving.  And few
casual listeners guessed that Collins rather than Gabriel sand More Fool Me,
a telling manoeuvre in many ways.

Received wisdom hails The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974) [nope, people,
the writer contradicts himself on dates within two paragraphs - that's not a
typo on my part - lmd] as their masterpiece, and for once, received wisdom is
right.  Sprawling and often obscure, it's the nearest they got to being cool.
 A surrealistic sexual odyssey starring a Puerto Rican street tough, it
iconised America in the same way Selling England did their home country.  The
other members have always, understandably, loathed the notion that it's
really Gabriel's first solo record.  It isn't but you can almost hear the
sound of two separate forces pulling the music apart.

As the group completed their mammoth 1975 tour, Gabriel and the band knew
that he was set to leave, though his departure was only announced later in
the form of an open letter to the music press.  His reasoning, a pining for
"vegetable gardening" and a dislike for the mercantile, soulless rock
machine, endeared him to the punks who treated him rather better than most of
his peers.  Genesis themselves went through a dispiriting period vetting
potential new singers (one of whom, unbelievably, appears to have been Nick
Lowe) before deciding that Collins was the natural choice having doubled on
vocals, practically incognito, for years.

The first post-Gabriel album, A Trick Of The Tail (1976), was splendidly
received and was a buoyant, if banal, comeback, notable for the title track
and the tender ballad Ripples, but a momentum was carrying them away from
anything like a cutting edge and nearer to the big bucks.

Follow You, Follow Me in 1978 provided them with their first Top 10 single
and will no doubt be remembered in rock history as a twee bit of fluff but
it's the best thing aboutxAnd Then There Were Three; the rest is grievously
lacking in personality, something becoming more and more applicable to
Genesis. (The title refers waspishly to the fact that Steve Hackett too had
now opted for a solo career).

Anyone not devoted to the group will also find the singles Turn It On Again
and Misunderstanding, a sharp soul pastiche, the main things to recommend
Duke, an album the band toured muscularly but feels slick and uninspired.
 Abacab (1981) was a conscious effort to move with the times.  Admirable,
yes, though by now there was a distinct impression that things were taking a
lead from Collins's exponentially-growing solo career.

Also included in this hefty re-issue programme are three live albums, of
which Genesis Live with Gabriel is the oddest and most interesting, Seconds
Out the most proficient and all-encompassing and Three Sides Live pointless.

Anything less than eulogies written in blood will disappoint stoically loyal
Genesis fans.  Even Phil Collins has been known to pen a stinging rebuke to
the hapless reviewer of the Coventry Argus who dared give a Birmingham NEC
show a lukewarm reception.  That the records are more bought than praised
should surely be reward enough.