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

"none of them were necessarily what i'd call top-notch instrumentalists" I'd say Banks is but he's also boring

Banks was notorius for not being able to play what he'd written, certainly when compared to some music school play-it-with-one-hand-while-chomping-on-a-curry-with-the-other type like Wakeman. Collins was probably the best musician of the lot.

banks' overreliance on arpeggios also gets pretty hilarious after a while

Banks was notorius for not being able to play what he'd written, certainly when compared to some music school play-it-with-one-hand-while-chomping-on-a-curry-with-the-other type like Wakeman. Collins was probably the best musician of the lot.

― akb23 (Matt #2),

I still laugh at how Rutherford became guitarist AND bassist after Hackett left.

none of them were necessarily what i'd call top-notch instrumentalists!

This is nuts. Collins is one of my favorite drummers of all time. I just ... I mean, one of the reasons I like Collins so much is not just his musical personality but how he makes the stuff kind of swing (which is part of that). Bruford is an incredible technical drummer, of course, but swinging is not his forte (see: Earthworks, etc.). For Phil, "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight" is about as good as prog drumming gets. You can find nerds online doing drum covers, which isn't the same thing but allows you to focus on the crazy playing.

And Hackett is nuts-good. I love this Hackett demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er2GHuzlUAY

Also, Rutherford was playing bass and guitar (and pedals) from the beginning, just as Banks was playing some guitar, too. I only recently learned (did I post here about it?) how much Rutherford was an early adopter of guitar synths, too, so some of the weird "synth" stuff is sometimes him as well.

??? Collins doesn't have chops? that's nuts, listen to Brand X

Even beyond chops, Collins can *groove*. Hell, listen to his playing in "Throwing It All Away," summoning up the spirit of Bonham in a song that could not be more the opposite of Zeppelin.

I bought a ferandes with that sustainer pickup in it, it's a shit ton of fun.

Hackett is such a pro he doesn't even make a Spinal Tap joke.

i am acquainting myself with the works of asia :(

Discogs suggests they have 65 albums, although I think most of those are live.

They had a spin-off version - John Payne's Asia - led by some guy who wasn't even in the original line-up! How does that work?

I only know the first couple of albums, which I'm fond of tbf

this one is live (in bulgaria in 2013, original line-up, my primary beef is vocals as usual)

i shd probably write up my actual general beef with prog vocals somewhere: the short version of the greg lake issue is that hating him his voice and his dumb songs and ideas is part of the joy of loving ELP very greatly, plus i like claiming he's a more horrible singer than all the evidently very much worse singers who've been in king crimson viz all the others, bcz my long-term relationship w/KC is a puzzled and suspicious fascination, i dont really like em but i return p often to check if actually maybe i do after all. the absent lovers set that someone mentioned i guess of their own thread i did quite enjoy earlier in the week despite belew singing quite a lot appropriate_emoji

i don't really get KC beyond those first proggy records

Every KC album from 1969-74 is good/worth hearing. After that, IMO you really only need to hear one or two of the recent multi-disc live sets (Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind and Audio Diary 2014-2018 are the ones I recommend) to hear how they're recasting/reshaping the old material with the new band. The new versions of old songs really are quite radically different a lot of the time. (And FTR the current live vocalist is pretty bad - a weak Lake imitator. But the actual music, especially with the triple drummers, is frequently great.)

whenever i check out modern KC it feels like all these chops deployed in the service of really unengaging/joyless music, idk, i'd dig deeper if i was interested i guess

I really like early '80s KC, though, but that is in essence an entirely different animal (hence them originally wanting to use a different name).

The best line-up of Crimson I saw might have been the one-off tour with Belew, Fripp, Levin, and Pat and Gavin on drums in 2008. Essentially close to the '80s line-up except with extra crazy drum stuff a la the Muir era. Here's a good example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w0vxQ-ueCI

(As you can see from pictures in that video, the Park West is tiny. Crazy that I've been able to see both KC and Bob Dylan there.)

Back to Genesis, here's a further cleaned up version of the Popshop TV appearance. These videos have been circulating in fan hands and getting progressively better looking over the years; I think this one was in the box set on a bonus DVD years back but it's been improved again since, this is the best I've seen it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=383&v=YGJI8WhmWyc&feature=emb_logo

(i had to knead some bread dough for 20 minutes so i switched to the gates of delirium off of relayer, the only good record)

back to genesis again yes

(there are lots of good yes records besides relayer -- the yes album, fragile, close to the edge, drama, and 90125 all rule)

the only good record by anyone ever qualmsley, this is canon and can't be refuted

xpost I like that 1972 clip, because you get to see Pete playing flute, Tony playing guitar and Phil playing a tiny drum set.

xpost \m/

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.

This is true, but I think the difference between them is thre "soul voice" seems to come more naturally to Collins, where with Gabriel it comes via this awkward posh school theatrical filter. Im just thinking of how both sing Supper's Ready, espceially the closing section, like Pete's all "Hello babe, your supper's waiting for you", and Phil's like, "Hey babe, your supper's waiting for you". Both approaches are fine - the awkwardness is a feature not a bug for Gabriel in the long run, whereas Phil's ease with soul takes us to his Supremes cover (which I think is fine) and the really awful Blues Brothers-style soul medleys on the Invisible Touch tour, which lead me to believe there must have been quite a lot of coke on the Genesis rider during that era.

RE: Banks, the key to his character for me has always been an on-the-road documentary filmed circa Invisible Touch where he's talking about The Brazilian in context of the new album, saying it sounds a lot like his solo stuff and then saying "So if you like that go buy my solo albums." And then he adds sourly, "Which no one ever does, of course."

how well discussed in gabriel lore is the 1977 tour he did with nona hendryx as support act?

i remember it being a critical talking point at the time in uk rock-paper reviews w/o very clearly remembering in what way (likely at least one review said the equivalent of "well NH gets it and PG doesn't" and others said "keep this bad music out of our nice genesis ears" but i honestly don't exactly recall except that i somehow firmly filed it away as a confluence of note)

xpost I feel like the Yes Album would be considered more of a classic if it had Roger Dean artwork

ooh wasn't aware of that but was listening to nona's Art of Defense yesterday and appreciating its hard Talking Heads vibe

She's kind of out there, Nona.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fc0wWy_OTA

The first two Nona Hendryx albums rule; the other eighties albums are cluttered things.

I think Television opened for him on part of that tour, too, or at least the next tour.

television was later in the year -- same tour US leg possibly? first NH alb = 1977, the year in question

i found a couple of reviews of the shows in question on rock's backpages, which don't live up to my billing upthread (at all, lol) -- so maybe it was discussions in interviews (with him or with her) round that time that i'm remembering

I tried to like Nona Hendryx, but she's the unnecessary middle ground between Chrissie Hynde and Grace Jones.

i can't quite identify what flute prog is sampled on juggaknots' "generally" - idk if it's like genesis or pfm or what - i know i've heard it before, can anyone listen and set my mind at ease?

― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, March 27, 2020 1:37 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been reading too much ILX, because my first thought after reading this was "Wait, Insane Clown Posse sampled Gabriel on 'The Knife'? Is that from the 2nd deck of Joker cards?"

what makes it interesting for me is that voice-wise the divide between "am actively drawn to" and "don't really care for" falls exactly between them (as collins sings here). so yes they're alike: but in some key subtle way, also not.

So this turns out to be also true for me, but in reverse. I just find Collins unconvincing and unengaging on prog material, maybe for the reason Alfred said. Once in a while, I try again with A Trick of the Tail and it just never lands.

I've been reading too much ILX, because my first thought after reading this was "Wait, Insane Clown Posse sampled Gabriel on 'The Knife'? Is that from the 2nd deck of Joker cards?"

― Bill Bruford's drumbeat for "South Side of the Sky": proto-dubstep? (Prefecture)

juggaknots weren't icp-related? they were a company flow offshoot

(But good show) xp

have i mentioned my completely baseless crackpot theory that "the knife" was based on the theme song to "the flashing blade"?

Ha! I looked them up and found out that yes, the Juggaknots have literally nothing to do with neither Violent J nor Shaggy 2 Dope. I would have never heard of them if not for this thread - I'll definitely check them out!

As for the actual question at hand, "The Knife" (from 1970's Trespass) is absolutely awesome, the kind of song you would hear during the movie montage scene where the protagonist trains to defeat the foe. The interplay between Banks, Rutherford, and Philips is total fire. So, point for 1970-77.

Counterpoint: "Anything She Does" from 1986's Invisible Touch is one of the best power-pop songs ever, and not just because Phil taught a generation of US kids how Britishers pronounce "garage".

Also a typically unspoken entry in the list of "80s songs about pining for centerfolds" songs.

have i mentioned my completely baseless crackpot theory that "the knife" was based on the theme song to "the flashing blade"?

This was shown in the US?

Pretty sure The Knife was a tribute to / knockoff of The Nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45pIvr4gJD4

It is a truth universally acknowledged that The Nice are infinitely better than ELP.

come on now. Ars Longa Vita Brevis is a fun record and there's some good stuff on their debut (depending on whether or not you like David Jackson's goofy psych pop songs) but The Nice ran out of ideas after 2 LPs plus they had a terrible singer and a drummer whose only mode was straightforward bashing. arguably a more interesting band than ELP though

This was shown in the US?

― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.)

not to my knowledge, why?

the nice at their best were just the right amount of ridiculous for me. keith emerson wearing leather trousers stabbing a keyboard > keith emerson in a stadium playing a levitating synthesizer

john peel clearly agreed; his famous quote on ELP came from someone who had the nice on his show what seemed like every fucking week. hell, the nice did his show's theme tune!

not to my knowledge, why?

I thought you were in the US?