Taking Sides: Genesis 1970-1977 Vs. Genesis 1978-91

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

(listening to seconds out except skipping all the bogus cockney ones ffs)

yeah it's painful when Phil does that, like he's minstreling himself

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.

Phil was the Artful Dodger in a big London production of Oliver! when he was a kid. So the cockney-for-laughs runs deep.

i.e. .the intro to the "Invisible Touch" video

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.

Born within the sound of Bow bells, mate.

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.

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?

i was regretting the one-offness of 90125 the other day

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.

good reading

revisited in the Slippermen

lovely post, Kate

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)

tbf I'm really just talking about Winwood's voice

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)

(a thing never before encountered before on ilxor.com)

lol this has been the best ilm thread in ages

phil is good again :)

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.

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

Was there much of an anti-prog narrative in 1980-whatever, though? If anything, prog kind of won!

"Frilly and fussy" = not how I've ever thought of Bartok :P

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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)

that was members of yes and elp. had at least two huge hits here.

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

i mean to quote the Onion, "Rock History Written By the Losers"

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

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.

yes my thought experiment fails when knowledgeable but secretly hostile critics select for possible overlap :)

also lol what a horrible horrible singer greg lake is

i hate him so much

B-b-but he talked to the trees!

No personal hostility! :( The idea was very interesting, which is why I was trying to consider it critically!

lol i always mix that song up with Paint Your Wagon

Lake is cool on that first Crimson record.

i was teasing sund4r, don't worry :)

while i'm fucking up a Genesis thread that Kanye sample justifies 30 years of KC nerd-post-rock imo