also now listening to seconds out as i edit someone's book abt the incredible string band (another group i have never much warmed to) (book is good tho, hope the fall of all the world doesn't impeded its publication too much)
xp lol i also don't much like steve winwood xxp lots of frontline prog musicians weren't especially posh, a handful definitely werexxxp my kidlit territoriality as a teen was not necessarily fact-based
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 13:50 (four years ago) link
Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel were both really influenced by soul singers (or maybe equally/specifically white soul singers). That's something that really sets them apart from a lot of prog people, imo. For example, I can totally see Gabriel taking inspiration from, say, Steve Winwood.
Otis Redding, though, right? Someone less inclined to cut Gabriel vocal slack might allude to Steve Winwood as exactly the starched-white white soul better whom Gabriel might sound like.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2020 13:51 (four years ago) link
can honestly say as someone who's listened to a lot of Genesis i've never heard a live set as good as the one in the movie unperson shared. Abacab era might be closest, sound and playing-wise
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 13:52 (four years ago) link
Phil singing backup on all those early songs maybe made it hard for him to handle the lead vocals on them. He wasn't yet a confident singer here; he still sings the high notes in falsetto where later he'll push his voice in that strained "soulful" Michael Bolton way he's famous for. Plus yeah, he wasn't so into hogweeds.
Peter Gabriel's appeal was partly the voice, but also this mystery and menace (assuming you bought into the persona). Some of those costumes were frightening — the fox head looks like a dead animal pelt. Seeing him onstage with a triangle shaved into his head, I'm sure some audiences figured he was nuts, which made the music & lyrics more convincing.
― dinnerboat, Friday, 27 March 2020 13:52 (four years ago) link
Hogweeds were real!
"He wasn't yet a confident singer here"
maybe this is exactly what i like! except i'm hearing unconfidence as prettiness (bcz it's so pretty!): can easily see how something so fragile wouldn't survive the professional needs of the regular all-night soulshout
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 13:57 (four years ago) link
I like the intensity of Pete doing the occasional Genesis song in the late '70s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd4aaoLE5co
Some good stuff in here, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FOnmf5NIWY
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 14:00 (four years ago) link
Discovering this track in 1990 after a decade of Collins shouting in soccer stadiums around the world was a seismic shock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyagd2EvwDU
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:01 (four years ago) link
(listening to seconds out except skipping all the bogus cockney ones ffs)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 14:01 (four years ago) link
yeah it's painful when Phil does that, like he's minstreling himself
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:02 (four years ago) link
He definitely plays it up, but isn't he ... cockney? I guess I never understood what that term meant, other than a working class accent.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 14:04 (four years ago) link
Phil was the Artful Dodger in a big London production of Oliver! when he was a kid. So the cockney-for-laughs runs deep.
― dinnerboat, Friday, 27 March 2020 14:11 (four years ago) link
i.e. .the intro to the "Invisible Touch" video
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:14 (four years ago) link
Born within the sound of Bow bells, mate.
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:20 (four years ago) link
I think, for better or for worse, Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel were both really influenced by soul singers (or maybe equally/specifically white soul singers). That's something that really sets them apart from a lot of prog people, imo.
I don't that's unusual for musicians of their era. Can't be too many UK musicians who learned their trade in the 60s who didn't play soul, R&B, Motown covers at some point - Geezer Butler hated it, mind you.
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:22 (four years ago) link
Probably true, but these two stuck with it ("Can't Hurry Love," "Sledgehammer," etc.). Did Jon Anderson and John Wetton or whomever ever do (or try) any soul stuff?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 14:43 (four years ago) link
i was regretting the one-offness of 90125 the other day
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:45 (four years ago) link
gabriel tends to kermit it up a bit in the genesis days, there's some vox-and-lead-guitar only stems from "selling england" floating about that aren't particularly flattering to him
before genesis i believe collins did sing lead in flaming youth, who were, honestly, a quite fine band. ultimately the '60s stuff descended into his lugubrious cover of "groovy kind of love" but as r&b/soul-loving white british lads go you could do far worse. gabriel as well... that time hackett showed up at a gabriel solo concert in the '80s and they played "reach out (i'll be there)", a fine moment.
gabriel-era genesis is something i relate really strongly personally to, honestly. it's often dismissed as being the typical prog-renfaire nonsense, but not all schoolboy stories of ancient time are created equal. what story do genesis retell? the story of hermaphrodite. when i look at gabriel era genesis, i see a band with a frontman who, at just about every turn, subverted and defied the expectations of heteronormative male gender presentation. and you best believe he got shit for it.
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:54 (four years ago) link
good reading
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:56 (four years ago) link
revisited in the Slippermen
lovely post, Kate
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 27 March 2020 14:57 (four years ago) link
more lessons in amazing portals of possibility :)
(spotify meanwhile followed seconds out with whiter shade of pale, which makes more sense to me as a source than stevie winwood, at least if i want my interest piqued)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 15:25 (four years ago) link
tbf I'm really just talking about Winwood's voice
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 15:44 (four years ago) link
yes i'm not disagreeing particularly, just that some routes in leave me (personally) less excited than others
(my entire intervention here has been a very self-indulgent analysis of micro-details of my own evolving taste)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 15:53 (four years ago) link
(a thing never before encountered before on ilxor.com)
lol this has been the best ilm thread in ages
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 15:54 (four years ago) link
phil is good again :)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:01 (four years ago) link
xposting to myself, memory jogged: duh, I completely forgot that "Owner of a Lonely Heart" is half Motown riff. Still, prog does tend to shy away from soul stuff. Yes covering "America" seems more par for the course. Bartok seems like a another popular reference (see: ELP, King Crimson). Folk and classical, stuff that showcases the frilly and fussy.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:27 (four years ago) link
90125 is, like i said, this wonderful anomaly, and it's soul roots are already distorted through T Horn and the burgeoning 80s reinvention. there's a good train of thought about how the trite anti-Prog narrative ignored all of that stuff tho, including the Collins/Gabriel stuff we've poked at on this last convo
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 16:35 (four years ago) link
Was there much of an anti-prog narrative in 1980-whatever, though? If anything, prog kind of won!
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:37 (four years ago) link
"Frilly and fussy" = not how I've ever thought of Bartok :P
― Sund4r, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:39 (four years ago) link
there's still a banal kneejerk anti-Prog narrative now, depending where you look. the joy of criticism now is there's no papers of record, maybe.
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 16:40 (four years ago) link
xpost OK, not Bartok, lol. Maybe invoked as a signpost of Serious and Complex Thought, then.
It's actually kind of weird how many prog acts not just thrived but hit various commercial peaks in the '80s: Genesis, Gabriel, Yes, King Crimson, Asia, Rush. Marillion? (I've never heard Marillion.)The Police had prog roots, too.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:42 (four years ago) link
Might be a North America/UK divide here? Classic rock radio was definitely still beaming Yes, Tull, Rush, and Floyd across this continent in the 80s, while you'd have to look to 'alternative' or even campus outlets to hear much that was punkier than the Cars or Police. I think things went differently on the other side of the Atlantic.
― Sund4r, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:45 (four years ago) link
my prog challops starts from the feeling that it's like the unhappy families in the first sentence of anna karenina (the the defitinion of a game in philosophical investigation): there's no such thing as "typical prog" if this means a characteristic found in every exemplar. if someone happened on ELP and genesis independent of the critical history, would they identify them as versions of the same thing?
of course there's a fvckton of traces of all kinds of black music across prog as a whole, which is no surprise given the patchwork of rival 60s clubs and london scenes its players emerged from
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:46 (four years ago) link
the erasure of Prog as a (necessary) joke enemy comes into my "why critics who use the word 'Punk' as an adjective of approbation are worthless" theory but i feel like in real terms people of good ears have moved beyond this, it's a kvetch about a certain kind of basicness that doesn't really matter
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 16:46 (four years ago) link
of the uk-based names in that list, almost all very significantly rebooted themselves at some point between 76 and 80: often with a hiatus following what may well have been a crisis of nerve
(i know nothing abt asia and do not plan to change this)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:48 (four years ago) link
that was members of yes and elp. had at least two huge hits here.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:53 (four years ago) link
there's a massive tangle that could fill a lifetime of knot-pulling. cities vs suburbs - consider that in terms of the vast geographical gaps in north america vs the UK; sophisticates vs conservatives, access to records, class affinities in small towns vs cities, the relationship of both to national music press, shit is complicated sorry i've had a few
before even touching the sexual/gender/class twists in there
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 16:54 (four years ago) link
i mean to quote the Onion, "Rock History Written By the Losers"
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 16:55 (four years ago) link
Idk, is it that hard to hear a resemblance between the band that did "From the Beginning" and the one that did "Supper's Ready"?xps
― Sund4r, Friday, 27 March 2020 16:56 (four years ago) link
one thing that might be intersting there sund4r is moving between the things that are consistent between the very first recordings and how they held those motifs when their interests had moved on, like never mind "Supper's Ready" there's still the same uptight thought in ""The Last Domino" somehow.
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 16:59 (four years ago) link
yes my thought experiment fails when knowledgeable but secretly hostile critics select for possible overlap :)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 17:00 (four years ago) link
also lol what a horrible horrible singer greg lake is
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 17:02 (four years ago) link
i hate him so much
B-b-but he talked to the trees!
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 17:04 (four years ago) link
No personal hostility! :( The idea was very interesting, which is why I was trying to consider it critically!
― Sund4r, Friday, 27 March 2020 17:07 (four years ago) link
lol i always mix that song up with Paint Your Wagon
― Let's kill the Queen and be legends (Noodle Vague), Friday, 27 March 2020 17:07 (four years ago) link
Lake is cool on that first Crimson record.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 27 March 2020 17:14 (four years ago) link
i was teasing sund4r, don't worry :)
― mark s, Friday, 27 March 2020 17:17 (four years ago) link