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

revisited this for the first time since....uh this poll started I guess. starting to come around to the idea that the first record kind of needs the second. even though the first record is insane on its own. I know the band has talked about how they were kind of rushed at the end, does anyone know why it's so long then? it's over an hour and a half, which even for a double is really long. I actually kinda like the stuff that I suspect was written on the fly though. "Riding the Scree" for instance I think really bottles up the way Banks writes his stuff. anyway the thing I think really stands out now that I'm really listening is the drumming. Collins is such a beast on this, even when his drums are buried he's going nuts - the way he plays the hi-hats on "Carpet Crawlers" almost sounds like a glitched out drum machine.

The drumming at the end of "The Lamia" finally being audible was what stood out for me about the remix.

The Lamb being a conscious effort to move from the pastoral to something more gritty and urban, and there being (pre-)punk vibes in the air.

lol. urban, definitely. theater district, to be more precise. album title otm, it's like 'street punk: the musical'

i like the album tbc, it's super weird and gets awkward and uncomfortable but more surreal than gritty, really.

xxp - which remix is this? I have a CD from 2004 or thereabouts, plus an original vinyl, unfortunately it's kind of beat up which sucks because there are so many quiet parts. I am looking to upgrade so if there's a nice remaster out there I'm definitely interested.

The 2008 remix.

To hear Phil's full power listen to the Shrine show from Archives 2 box. And he was singing the WHOLE time. Phil was an absolute monster during thing period.

Also PG has fully copped to stealing the whole story from El Topo.

spending some time with this tonight, the tension between old and nu Genesis on the album feels more palpable to me than it used to -- the pastoralisms and Canturbury-jazz moods (Hairless Heart, In the Cage) feel here they're a foil for the more accessible place PG's that's calling to PG's heart & muse (the title track, Back in NYC, Counting Out Time). But within a few years three out of the four remaining will feel the same pull toward more trad song structure, toward being heard. I find this tension more irritating than satisfying in the album as a whole -- if there were a third impulse to complicate things it might not feel, to me, like this is a band who just can't agree on what they're trying to do. still, when I stop thinking about all that and just sink into it -- such good sounds, a really good flow. I like the proggier bits better generally but when Gabriel finds his pocket, when he plucks a melody he can really bite into, it's glorious.

"counting out time" playing in the room as I type...fuck I loved this song so much when I was a kid, "unexpected dis-stress from my mistress" felt like the coolest damn delivery and the chord sequence was so exactly my thing,

please strikthrough that first "PG's" as you read if you read tyvm.

This album was playing the other day at a record store while i was browsing, and I was really surprised by how good it sounded. I had the album as a kid (Genesis was the first band I did a full back catalogue deep-dive on), and I honestly didn't think much of it then. But hearing it on a proper sound system, the production and the songwriting were both a lot better than I remembered. And yeah, "Counting Out Time" was the one that really jumped out.

yeah it's such a track, and it also sounds to me like PG saying "I want to make pop songs. I like Motown and I wanna make pop songs, guys" and the guys going "...but prog, right?"

The album ultimately does kind of (figuratively and literally) lose the plot, but the first half and smatterings of the second remain pretty rad. It's definitely transitional in discography context, but still cool and full of surprises. And subtle Enosification.

the good bits of "Counting Out Time" are great it's true but i feel like there's a bit of cheesiness - i don't hate that but i hear it - in the delivery, arrangement? not sure what. the opening basically. it's much better when it hits stride

the title track embraces the R'n'B soul vibe more fully maybe

wait i thought the music was written by all the others and PG just added lyrics?

that's the story but idk

also my understanding is that Phil at least had always been an R'n'B fan

wait i thought the music was written by all the others and PG just added lyrics?

I think that's mostly true, but "Counting Out Time" was one of Peter's songs, according to Tony (here).

Tony: "It's all about... early sexual experiences, trying to do it by the book." *embarrassed shrug*

Phil and Peter are both longtime soul/r&b fans, as their solo stuff would evince (if not always enforce).

kinda difficult to figure out what music PG actually wrote for the band, obviously he gets a lot of songwriting credits for the lyrics/conceptual stuff but none of his solo material sounds a thing like Genesis. outside of like the first song on his debut

Willow Farm from Supper's Ready was Gabriel's song too, he seemed to write in that jaunty piano-led style in his early days. Personally I could do without Counting Out Time and most of side 4. As I said on the Duke thread, remove about 15 minutes from most of the 70s-era Genesis albums and you have a better album.

Excuse Me from his first album is another of the Flanders & Swann numbers

Iirc Yes would always say their songs kept getting longer because everyone kept bringing in bits and pieces they didn't want cut.

xps I think Harold the Barrel was all PG too.

and yet their albums are pretty economical! outside of Tales of course. but I never really felt there was a lot of noodling or unnecessary bits on them, whereas yea every Genesis album from like 1971-1981 feels like it could've been trimmed

its kind of rough out there for people who collect prog vinyl, you got King Crimson albums that are full of dead quiet parts so you need clean vinyl, and Genesis stuffs 25-28 minutes on a side so you have to crank it meaning the surface noise is often a bit more pronounced. and you need a good stylus as well. but Yes doesn't have those problems :)

I think Harold the Barrel was all PG too.

lol my favorite genesis tune bar none

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

yeah, I love that too, it's like, for just a moment, he's Mark E Smith

I’ve always been surprised that Back in NYC was not totally written by PG.

echoes of the broadway everglades

love how everything melts here

lol i'd forgotten the silly Bonzos break in "Counting Out Time"

I’ve always been surprised that Back in NYC was not totally written by PG.

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*