genesis: duke

Yeah, he married a Swiss woman and everything, but c'mon, the guy knew what he was doing.

xxxxpost - agreed Turrican, though (imo) no band ever did a better job of evolving through the years while maintaining the essential thing about their band than Rush, but I think this and Abacab do a good job of it too

re: three rich successful men dicking about

I think that's sort of the charm of a lot of stuff from 78-83ish, there was a certain grand imperial era of rock that allowed tremendously talented people to sort of muck around in sometimes very interesting ways. which I understand at the time was probably stifling but as they say we won't see their like again, or albums like Duke. so few artists even get to have careers now let alone float lazily through the decades like a luxury yacht picking up and trailing the detritus of various musical styles of the moment as they pass by

Phil defends himself pretty forcefully from this in his book. I think he got shit for being a tax avoider or something, but that had nothing to do with it. The woman he married (and recently remarried, iirc) was Swiss, and her whole family, including aging parents, was in Switzerland, so he was basically, why wouldn't I move to Switzerland?

At the time there was a lot of talk about Phil giving an interview before the 1997 election (or maybe it was 1992) that if Labour got elected and raised taxes he would leave the country. He's since denied saying those things, and I've never seen anyone find the original source material for those quotes, but I think that's why he got accused of tax avoidance (again, it could be and probably is bullshit, but it was in the air at the time he left).

Collins has admitted speaking to The Sun about politics and claims to uave regretted it since. It was in 1992, I think.

"i think both abacab and the s/t are considerably better and hit their respective marks better than invisible touch"

of course! invisible touch is 1/2 dire. abacab is all class and s/t only has illegal alien against it.

as they say we won't see their like again, or albums like Duke. so few artists even get to have careers now let alone float lazily through the decades like a luxury yacht picking up and trailing the detritus of various musical styles of the moment as they pass by

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, July 4, 2017 4:28 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I understand what you mean - one of the fun things about getting into a band that has several albums over multiple decades is hearing how a band changes in its approach to developing material or hearing the changes in production styles.

akm it's like you're my brain talking back to me

I'm not even going to ask which half of Invisible Touch is meant to be dire, because the idea of the record being 50% dire is just wtf.

Has Genesis not been ballot polled yet? Seems like there's a fair bit of discussion on them in multiple threads lately.

would genesis + solo records be too much

Yeah, I think it would be. The Genesis discography itself is huge enough without having to think about Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Steve Hackett, Mike & The Mechanics and everything else the guys have been involved in...

oh god yeah gabriel is the one who tips it over i think (i just mostly would've wanted to include voyage of the acolyte tracks in my ballot)

I don't blame you - it's a great record!

There have been tracks polls on here covering entire genres, so I'm not sure. It depends in part on the number of voters.

it doesn't make any sense to add the solo stuff in there as there is so little crossover stylistically between most of them that's it's not fair to compare them.

if you count all the record sales and charting of both eras of Genesis, solo Collins, Gabriel, Mike + the Mechanics, various other stuff, I wonder if they as a collective wouldn't be close to the biggest money rock group of all time.

Gabriel's So, Genesis Invisible Touch, and Collin's No Jacket Required combined would get you north of 25 million worldwide

then I'd imagine, jeez another 15 at least Platinum
records between them all?

Gabriel's So, Genesis Invisible Touch, and Collin's No Jacket Required combined would get you north of 25 million worldwide

and that's just 1985-1986!

It's quite something when you think about it - a bunch of proggers that have been around the block a while, all in their mid-to-late thirties, having these mega, million-selling blockbuster smashes in the era of Duran Duran etc.

And they played four nights at Wembley Stadium. I don't know if it still is, but at the time that was a record.

def keepers: "Turn It On Again", "Misunderstanding", "Abacab," "No Reply at All," "Home by the Sea," "Domino."

pretty okay: "Throwing It All Away," "Man on the Corner," "That's All."

For those I will forgive "Anything She Does," though I am not quite ready to forgive "Illegal Alien."

I like Anything She Does. And Throwing It All Away is an unexpected exemplar of Phil Collins's Bonham groove.

There's a special kind of irony to "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight," a song about addiction being used in a beer commercial more or less contemporaneously with Eric Clapton's take on "After Midnight," Clapton being one of the era's most famous addicts, and Collins collaborators.

Also, in 'Domino', there's the lyric "look at the beautiful river of blood", and in the '70s Clapton came out in support of Enoch Powell... while drunk! #wow #mindblown

I've actually found myself wanting to listen to Duke quite a lot now - I'd easily rank it now as one of my three favourite Genesis records.

Clapton / Collins / Phillinganes / East was a pretty good band.

Collins' hair style circa No Jacket Required/Invisible Touch was, uh, certainly something...

impossible to divorce his image at that time from the Spitting Image puppet

Phil's mull' in full effect here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTVtphUTwQw&index=5&list=PLWsPdBjhn3_sgvpnf1WKaVxHkHDHIlZiv

impossible to divorce his image at that time from the Spitting Image puppet

― akm, Tuesday, July 4, 2017 9:56 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, yeah! When he had short hair circa Duke/Face Value he didn't look too bad, but his 1985-1986 look is just fucking horrific. I can hardly watch Phil Collins/Genesis music videos from this period without thinking "fuck man, what was he thinking?"

competing with bono

From Invisible Touch onwards the golden rule was long hair for Genesis, short for solo. Never mind the fax, fucking with this system circa 'Both Sides' ended his midas touch

it doesn't make any sense to add the solo stuff in there as there is so little crossover stylistically between most of them that's it's not fair to compare them.

I have been patiently waiting for several years now to vote for Over My Shoulder in the scheduled ilm Genesis + solo ballot poll, please do not take this away from me

Never Mind the Fax should totally be the title of a Phil Collins bootleg.

been listening to this a ton and honestly I actually have always liked "Misunderstanding" as a song I remembered hearing on the radio but it's just such a sore thumb on this album, really messes up the flow...

one of the things i love about abacab is that the obvious collins solo track ("man on the corner") really fits into the overall texture of the record where "misunderstanding" doesn't

According to Collins, the song was modeled after The Beach Boys' "Sail On, Sailor", Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and Toto's "Hold the Line".

one of the things i love about abacab is that the obvious collins solo track ("man on the corner") really fits into the overall texture of the record where "misunderstanding" doesn't

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, July 5, 2017 4:43 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed also that's a way better song...if, as suggested upthread, he brought them "In the Air Tonight" and they passed I think that, while it's not totally in line with the rest of Duke, would have injected some menace instead of seeming like a little breezy out of place pop song.

'Man on the Corner' does fit in better on Abacab than 'Misunderstanding' does on Duke, but I think 'Misunderstanding' is the superior song.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

A tangent from upthread re: 80s Clapton/Collins collabs, I was listening to bits of August yesterday ("Hung Up On Your Love," "Bad Influence"). Underneath the schlocky/glossy overproduction, the rhythm section work is fuckin stellar.

Y'know, as much as I dislike large portions of his solo work - and concentrating solely on the music here - I still think that Collins has taken a lot of unwarranted shit over the years. The guy deserves a knighthood for his drumming on 'The Musical Box' alone, and his drumming throughout Genesis' catalogue, even as late on as ...And Then There Were Three and Duke has been great. I think 'In The Air Tonight' is the very definition of classic, and the relative poppiness of the '80s era was as much down to Banks and Rutherford as it was down to Collins. They never really stopped being a prog band until the very end of Collins' stint with the band, I think - even as late as Invisible Touch, you can tell the difference between a Genesis record and a Phil Collins solo record and the proggy tendencies are still there. The guy has also been a session drummer on a number of very good to great records and he has a great, expressive, immediately identifiable voice. With all this in mind, I really wish I could get more out of Collins' solo work - but I don't, and that's perfectly fine because it's only a very, very small part of what the guy has done and not representative of his entire career. I dislike 'Sussudio' (it's always been a weak version of '1999' musically) and I loathe 'Another Day in Paradise' ... but it's a very small fraction of what he does.

one of the things i love about abacab is that the obvious collins solo track ("man on the corner") really fits into the overall texture of the record where "misunderstanding" doesn't

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, July 5, 2017 4:43 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed also that's a way better song...if, as suggested upthread, he brought them "In the Air Tonight" and they passed I think that, while it's not totally in line with the rest of Duke, would have injected some menace instead of seeming like a little breezy out of place pop song.

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

See my post above; and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8h0Wz6Z5nU

Yeah that would be a lot better Misunderstanding

Disagree about Turn It on Again though, that totally fits and is one of their best songs

Collins's drumming has always been melodic and hooky. It's something Bill Bruford doesn't quite capture on Seconds Out.

Another hooky contemporaneous deep cut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsV-1FDLTW0

Something like 'Anything She Does' strikes me as being the sort of thing which would be misattributed to Collins, though as far as I'm aware it is primarily the work of Tony Banks

I imagine it's a much-loathed song by a certain type of Genesis fan, but to me it absolutely blows away the breezy pop in a similar mould on 'No Jacket Required', i.e. 'Don't Lose My Number'

Also in the rarefied company of Van Halen's I'll Wait and J. Geils Band Centerfold of songs about a guy in love with a magazine centerfold model.

I imagine it's a much-loathed song by a certain type of Genesis fan, but to me it absolutely blows away the breezy pop in a similar mould on 'No Jacket Required', i.e. 'Don't Lose My Number'

he shouts a lot

"Man on the Corner" is a Collins solos song for all intents and purposes. Even the synthesizer style is closer to what Collins would play..

'Anything She Does' rules and I agree, it's much better than songs that are in the same mould on No Jacket Required.