Imperial Aerosol POLL: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis

i voted for "waiting room" bc it's the most amazing shit ever when you're really stoned but now i'm thinking i should've gone for "slippermen"

i cannot believe people itt do not like "slippermen"

keep your fingers out of my eye

Man I love Slippermen. "Me? ... Like you? ... like that??"

"Don't delay, dock the dick!"

It's a yellow plastic... ~~shoobedoobe~~

Outrageous Google Doc with the story and links and photos, fan art etc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ITGpu-3WK7bTSTLxefdQGC0O6renCkka7LH4cKkxHwU/edit#

Slippermen is so catchy and fun. At some point for me it went from being mildly embarrassing to endearingly ridiculous.

Just realised that I have 5.1 mixes of all the Genesis rekkids, wish I had an A/V amp to listen to The Lamb in surround! Can anyone report on that?

That cool little interlude connecting "In the Cage" and "Grand Parade" deserves a vote.

Oh yeah I love that part. Also the flute solos in "Cuckoo Cocoon" are so gorgeous.

That google doc is bonkers.

Anyone else rep for the live version on the Archive 1967–75 box set? It sounds great to me, and the fact that Gabriel's vocals and Hackett's guitar are re-recorded doesn't bother me in the slightest.

The overdubs bugged me at first but now I enjoy it as an ersatz reunion.

I saw The Musical Box do this album, with the original costumes and slides. It was awesome.

I have not played this record (the only Genesis album I own) since high school, 40+ years ago.

Likewise, although I used to own several more that went away in my great punk rock prog purge. Listening today, even on earbuds at work, the remastered cd sound is wonderful. I'm amazed how many of the lyrics and little musical details I remember; I must have played it a lot more at the time than I thought. I do think the second half trails off, I know I played the first LP way more than the 2nd.

Back then I would have voted "Broadway Melody," I lived for lyrics like "smell of peach blossom and bitter almonde..." Now, I'm not so sure.

"Eno apparently provided a lot of "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats"."

I don't believe that's true; I used to think that as well but everything I've read indicates that he only did treatments on Grand Parade (and it shows there). Also, welcome back, Geir.

there's a rather expensive book that was put together documenting everything about this album; it's probably OOP now, it was a very limited run and a really exhausting labor of love for the guy who did it. Site appears to be down right now for some reason but it might come back up. https://jonkirkman.co.uk/?product=genesis-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway-signed-hardback-copy

Guitar solo in Counting Out Time is very Eno, but I've only ever heard of him contributing to Grand Parade

Man, I love Steve Hackett's guitar tone so much, especially the fuzz he uses. I remember reading into it once and he used a pedal called the shaftsbury duo fuzz. I mentioned this once to a friend, who some years later needed to approximate Hackett for a session he was playing on. He bought a clone of that pedal, and it nailed the sound.

Any idea where I could learn more about this? (As you can imagine the title of “The Light” on its own kind of trips up google w/r/t things Genesis have put out containing that phrase)

― You can’t see it but I had an epiphany (Champiness)

There's a famous bootleg from early in '71 in Belgium. Lo-fi, bassy audience tape. (Listening to it again I know the story is that Collins sang it, but the choruses are definitely Gabriel... probably Collins/Gabriel in unison on the verses).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiYa5v6XIbU

Would love to read this if you have a link.

The fact that this album deals with sexuality at all sets it apart from most prog rock, and the way it progresses from the juvenile humor of "Counting Out Time" to the grotesque sexual body horror of "The Lamia" and "Colony of Slippermen" is fascinating.

― J. Sam

I mean, I think "Counting Out Time" is consistent with "Colony of Slippermen" - a lot of the mythology Gabriel is dealing with, deconstructing really, is the myth of the hypersexual male.

Anyway, this is the bit I wrote - it's the only review.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/unauth/genesis/the-lamb-demos/

I'd be surprised to find out that all he did was some filtering "Grand Parade" (one of the last songs written for the record IIRC). Guitar solo on "Counting Out Time" and the nullification sound effect both fairly scream "Eno" to me.

iirc Tony Banks gets pretty annoyed whenever Eno's (overstated) role comes up. From what I recall from everything I've read about this album (which is a lot, but none of it recently), Eno really didn't do much at all on LLD, and what little he did do was done with the ulterior motive of poaching Collins to play drums on whatever he was working on at the time (Tiger Mountain? Warm Jets?). I'm pretty sure there are no keyboard or synth performances by Eno on this album.

And the "Counting Out Time" solo is definitely Hackett

I wanted to like this album more than I do. Great songs, off-putting production.

Counting Out Time

The Eno stuff is not much of a mystery. He used Phil on "Another Green World," and in return popped in to "treat" some of the vocals on this album. That's it. You can hear it on a few seconds of a couple of songs. I don't think it's Eno's doing, but I still have no idea what the guitar effect used on "Counting Out Time" is.

Maybe it was actually for Tiger Mountain that Eno got Phil? Phil is on AGW and Before and After Science as well.

Weird, I just found a quote from Banks saying that Eno did stuff on "In the Cage," too. That's the first I've seen that.

I love the thought of Banks harrumphing about Eno's non-involvement and getting all pissy about the fact no-one likes his solo albums to boot.

i've been too drunk to read this poll hooray for it existing the answer is probly the Lamia side 4 is shit i'll be back when i've read the other posts

XP - I liked The Fugitive :)

Eno apparently took his EMS Putney with him to the session and routed some vocals through it which he filtered, I'm certain there's no way he'd have played guitar on the album.

There is absolutely no way he played guitar on the record, is that even being debated?

'The Carpet Crawlers', I think, but I've always listened to this album as a fragmented yet indivisible whole. Sides 3-4 are part and parcel of the experience.

I meant it sounds like Eno could have treated the solo on Counting Out Time, not played it

Anyway is also v good, i think i voted for side 3 when we polled the sides on this, the best bit of The Cage is "sunshine in my stomach" tbh

^Do you have a link to that poll? All I could find was the Lamb vs. The Wall vs. Tommy thread

I looked, maybe it wasn't a poll, pretty sure there was a discussion somewhere

"Fly On the Windshield" is so heavy/awesome. When I listened to this album again yesterday, I really got into "Lilywhite Lilith," too. And "Back in NYC," another heavy song. I love that Jeff Buckley covered that one.

Oh, and speaking of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlX4moDYEmA

When I saw Musical Box do this, at the time they even had a left-handed balding drummer!

Holy shit, I think I knew this, but the other/former/future drummer, Martin Levac, is actually a Phil Collins impersonator!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O_CMLJRRgw

xp I was very impressed by this detail when I saw them. Esp. when he came out front to sing More Fool Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRBhbG6jfY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejs1G2yLBM8

Oh yeah those interviews are great. It's kind of hilarious how much Tony Banks hates on this album, though I believe he refers to "In the Cage" as "a strong piece" or something like that.

Banks seems like the biggest douchebag ever

"It was all very Spinal Tap. Cutting edge but Spinal Tap."

I don't wonder if the accumulated hassle of being drawn out on details about every single one of their albums at the time possibly drove them all a bit nuts, especially given their theoretical rep as a bunch of passive aggressive posh boys (Collins excluded), Banks looks quite angry.

Not theoretical

I think Tony Banks gets a bad rap. He may come off as unlikable in interviews but he's the closest thing this band ever had to a musical visionary. And his playing, especially during this era, is terrific.

true

I've always disliked Banks as a person, he always comes across as this villainous figure who didn't really get what made the band great, though when I go back and listen to the records he always comes across as the guy most responsible for their greatness

Eh, I'm not down with the idea of Banks as alpha visionary. Hackett was every bit the musical pioneer that Banks was, probably more so, and Peter Gabriel, obv., was not lacking in vision - in fact, Genesis was holding him back! Now Rutherford, that dude has no vision. And Phil back then was the most musically talented of them all, I'd say, but his vision was to leave the musicianship behind (eventually) and focus on the emotion/yelling.

Banks I think is the worst kind of prog prig, as he clearly believes that his classical training makes him better than everyone else, and his lack of hits outside of Genesis was because he was too good for everyone else, they just didn't get it.

fwiw individual writing credits do not seem to get broken down until after Gabriel leaves, and revert back to a collective band credit after a few albums. Is there a good guide out there to who largely contributed what?

i wasn't knocking his contributions to the band

but honestly i've never seen an interview with him where he didn't come off as a smug dick

yeah it does have a bit of a Dodo/Lurker/ABCAB feel to it. I still feel like that song is very future-feeling, and that they kind of retreated from this for the rest of the decade

haha Abacab.

I would have said that the one-bass-note-on-a-Taurus-pedal in "Back in NYC" is also very Mike Rutherford, but apparently he didn't start using them until 1976.

Love how Gabriel pronounces "Manhattan" like "man had honor" on the title track

― J. Sam

wait that lyric is "manhattan"?

i have a soft spot for "counting out time"... that guitar break sounds very enossified to my ears, and the lyric, well, the only way i could think to work out sex was by numbers ("try writing the alphabet with your tongue"), and it never really worked for me. so i found that song very relatable.

I'll admit I don't know a lot about the sex habits of Puerto Rican adolescent boys in 1974 New York, but I would assume Rael would be less likely to learn about sex from a presumably non-pornographic instruction manual than an upper-middle-class UK student at an all-male boarding school in the 60s would have been. That's a failure of characterization on Gabriel's part.

*embarrassed shrug*