GENESIS

"Can you tell me where my country lies?"

Class B

Introduction

ALBUM REVIEWS:

APPENDIX: SOLO PROJECTS

Disclaimer: this page is not written by from the point of view of a Genesis fanatic and is not generally intended for narrow-perspective Genesis fanatics. If you are deeply offended by criticism, non-worshipping approach to your favourite artist, or opinions that do not match your own, do not read any further. If you are not, please consult the guidelines for sending your comments before doing so. For information on reviewing principles, please see the introduction. For specific non-comment-related questions, consult the message board.

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Introduction

Geez, I am reviewing Genesis... boy, am I reviewing Genesis. Who'd ever had thought I'd be reviewing Genesis... nah, let's get serious. We really need to sort things out here.

General Evaluation : Listenability: 3/5 . Due exclusively to tremendous inconsistencies - I mean, heck, when your output ranges from Foxtrot (great prog) to Wind And Wuthering (terrible prog) to Genesis (great pop) to We Can't Dance (terrible pop) to Calling All Stations (one of the worst albums ever recorded), you have to be careful with that rating, don't you?

Resonance: 5/5 . Peter Gabriel is one of those few dudes who brings real feelings into progressive. Phil Collins, unfortunately, is NOT one of those few dudes... but he brings enough real feeling into POP.

Originality: 3/5 . Lots of neat ideas here - Genesis may not have initiated prog, but they gave the genre its good reputation.

Adequacy: 4/5 . Half a point off because of Phil Collins and half a point off because ofour favourite keyboardist. Sorry, I can't but be harsh here.

Diversity: 3/5 . You could say the Gabriel period was similar-sounding, but the metamorphose from Foxtrot to Abacab has to be heard to be believed.

Overall: 3.6 = B on the rating scale.

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ALBUM REVIEWS

FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION

Year Of Release: 1969

Record rating = 7

Overall rating = 11

At least a dozen times better than everyone says it is.

Track listing: 1) In The Beginning ; 2) Fireside Song; 3) The Serpent; 4) Am I Very Wrong? ; 5) In The Wilderness ; 6) The Conqueror; 7) In Hiding; 8) One Day ; 9) Window; 10) In Limbo; 11) A Place To Call My Own; [BONUS TRACKS:] 12) The Silent Sun; 13) That's Me ; 14) Where The Sour Turns To Sweet ; 15) A Winter's Tale; 16) One Eyed Hound .

Their only album for Decca - their early manager Jonathan King managed to procure them this little contract when they were still schoolboys, but it's no wonder that after the record's release Decca as only too happy to severe all contacts. It sold less copies than Santa Claus' recent autobiography and not only made them lose the contract, but also made them the laughing stock of every critic alive (among those who actually managed to hear the record, that is). What's even more pathetic, even now it is usually still looked on as something to be really ashamed of - like some silly childhood scribblings of a notorious poet that he'd forgotten to send down the drain and then they had suddenly been unearthed and made public. Even the band's fans usually shake their heads and say: 'Well, man, they were young. Even the gods make mistakes sometimes'.

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TRESPASS

Year Of Release: 1970

Record rating = 6

Overall rating = 10

Progressive, long-winded and too often - boring. But, as they say, it "points the way to the future".

Track listing: 1) Looking For Someone ; 2) White Mountain ; 3) Visions Of Angels ; 4) Stagnation; 5) Dusk; 6) The Knife .

Well, this looks like the familiar 'Genesis' wagon already. Even though only a year had passed since FGTR, Peter Gabriel already sounds like he's undergone a fifty-years spiritual training course in Tibet or, at the least, in Oxford's Department of Philosophy. What's the news, you say? Well, it's like those charming, blue-eyed kids that stared at you from the last album's cover with white innocence never existed. They are not represented on the Trespass cover at all, by the way. (For that matter, no Genesis album pictured the band members until 1978, and even then it was rather an exception - in the finest traditions of prog).

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NURSERY CRYME

Year Of Release: 1971

Record rating = 8

Overall rating = 12

The boredom is still there, but, truthfully, there's lots of pure entertainment on this record.

Track listing: 1) The Musical Box ; 2) For Absent Friends; 3) The Return Of The Giant Hogweed ; 4) Seven Stones; 5) Harold The Barrel ; 6) Harlequin; 7) The Fountain Of Salmacis .

This is where the 'classic Genesis formula' finally falls into place, together with the acquisition of new guitarist Steve Hackett and new drummer Phil Collins - the cute little bald chappie with probably the most unpredictable career in the whole history of rock/pop. Back then, though, he did have all of his hair firmly in place and rarely ventured onto the steep path of singing, much less songwriting... oh man, those were the days. Not that I have any hard feelings towards Phil (except for ruining Clapton's career in the mid-Eighties, that is), but somehow he always looks more favourable on photos dating back to, say, nineteen seventy-three, than any time in the present. But let's get on with reviewing, shall we?

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FOXTROT

Year Of Release: 1972

Record rating = 9

Overall rating = 13

The focus of the band's legend, it is all that good - but you have to strain yourself for it.

Track listing: 1) Watcher Of The Skies ; 2) Time Table; 3) Get 'Em Out By Friday ; 4) Can-Utility And The Coastliners ; 5) Horizons; 6) Supper's Ready .

More of the same formula: lengthy marathons with boring instrumental passages, increasingly complicated prog lyrics and Gabriel's fantastic singing skills. But even better this time around; the instrumental passages are generally less boring because they tend to be shorter and more multi-part, the lyrics are getting interestinger and interestinger, and Gabriel's singing skills are on the rise again, as he goes deeper and deeper into his amazing brand of "rock theater".

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GENESIS LIVE

Year Of Release: 1973

Record rating = 9

Overall rating = 13

Mostly by-the-book renditions of standards. But what standards!

Track listing: 1) Watcher Of The Skies ; 2) Get 'Em Out By Friday ; 3) The Return Of The Giant Hogweed ; 4) The Musical Box ; 5) The Knife .

A cash-in, but it's really really strange that this is a single album. A single live album? When Yes were releasing a triple live set? Come on, Peter, what were you thinking about? Especially since the band's fans admit there were plans for a double live album, with 'Supper's Ready' and some other good shit (or bad shit). Anyway, there's no point of wailing for that now. I'd expect they beef up the new re-mastered version, but nope. No such thing - just the standard five tracks and not even a single stage story from Pete which he was so famous for. (Genesis fans don't need to bother, though: once you've picked up the boxset Archives, you'll discover everything you need and more). Pity. But let's talk about them, still.

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SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND

Year Of Release: 1973

Record rating = 10

Overall rating = 14

One of the most diverse, funny, pathetic, bombastic, mystic, and beautiful prog-rock albums ever.

Track listing: 1) Dancing With The Moonlight Knight ; 2) I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) ; 3) Firth Of Fifth ; 4) More Fool Me ; 5) The Battle Of Epping Forest ; 6) After The Ordeal; 7) The Cinema Show; 8) Aisle Of Plenty.

Yup, either this or Genesis' only reason for existence. Truly, if this one were not my first Genesis album, I doubt that I would ever think of getting deeper into the band. Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot might have been okay, but you have to work really hard in order to appreciate even some of the material, and a lot of it I still treat as absolute filler. Not so with this truly timeless effort. For once, the band seem to have resolved all of their problems. For once, the instrumental passages are suddenly not so boring or even not boring at all - and, quite often, they are downright beautiful. For once, Steve Hackett gets quite a lot of chances to make good use of his instrument (even though he's still exploiting that silly pedal of all things). For once, Tony Banks neglects his synths to play some fresh, exciting piano. For once, Gabriel puts a little bit of everything into his lyrics - from plain, good old-fashioned humour to ultra-bombastic, but still clever lyrics. And, for the first time, Phil Collins gets to shine with a self-penned song, and it doesn't suck! Now that's what I call an album.

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THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

Year Of Release: 1974

Record rating = 8

Overall rating = 12

Rather like 'The Mind Dies Down On The Way', if you get my drift - but this is sure a long and exciting way.

Track listing: 1) The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway ; 2) Fly On A Windshield ; 3) Broadway Melody Of 1974; 4) Cuckoo Cocoon ; 5) In The Cage ; 6) The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging; 7) Back In N.Y.C. ; 8) Hairless Heart ; 9) Counting Out Time ; 10) Carpet Crawlers ; 11) The Chamber Of 32 Doors; 12) Lilywhite Lilith; 13) The Waiting Room ; 14) Anyway; 15) Here Comes The Supernatural Anaesthetist; 16) The Lamia; 17) Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats; 18) The Colony Of Slipperman; 19) Ravine; 20) The Light Dies Down On Broadway; 21) Riding The Scree; 22) In The Rapids; 23) It .

Whee, this is one mightily frigged out record. My guess is that Peter Gabriel thought people were still taking him less seriously than necessary, due to all the fox dresses, willow farms and Harold the Barrels. So, one thing he hadn't still come up with was an extended, pretentious rock opera. As you might have guessed, this is a double album - a double-length rock opera. But ohmigosh, what a rock opera this is. Apparently, after a lot of squibbling one comes to the conclusion that it does have a plot: it's based on the lifestory and hallucinogenous experiences of a Puerto Rican tramp called Rael, in order to impersonate whom Gabriel even sacrificed his long hair and trippy stage costumes (some of them, of course - over the duration of the live Lamb show Peter still used to change quite a few outfits, including some gigantic monstruous "pods" and other different stuff; but normally, he just put on a ripped T-shirt and that was it). However, not even a supertalented scientist, heck, not even a 'supernatural anaesthesist' can decipher what the hell is really going on, be it in reality or in Rael's stoned mind.

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A TRICK OF THE TAIL

Year Of Release: 1976

Record rating = 8

Overall rating = 12

The best in songwriting and the most mediocre in song arrangement. Tony Banks should be guillotined. (On parole!)

Track listing: 1) Dance On A Volcano ; 2) Entangled ; 3) Squonk ; 4) Mad Man Moon ; 5) Robbery Assault And Battery; 6) Ripples ; 7) A Trick Of The Tail ; 8) Los Endos.

What differences are there between the Gabrielled Genesis and the Gabrielless Genesis? Well, first of all, as one might guess, a Gabrielless Genesis features no Peter Gabriel. That meant that somebody had to replace his showman/singing abilities (the songwriting would be quite modestly handled by those old pals, Mr Banks and Mr Rutherford). After trying out dozens, if not hundreds, of potential candidates, they suddenly found out that the answer was right before them all of this time. Our old friend, Phil the Boomer, rose to the challenge and demonstrated his ability to take the place of Peter. And so begins the Odyssey of Phil Collins and his rapid rise from one of the best drummers in progressive rock to one of the crappiest performers on the adult contemporary scene...

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WIND AND WUTHERING

Year Of Release: 1977

Record rating = 3

Overall rating = 7

Sorry, but Banks totally slaughters this one for me. I agree there are some strong songs, though.

Track listing: 1) Eleventh Earl Of Mar ; 2) One For The Vine ; 3) Your Own Special Way ; 4) Wot Gorilla? ; 5) All In A Mouse's Night; 6) Blood On The Rooftops; 7) Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers ; 8) In That Quiet Earth ; 9) Afterglow.

Oops, I blew it. I said something good about Tony Banks in that last review, haven't I? Well, screw it. Forget it. From the opening notes of this album and down to the last second, it's a nauseating synthfest. These electronic sounds seem to infiltrate you, spoil the very air you're breathing, poison the cup of tea you're sipping at while trying to get through to the melodies. And remember: I'm not against synthesizers as long as they're used in the correct way. You can put out a killer synth riff, something like Gentle Giant's 'Alucard'. You can use the synth to create outstanding fantasy-world or just outstanding spiritual musical textures, like Brian Eno. You can at least demonstrate your vast instrumental prowess by playing a technically immaculate, warp-speed solo - something in the style of Keith Emerson; I admit that some would hate that last style, calling it self-indulgent etc., but it's at least motivated. But when you engage in series of pointless, draggy instrumental passages that do neither of these three things, the reasonable question is: WHY? Why did Tony Banks clutter this huge, fifty-minute album with LOADS of these routine, boring, monotonous synth passages that do nothing besides just sit there and fart around? Okay, the tone he gets on this album and the general 'atmospherics' of his playing is basically not the worst thing in the world. But it's absolutely the same tone and absolutely the same atmospherics he used on the previous album, and he doesn't change AT ALL throughout all of these fifty minutes! Just noodle noodle noodle noodle... until I really can't tell one song from another, apart from a couple relative highlights I'll be mentioning shortly.

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SECONDS OUT

Year Of Release: 1977

Record rating = 6

Overall rating = 10

Slaughtering the old classics doesn't mean they're no longer good.

Track listing: 1) Squonk; 2) The Carpet Crawl; 3) Robbery, Assault & Battery; 4) Afterglow; 5) Firth Of Fifth ; 6) I Know What I Like ; 7) The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway; 8) The Musical Box (closing); 9) Supper's Ready; 10) Cinema Show; 11) Dance On A Volcano; 12) Los Endos.

As far as I can think, this is probably the last 'classic' Genesis album, because it still features Steve Hackett and it still relies mostly on the 'old classics'. Diehard prog fans usually don't even want to think of crossing the line between this and what followed. It's live, of course. Therefore it doesn't have Phil on drums; Bill Bruford bashes the kit on a couple tracks, most notably 'Cinema Show', but for most of the rest it's Chester Thompson, the black jazzy player who'd previously scored with none other than Frank Zappa himself. Needless to say he's good - he'd played stuff thrice as complex and witty as Genesis' moderately tricky signatures. As an unpretentious drummer, he rules. Unlike Phil. I'm sorry, but I have to say that, whatever the critics may have raved, he is absolutely not out-Gabrielling Gabriel. But let's deal with this in due time, shall we?

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AND THEN THERE WERE THREE

Year Of Release: 1978

Record rating = 5

Overall rating = 9

A country-western album full of Banksynths. Don't ask me whether that's possible. I just can't think of any other description.

Track listing: 1) Down And Out; 2) Undertow; 3) Ballad Of Big; 4) Snowbound ; 5) Burning Rope; 6) Deep In The Motherlode; 7) Many Too Many; 8) Scenes From A Night's Dream; 9) Say It's Alright Joe; 10) The Lady Lies; 11) Follow You Follow Me .

Humorous album title that shows us the guys really could take a laugh if they wanted to very hard, but that's not really saying much. (What a shame that Hackett and Gabriel had to go and Banks and Collins had to stay... ah, the calamities of nature). Their first album as a 'power pop trio', with no Steve Hackett for miles around. However, considering the amount of work he did on the preceding three studio albums, this eventually doesn't mean a damn thing. And that's exactly the thing that makes me wonder. The record is commonly described as 'the beginning of a new Genesis', the Collins-dominated, pop-oriented Genesis. It is generally expected that prog rock fans are to despise this record (and all the following), while at the same time they're expected to worship Wind And Wuthering (and all the preceding). To my ears, however, And Then... does not sound at all different from the first two post-Gabriel records. The absence of Hackett doesn't mean a damn thing (I think I already said that a couple of lines above, but repetitio est mater studiorum, you know), because the sound is still dominated by Banksynth and Collins' drum sound, with an occasional acoustic (sometimes even electric!) guitar from Master Mike. The songs are still long - well, not 'Supper's Ready'-long and not even 'The Musical Box'-long, but long nevertheless (and there's quite a lot of 'em, too - yet another album that doesn't really deserve not to fit on one side of a tape). And the lyrics are still as pretentious as hell - preachy and pathetic, that is. This, in fact, is the one really really serious flaw that makes me hate post-Gabriel Genesis - neither Banks nor Rutherford were ever able to capture that groovy Gabriel vibe (and I don't even mention Phil's exercises in lyrics-making).

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DUKE

Year Of Release: 1980

Record rating = 5

Overall rating = 9

I don't think it's pop. I don't think it's prog. I don't think it's too good, either. Buy it out of curiosity.

anyway, why do I have to chose best songs all the time? Oh, allright. It must be

Track listing: 1) Behind The Lines; 2) Duchess; 3) Guide Vocal; 4) Man Of Our Times; 5) Misunderstanding; 6) Heathaze; 7) Turn It On Again; 8) Alone Tonight; 9) Cul-De-Sac; 10) Please Don't Ask; 11) Duke's Travels; 12) Duke's End.

Ah! Now this is already different! They've entered the Eighties, see, and the album really ushered in Eighties synth-pop like a swarm of locusts. You might expect it to be detestable. Strange enough, it isn't, for reasons I'm still not able to determine. I guess it's mainly because Genesis were the forefathers of the genre. And you know how it goes with talented forefathers: even if the idea in general turns out to be moronic, they're still able to make the best of it. Europop is a miserable genre, for instance, but ABBA, who originated it, was a great band. Led Zeppelin generated heavy metal, a genre that's long since stripped itself of most of its redeeming qualities, but them? Them did it good, I say! Same goes for Genesis.

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ABACAB

Year Of Release: 1981

Record rating = 7

Overall rating = 11

This is the kind of 'good music for dancing that one need not be ashamed of'. Not boring, either.

Track listing: 1) Abacab ; 2) No Reply At All; 3) Me And Sarah Jane ; 4) Keep It Dark; 5) Dodo/Lurker ; 6) Who Dunnit?; 7) Man On The Corner; 8) Like It Or Not; 9) Another Record.

Well, take my words back! This IS pop music! Genesis DID become a pop band after all, didn't they? Maybe my main dissatisfaction with the standard notions about Eighties' Genesis was that they did not take into view the gradual metamorphoses of Genesis. This is presumably the first album where the 'dance pop' element takes over and becomes the dominant on the record, due to Collins falling more and more in love with sequencers and drum machines. The only weak traces of mid-Seventies Genesis can sometimes be found in the lyrics, like in 'Dodo' which is a fair enough reminiscence of 'Squonk'. Actually, the entire lyrics in general are a big step up from Duke: while certainly not the kind of meaningless, but preachy 'confessions' that Banks used to pen in the past four or five years, they are still a far cry from the average love song themes of, say, Fleetwood Mac or anybody else in that epoch.

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THREE SIDES LIVE

Year Of Release: 1982

Record rating = 7

Overall rating = 11

Live. Imagine that.

Track listing: 1) Turn It On Again; 2) Dodo; 3) Abacab; 4) Behind The Lines; 5) Duchess; 6) Me & Sarah Jane; 7) Follow You Follow Me; 8) Misunderstanding; 9) In The Cage ; 10) Afterglow; 11) One For The Vine ; 12) Fountain Of Salmacis ; 13) It/Watcher Of The Skies .

This has gotta be the world's most deceptive album title - double deceptive, actually. Originally, Three Sides Live in its American issue was just as it billed itself - three sides of the album were recorded live on the band's 1981 tour, and the fourth side was comprised of five contemporary studio cuts. I've never heard these, although Genesis fans usually don't think much of them, except for the single 'Paperlate'. However, the British version of the album had all four sides live, with the fourth side dumping the studio cuts and replacing them with some more 'archive' live recordings, taken from the band's performance at Knebworth in 1978 and at a gig recorded as early as 1976 (which means you have Steve Hackett on one cut!!). Since then we stepped into the CD age, and it was the British release that made it onto the CD. Now we have a double deception, heh heh: not only are there four sides live, there aren't even any sides. They should have renamed it Two Discs Live! Next time, choose your album title more carefully and with regards to the future, guys.

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GENESIS

Year Of Release: 1983

Record rating = 8

Overall rating = 12

Finally, casting all ambitions aside, our favourite pop group releases a pure pop album, resulting in a minor masterpiece.

Track listing: 1) Mama ; 2) That's All ; 3) Home By The Sea; 4) Second Home By The Sea; 5) Illegal Alien; 6) Taking It All Too Hard; 7) Just A Job To Do; 8) Silver Rainbow ; 9) It's Gonna Get Better.

Drum machine sound greets you from the very beginning of the album on 'Mama', and you immediately get the uncomfy feeling that this is going to be Abacab vol. 2 - synth/drum machine experimentation over clumsy melodies and not less clumsy singing. Well then, wrong you are (actually, I was wrong too, so that's a self-insult rather than anything else). The album is a huge step up from Abacab. Well, not exactly huge if we judge by the actual song quality, but huge, I'd say, in the mental sphere. This album has no progressive ambitions at all. Sure, the lyrics are still cleverer and more entertaining than Fleetwood Mac, but apart from that, it's all fast, enjoyable, hummable pop.

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INVISIBLE TOUCH

Year Of Release: 1986

Record rating = 5

Overall rating = 9

Actually, a very visible touch. A touch of drummachinnitis and synthesizeritis.

Track listing: 1) Invisible Touch; 2) Tonight Tonight Tonight ; 3) Land Of Confusion ; 4) In Too Deep; 5) Anything She Does; 6) Domino; 7) Throwing It All Away; 8) The Brazilian.

Ugh. No doubt about it, this one's is a little too much pop. First off, what happened to the lyrics? Genesis actually doing love songs? Simplistic love songs? Trivial love songs? Accessible love songs? 'Tonight Tonight Tonight'? 'Anything She Does'? Of course, Phil was already used to doing love songs on his solo albums, but couldn't he propose something better to the band that once was famous for telling tales about Hermaphrodites and Salmacis or battles between humans and giant hogweeds? And yeah, I'm perfectly aware of the fact that they began drifting towards love thematics quite a while ago ('Your Own Special Way' on Wind And Wuthering actually started it, didn't it?), but here this is all much too obvious. Also, quite a lot of songs are trite, skeleton-less ditties perfectly fit for the radio but certainly not fit for aging on anybody's shelf. The title track, for instance, could have been done by just anybody in the business, and considering the fact that Phil just isn't a truly great singer, it would certainly be done better by just about anybody else. Almost totally emotionless emotional song. Not very catchy, too.

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WE CAN'T DANCE

Year Of Release: 1991

Record rating = 3

Overall rating = 7

More like, you know, a Phil Collins solo album. Why he had to stick the 'Genesis' moniker on it is beyond me.

Track listing: 1) No Son Of Mine ; 2) Jesus He Knows Me ; 3) Driving The Last Spike ; 4) I Can't Dance ; 5) Never A Time; 6) Dreaming While You Sleep; 7) Tell Me Why; 8) Living Forever; 9) Hold On My Heart ; 10) Way Of The World; 11) Since I Lost You; 12) Fading Lights .

Maybe good old Phil was just lending his old pals Tony and Mike a helping hand to gain some easy bucks? Whatever. After a five year break, when all chances of seeing Genesis on the road again seemed to be more or less equal to chances of John Lennon coming down from the sky and joining forces with, say, Peter Gabriel for instance, Phil suddenly changed his mind and decided he wanted to keep the band after all. The album, as everybody knows, was yet another huge success for the pop Genesis, yielding loads of hit singles, top rank videos and stuff like that. In retrospect, though, the whole affair stinks badly, and, frankly speaking, it's really hard to get into the album, if you haven't taken a Collins-addiction course beforehand.

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LIVE: THE WAY WE WALK VOLUME ONE - THE SHORTS

Year Of Release: 1992

Record rating = 6

Overall rating = 10

What bugs me about all these washed-up superstar live albums is that they tend to replace greatest hits collections.

Track listing: 1) Land Of Confusion; 2) No Son Of Mine; 3) Jesus He Knows Me ; 4) Throwing It All Away; 5) I Can't Dance; 6) Mama ; 7) Hold On My Heart ; 8) That's All; 9) In Too Deep; 10) Tonight Tonight Tonight; 11) Invisible Touch.

Apparently the success of 'I Can't Dance' got so much to Phil's head that he decided to build the image of the succeeding live album on the concept. Hence the lengthy title and the cover image where the band plus supporting musicians are indeed doing some 'shorts'. Don't really know whether that contributed to the album sales or not, but the tour itself was quite successful - even my father who's not really a great Genesis fan got to see them in Germany and, well, he did appreciate them. Me, unfortunately, I got to appreciate them based entirely on this hour-long audio documentary, and you know what? It's worthy.

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LIVE: THE WAY WE WALK VOLUME TWO - THE LONGS

Year Of Release: 1993

Record rating = 6

Overall rating = 10

Still aspiring for progressive heights? No way, bros.

Track listing: 1) Old Medley; 2) Driving The Last Spike; 3) Domino; 4) Fading Lights; 5) Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea; 6) Drum Duet.

If there ever was a reason to release this and the previous album packaged separately (and apparently, with several months of delay after the first one), it'd be to make life easier for the two branches of Genesis fans. The pop Genesis lovers could grab the Shorts, and then along would come the serious prog dudes and grab the Longs. And everybody would be happy. (Which makes me seriously wonder about the average quality of audiences at Genesis concerts; is it 'prog fans on the left', 'pop fans on the right', and then Phil sings one song to the left side and the next song to the right side? While ducking the tomatoes and all?).

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CALLING ALL STATIONS

Year Of Release: 1997

Record rating = 0 [sorry]

Overall rating =

What the hell is THIS SHIT? Horrendous zero-tone music serving as cosmic rock lullabies?

Track listing: 1) Calling All Stations ; 2) Congo; 3) Shipwrecked; 4) Alien Afternoon; 5) Not About Us ; 6) If That's What You Need ; 7) The Dividing Line ; 8) Uncertain Weather ; 9) Small Talk ; 10) There Must Be Some Other Way ; 11) One Man's Fool .

When Phil Collins announced he was quitting the band for good (a rather strange move, since nobody ever prevented him from preserving the band and getting on with his own solo career as well), he probably thought Mike and Tony would disband the unhappy, violated group and just get on with their solo careers. He was dead wrong, and if he were able to preview the ensuing catastrophe, he'd probably have changed his mind. Because Tony and Mike thought they still weren't done with the band. Unfortunately. Instead, they recruited ex-Stiltskin member Ray Wilson, proclaimed him to be the next Peter Gabriel and decided to get artsy again. They didn't, however, take into account the fact that none of the two really remembered how to write good art rock music, since, quite naturally, they hadn't really done that for about twenty years now. The result is this album sucks. Not just sucks - it's abominable. It's the kind of music that I've been consciously (or, well, at least subconsciously) trying to get away all my life - pseudo-prog rock, full of monotonous mechanic beats, dull, dead-sounding synth backgrounds, and an ultra-pretentious feel from guys who really don't know what they're doing or where they're going but pretend to think that they do. It's murder, and after sitting through this record the appropriate three times (which actually took a week - listening to three songs off this album in a row puts you in a coma) I'm so sick that I doubt I'll ever put on a Gabriel-less Genesis record again...

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ARCHIVE 1967-75

Year Of Release: 1998

Record rating = 8

Overall rating = 12

You sure they couldn't have made this boxset just a lil' more valuable than it actually is?

Track listing: CD I & II: see the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tracklist;

Dancing With The Moonlit Knight

Firth Of Fifth

Supper's Ready

I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)

Twilight Alehouse

Biggie biggie. Genesis solidify their claim to being the best prog-rock band of all time by releasing the best prog boxset of all time. Well, okay, this time around by "best" I solely mean "least redundant". You can probably get some sort of rarities and stuff with boxsets that ELP, Yes, and the like are putting out, but with this (as well as the second archive volume) you get stuff that you are unlikely to get anywhere else until you're really into the bootleg thing.

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ARCHIVE 1976-1992

Year Of Release: 2000

Record rating = 8

Overall rating = 12

Much maligned, mayhaps, but odd enough, there may be more pure creativity captured here than on the previous volume.

Track listing: CD I: 1) On The Shoreline; 2) Hearts On Fire; 3) You Might Recall; 4) Paperlate; 5) Evidence Of Autumn; 6) Do The Neurotic ; 7) I'd Rather Be You; 8) Naminanu; 9) Inside And Out ; 10) Feeding The Fire; 11) I Can't Dance 12"; 12) Submarine ;

Ripples

The Day The Light Went Out

No kidding - I think this second (and hopefully last; surely they're not going to do an Archive 1997-1998 volume with three CDs worth of live performances and... ehh... studio outtakes from the Ray Wilson era?) installation in the Archive series is just as good, if not marginally better, as the first one. Naturally, most reviewers and fans of the good old days praised the first archive and panned, or at least, seriously rebuked the second one, seeing as how the first volume embraces the "glory days" and the second represents the "sellout era". I didn't expect much of it either, but...

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APPENDIX: SOLO PROJECTS

All Genesis members, including even such early figures as Anthony Philips, have had lengthy and often prolific solo careers of their own; however, I'm not at all interested in reviewing all of these (review Tony Banks solo albums? I'm not a schizophrenic yet!) Recently I have managed to build up a decent Steve Hackett collection, as his output really ignited my curiosity; while some of his records do seem to be minor pieces of shit, most of them prove to be minor classics, and unlike so many guitar colleagues of his, Steve never lost the experimental and innovative edge through the years; this, taken together with the diversity and enjoyability of his catalog, prompted me to move him to a separate page. And, of course, I have reviewed the entire solo career of Peter Gabriel, the most important member of the band, on a separate page of his own. Thus, the only thing left in this here section turn out to be... yup, you guessed it - Phil Collins solo reviews! Get the gas masks out!

FACE VALUE

(released by: PHIL COLLINS)

Year Of Release: 1981

Overall rating = 8

An under-produced, bleak collection of adult pop... blah blah blah, you know everything already. But a couple of gems are on here, too!

Track listing: 1) In The Air Tonight ; 2) This Must Be Love; 3) Behind The Lines; 4) The Roof Is Leaking; 5) Droned; 6) Hand In Hand; 7) I Missed Again ; 8) You Know What I Mean ; 9) Thunder And Lightning; 10) I'm Not Leaving; 11) If Leaving Me Is Easy ; 12) Tomorrow Never Knows .

I just picked this one up the other day - don't despise me, I actually supposed there might have been a time at which Phil Collins made albums that were something else than just tuneless, slick, predictable 'adult contemporary'. After all, the early Eighties were not that bad a period for Genesis - they were fooling around with all these tricky drum machines and exploiting the new genre of synth-pop to a tee, both the good and bad sides of it. So I thought, hey, maybe Phil was doing something similar on his solo albums at the time.

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HELLO I MUST BE GOING

(released by: PHIL COLLINS)

Year Of Release: 1982

Overall rating = 8

For short summary, see above.

Track listing: 1) I Don't Care Anymore ; 2) I Cannot Believe It's True ; 3) Like China; 4) Do You Know Do You Care?; 5) You Can't Hurry Love; 6) It Don't Matter To Me ; 7) Thru These Walls; 8) Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away; 9) The West Side ; 10) Why Can't It Wait 'Til Morning.

Talk about uniformity. Phil's second album follows exactly the same pattern as his first one, and it's probably more of a complete clone in relation to Face Value as any selected AC/DC record is in relation to any other selected AC/DC record. I should have probably lowered the rating for a complete lack of originality, but this time around, the Phil formula doesn't seem to be exhausted yet: the better stuff is just as interesting as the better stuff on the previous album, and the dreck, well, the dreck isn't any more drecky than before. So let's say this is just a very weak eight as opposed to Face Value's strong eight (i.e. weak mediocrity as opposed to mediocrity epitomised!)

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NO JACKET REQUIRED

(released by: PHIL COLLINS)

Year Of Release: 1985

Overall rating = 7

They should have entitled that 'No Ears Required (Not To Mention Brains)'. The record that did it for the Eighties, and did in the Eighties.

Track listing: 1) Sussudio ; 2) Only You Know And I Know; 3) Long Long Way To Go ; 4) I Don't Wanna Know; 5) One More Night ; 6) Don't Lose My Number; 7) Who Said I Would ; 8) Doesn't Anybody Stay Together Anymore ; 9) Inside Out; 10) Take Me Home ; 11) We Said Hello Goodbye.

Phil's Big Whopper - how could I have bypassed that one? How could I? How could I resist the pleasure of bashing this prototypical example of why the Eighties as a musical decade sucked everything suckable? No, I simply couldn't.

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