Feeding the fire

  • For me Scenes From A Night's Dream makes all these other songs sound like epic masterpieces.

    I have to say I’ve never understood the hate some feel for SFAND. If nothing else it has a prog-jazz feel musically that puts songs like Anything She Does to shame. To my ears from ATTWT The Ballad of Big is godawful, with painfully hokey lyrics.

  • I have to say I’ve never understood the hate some feel for SFAND. If nothing else it has a prog-jazz feel musically that puts songs like Anything She Does to shame. To my ears from ATTWT The Ballad of Big is godawful, with painfully hokey lyrics.

    The tinny sugary top-end tweeness that dogged some of the 76-78 phase reached its absolute nadir with Scenes but I can't disagree that Ballad is pretty dreadful. I quite like the lead synth line but it can't redeem a horrible duffer of a track.

    Abandon all reason

  • The tinny sugary top-end tweeness that dogged some of the 76-78 phase

    I should probably feel ashamed about having some bad taste, but that's precisely something I like in those records...

    I know the majority (including the band itself, that's why I think something is wrong with me...) favours any Genesis producer over Hentschel, but still, I like the sound he gave to these records.

    But I can't explain why, only that I listened to these 76-78 albums countless times, as I was a child. It's probably why I'm attached to them...

  • I should probably feel ashamed about having some bad taste, but that's precisely something I like in those records...

    I know the majority (including the band itself, that's why I think something is wrong with me...) favours any Genesis producer over Hentschel, but still, I like the sound he gave to these records.

    But I can't explain why, only that I listened to these 76-78 albums countless times, as I was a child. It's probably why I'm attached to them...

    The production is part of it but I'm also referring to the tweeness of some of the actual songs, Scenes being the worst example. PG took with him a sort of strangeness, an edge, when he left and it allowed this more winsome quality to take over. Combined with sugary production it makes 76-78 my least-liked phase.


    But no you absolutely should not feel ashamed about your taste. No-one ever should! Who cares what anyone else thinks?

    Abandon all reason

  • The tinny sugary top-end tweeness that dogged some of the 76-78 phase reached its absolute nadir with Scenes but I can't disagree that Ballad is pretty dreadful. I quite like the lead synth line but it can't redeem a horrible duffer of a track.

    I agree that the lead synth line to The Ballad of Big is at least palatable, though to my ears both it and the lead synth in Down & Out sound rather like 1977’s Grand Illusion by Styx (especially D&O). In general for me ATTWT and IT feature the worst sounding synths of the Collins era.

  • I don't know yuor Source, but Mario Giammetti's Musical Box, writes Banks-Collins-Rutherford. :/

    A number of trio-credited songs were largely written by one person (as with the 5-man era when the 'by all' credit wasn't always actually the case). I wasn't aware ASD and FTF were mainly Banks but it's entirely feasible. But while TB was known to be fond of getting his own way (often by his own admission) I doubt the above claim that as ASD was 'really' by him it therefore had to be included. By that stage album tracklists would definitely have been agreed by all three, possibly with input from Smith and Padgham too.

    Abandon all reason

    Edited once, last by Backdrifter ().

  • Feeding the Fire sounds like a very typical Banks lyric. "Many a thing..." etc.


    Anyway, listened to it last night as this thread was going. Top tune. Love the growly guitars and overall dark tone of the music, the passion in Phil's vocal (it cracks slightly on "...come dow-ow-own") and the ethereal bridge. My kind of song!

  • It strikes me that there were often “trade offs” in terms of certain songs making an album while others did not. Heathaze and Evidence of Autumn always seemed quite similar to me (makes sense since TB wrote both songs). One song made the album; the other did not. Land of Confusion and Feeding the Fire are similar in lyrical content and the rock punch in the music: LOC made the album; FTF did not. The Brazilian and DTN were both instrumentals, but only one (the wrong one in my humble opinion) made the album.

  • Regarding Duke this is quite obvious imho: They had the Duke Suite, and then each of them contributed a fast song and a ballad. Tony had Heathaze and Evidence of Autumn as ballads, Mike had Open Door and Alone Tonight as ballads. In both cases they picked the songs that went better with the flow of the album.

  • It reads very much like a Tony lyric to me, and I think works well apart from the word 'roasted' which I think is one of those words that is hard to sing. The lyrics would be very timely now with "cancel culture" and the censorship of things from the past that don't meet today's ethical standards:

    Quote

    Times change, it's not enough to say
    It seemed a good idea a hundred years ago

    I remember (dimly) a vinyl interview picture disc around the time of Invisible Touch and they were talking about the limitations of running times of vinyl, and that they had some very strong songs that weren't on the Invisible Touch album that they'd like to put out as non-album singles. Maybe this was one they had in mind but ultimately they tended to leave it up to the record company to choose the singles...


    I know they're wary of messing with albums that people love *too* much (see reaction to remixes)... but I for one would love to see expanded editions of all the albums inserting tracks that were left off due to insufficient running time... as long as the set contains original mixes of the original album somewhere the purists would be catered for! I was watching an old interview with Phil on YouTube the other day where he's talking about being in the middle of writing with the band (what became Abacab) and their desire for it to be a double-album as they had so many ideas that there wasn't enough room in a single album to explore them all properly! Expanded sets could include some of the tapes of them just jamming... (or just "blowing" as puts it back in the day...)

  • It reads very much like a Tony lyric to me, and I think works well apart from the word 'roasted' which I think is one of those words that is hard to sing. The lyrics would be very timely now with "cancel culture" and the censorship of things from the past that don't meet today's ethical standards:


    Out of interest, "Out on the street" by Medicine Head includes the word "Roasted"

    Ian


    Putting the old-fashioned Staffordshire plate in the dishwasher!

  • It reads very much like a Tony lyric to me, and I think works well apart from the word 'roasted' which I think is one of those words that is hard to sing. The lyrics would be very timely now with "cancel culture" and the censorship of things from the past that don't meet today's ethical standards:

    I remember (dimly) a vinyl interview picture disc around the time of Invisible Touch and they were talking about the limitations of running times of vinyl, and that they had some very strong songs that weren't on the Invisible Touch album that they'd like to put out as non-album singles. Maybe this was one they had in mind but ultimately they tended to leave it up to the record company to choose the singles...


    I know they're wary of messing with albums that people love *too* much (see reaction to remixes)... but I for one would love to see expanded editions of all the albums inserting tracks that were left off due to insufficient running time... as long as the set contains original mixes of the original album somewhere the purists would be catered for! I was watching an old interview with Phil on YouTube the other day where he's talking about being in the middle of writing with the band (what became Abacab) and their desire for it to be a double-album as they had so many ideas that there wasn't enough room in a single album to explore them all properly! Expanded sets could include some of the tapes of them just jamming... (or just "blowing" as puts it back in the day...)

    Actually, I've always understood the lyrics to be a reference to our tendency to ignore crises and human suffering in parts of the world that were once paid more attention to by colonial/imperialist "Western" powers.