Deep Album Cuts Vol. 240: Genesis
Genesis is embarking on The Last Domino? Tour this fall (for now, I guess, at this point it's hard to know what's happening with various tours). So I thought I'd finally get around to doing a Genesis playlist, since I'd already done ones for the Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins solo catalogs years ago.
2. Dusk
3. For Absent Friends
4. The Musical Box
5. Horizons
6. More Fool Me
7. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
8. Back In N.Y.C.
9. Squonk
10. Afterglow
11. Scenes From A Night's Dream
12. Behind The Lines
13. Another Record
14. Just A Job To Do
15. Domino (Pt. 1 & 2)
16. Since I Lost You
Track 1 from From Genesis To Revelation (1969)
Track 2 from Trespass (1970)
Tracks 3 and 4 from Nursery Cryme (1971)
Track 5 from Foxtrot (1972)
Track 6 from Selling England By The Pound (1973)
Tracks 7 and 8 from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974)
Track 9 from A Trick Of The Tail (1976)
Track 10 from Wind & Wuthering (1976)
Track 11 from ...And Then There Were Three... (1978)
Track 12 from Duke (1980)
Track 13 from Abacab (1981)
Track 14 from Genesis (1983)
Track 15 from Invisible Touch (1986)
Track 16 from We Can't Dance (1991)
Even though the era with Phil Collins on lead vocals was by far the most successful part of Genesis's career, the first six albums with Peter Gabriel really established the band in the UK and continue to have a diehard following. And I think those early albums, particularly the ones with guitarist Steve Hackett from 1971 to '76, kind of became more revered by a lot of rock fans after Collins became a pop balladeer, while Gabriel kept a bit more of his art rock cred in his solo work. So I wanted to really capture both eras and give them near equal time (as with my Van Halen playlist, I skipped the late '90s album where the band unsuccessfully attempted to relaunch with a third lead singer, Calling All Stations).
One of the remarkable things about Genesis's career is that they may have the longest streak of upward commercial momentum of any band in modern pop history. Most long-running acts have ups and downs or peak early, but pretty much every Genesis album sold a little more than the last for 13 albums. Their debut From Genesis To Revelation only sold about 600 copies in its first year of release, but they kept climbing and climbing until Invisible Touch sold over 6 million in the U.S. alone. Of course, that streak includes two very different eras that could very well have been different bands if they'd decided to change the name after Gabriel left. But even their solo careers kept climbing on the same path. There was that very unexpected moment in the mid-'80s when Genesis and its members' solo projects were absolutely dominating the charts. I grew up on that stuff -- my dad had Invisible Touch, So, No Jacket Required, and Mike + The Mechanics, and played all of them a ton.
My self-imposed 80-minute cap for these playlists makes things a little more difficult with prog rock bands and other acts whose standout non-singles tend to be very long. "Supper's Ready" is one of the most revered early Genesis songs, but it's 23 minutes, I'm just not gonna give over a quarter of the playlist to one song. But I got a couple 10-minute epics into the playlist, "The Musical Box" and "Domino," picking shorter songs from some other albums to make room for them. The Peter Gabriel era has some good stuff, particularly his last couple albums with the band, and I've always liked "Back In N.Y.C." since hearing Jeff Buckley's cover. But I'm definitely a bigger fan of Gabriel's solo work, and the mid period Genesis albums with Collins singing -- Abacab and Face Value are probably by two favorite records Collins ever made, he was just on fire in 1981.
Collins and Hackett joined Genesis for their third album, Nursery Cryme, really beginning their classic era. And although there was no way of knowing Phil Collins someday be a superstar singer, he was utilized as a vocalist immediately -- he was in part hired because he was a more capable backup singer than some other members of the band, and he sang lead on his first Genesis song on the brief "For Absent Friends," track 2 on Nursery Cryme, and sang lead again with increasing confidence on "More Fool Me." After Peter Gabriel left and the band extensively auditioned new singers, "Squonk" was the first song Collins sang lead on that led the band to move forward with him as the frontman. And when Genesis was recording "Behind The Lines," Collins heard the tape play back at double speed at one point and got the idea for the faster version of the song that appears on Face Value (he apparently offered "In The Air Tonight" to Genesis for Duke and they weren't interested).
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 9:00 AM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
Post a Comment