: 1) I just got it and my question is: is it a concept album? does it tell a tale? or just unconnected songs?
It isn't a concept album per se, by the strict definition that all the songs on the album tell one story.
There are a LOT of interlinked musical themes both on this album and Wind and Wuthering. The Genesis Discography tells a little about what recurrs where:
Los Endos
The name "Los Endos" doesn't mean anything significant in any language we have ever encountered, and is apparently something Phil made up to sound like "the end". (The closest thing in Spanish seems to mean "The Entrails") Collins pronounces the "o" in both words more like "ah".
The song was originally a self-contained, completely original jazz-fusion piece by Phil. written by Phil Collins (who gets the major writing credit for the final version). Collins was just getting into Brand X at the time of A Trick Of The Tail, and was bringing the type of music they played back into Genesis. The themes from the other songs on A Trick Of The Tail were then added in. (The outtakes album Trick Of The Tail Outtakes has a rehearsal performance of Los Endos proper before the other bits were added in.) The part at the beginning you hear which isn't part of the jazz-fusion song and also isn't a theme from any of the other songs on the album is from It's Yourself, which was a b-side.
Some but not all of the songs on A Trick Of The Tail are closely linked together. About the best way to link the songs together is this:
Dance On A Volcano/Squonk/It's Yourself/Mad Man Moon/Los Endos
Squonk reprises part of Volcano near the end, It's Yourself ends on the same phrase that Mad Man Moon begins, and Los Endos has a little bit of everything. The Trick Of The Tail outtakes, which have the instrumental backing tracks for (most of) the songs, makes a lot of the connections obvious that would be difficult to detect.
[If you don't hear it in Squonk, listen VERY carefully to the music in the "all in all you are a very dying race" part. It's MUCH more obvious in the Trick outtakes with no lyrics.]
At the end of Los Endos, there are two lines sung that are mixed into the background and difficult to hear. They are the final words in Supper's Ready.
These words were a farewell to Peter Gabriel. Compare the motif of getting home to the song Solsbury Hill, which was Peter Gabriel's song about leaving Genesis.
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"...unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth" is the last line of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
Wot Gorilla is a variation on a theme played in One for the Vine. The theme in the latter song is an instrumental section smack dab somewhere in the middle of the song (after "...and then with the vine" and a quiet synth passage, which is then followed by the aural bit complete with duck--call; after all that the theme in question is played). The theme in question is played on guitar, and probably backed up with piano or synth (or bass; who knows?). Live, it was played on piano. What Wot Gorilla does is take the first five notes of the theme and then go in a completely different direction from where the theme originally goes in Vine. It is even in a different time signature and the accents on the beat are completely different. In One For The Vine, the theme is much, much slower, and listening for the very slow part after the wild middle section is the best clue. Live, Tony played it on piano without accompanyment.
Also, the opening theme from 11th Earl of Mar in turn becomes an important theme about 2:30 into ...In This Quiet Earth? Again, it's in a different key.
Scott