Songs I'm Afraid to Admit I Don't Like

    Quote from chema

    i'm not crazy about afterglow. i find it a bit flat, and it lacks an instrumental section to breathe. nevertheless, i think it works well as a live number.

    I think an instrumental section is lacking on Undertow and perhaps on Heathaze, because I think the songs were written with this structure in mind which is typical of Tony. Particularly on the former you can hear how it was edited and the song suffers a lot but Afterglow, whether one likes it or less wasn't imo conceived in that way and of course he could have squeezed an instrumental section in but just like Many too Many the song works fine without it and doesn't require it.

    Quote from Old Miss Mort

    Funny ... I came here to write that I despise Mama. I've never been part of a Genesis forum until now, and I never would have guessed that Mama was so loved.


    That laugh ... ugh.


    But then again, aside from Silver Rainbow, I don't like anything from the eponymous album.

    Couldn't agree more. By the time this album came out, they'd long abandoned art-rock glory for radio-ready piffle.

    ~ My talents may not be obvious but they are always...always...delicious! ~

    Quote from StillCan'tDance

    Like Home By The Sea, Domino, Fading Lights, Dreaming While You Sleep, The Brazilian, Driving The Last Spike...

    Home by the sea without the instrumental is quite radio-friendly, in fact in the beginning I though it was Mike's given the similarity with Silent Running, I found out much later it was Tony's. A case could be made for Dreaming while you sleep but The Brazilian like any instrumental doesn't stand much of a chance on the radio. The others are simply too long or too complex or both. Not that they are overly intricate but simply too much for the radio.

    Quote from mdepps

    That's some confession!


    Makes me feel better about not being massive on Supper's Ready - though having seen G2 do it live last week I see more in it.

    They were a great tribute band, weren't they? Next one up is 'The Musical Box', in October. Not to be missed!

    ~ My talents may not be obvious but they are always...always...delicious! ~

    Quote from Fabrizio

    Home by the sea without the instrumental is quite radio-friendly, in fact in the beginning I though it was Mike's given the similarity with Silent Running, I found out much later it was Tony's. A case could be made for Dreaming while you sleep but The Brazilian like any instrumental doesn't stand much of a chance on the radio. The others are simply too long or too complex or both. Not that they are overly intricate but simply too much for the radio.

    I was being sarcastic about those longer pieces!


    Seriously, though, as Phil points out in his excellent autobiography, Tony and Mike wrote songs that they wanted to get on the radio. They came from a time when you could switch on the radio and hear The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles and The Animals, all of whom wrote great songs that got a lot of radio play. And right from the get-go they released singles as unlikely as The Knife and Watcher Of The Skies (indeed they made a version of the latter specifically for the singles market). As they progressed, they simply got better at writing shorter songs which meant that eventually they got the radio play that they'd coveted for so long. Once you get good at something, you're bound to do it more often, which is why in the latter half of their career, the shorter songs dominated over the longer pieces.

    Quote from Old Miss Mort

    Funny ... I came here to write that I despise Mama. I've never been part of a Genesis forum until now, and I never would have guessed that Mama was so loved.

    Really? It was never out of the set-list since its release (only being dropped during the We Can't Dance tour when Phil lost a lot of his mid-range after getting a cold in Miami) and was always given a rousing reception by the audience. The album upon which it was featured went to Number One in England and was a top five hit single in the UK. And yet you had no idea it was so popular with the fans.


    Oh, and Steve Hackett apparently claims it to be his favourite Genesis song since his departure.

    Quote from Gabble Ratchet

    They were a great tribute band, weren't they? Next one up is 'The Musical Box', in October. Not to be missed!


    Quote from mdepps

    That's some confession!


    Makes me feel better about not being massive on Supper's Ready - though having seen G2 do it live last week I see more in it.

    Around the same time, 'The Carpet Crawlers' are performing 'Selling Foxtrot by the Pound' in Oxford. Let's make a long weekend of it. Just classic Genesis, no piffle!

    ~ My talents may not be obvious but they are always...always...delicious! ~

    Quote from StillCan'tDance

    I was being sarcastic about those longer pieces!


    Seriously, though, as Phil points out in his excellent autobiography, Tony and Mike wrote songs that they wanted to get on the radio. They came from a time when you could switch on the radio and hear The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles and The Animals, all of whom wrote great songs that got a lot of radio play. And right from the get-go they released singles as unlikely as The Knife and Watcher Of The Skies (indeed they made a version of the latter specifically for the singles market). As they progressed, they simply got better at writing shorter songs which meant that eventually they got the radio play that they'd coveted for so long. Once you get good at something, you're bound to do it more often, which is why in the latter half of their career, the shorter songs dominated over the longer pieces.

    Sarcastic? You? No wonder I didn't get it ;) Joking aside though, I heard and read Phil saying that a few times but I have a hard time buying it. It seems a bit defensive of him to me. While I am sure that they would have relished having more recognition or comercial success, if you will and certainly the radio was a whole different beast in the 70s, they increasingly wrote songs that made it really difficult for them to be played on the radio, even when there was a wider attention span. When there was a song with some chances of being played, like I know what I like, they were quite ambivalent about it. Peter said they were worried about its obvious single potential, adding also how dumb that was. I remember reading how happy they were on Trespass to have escaped Jonathan King's grip who basically forced them to write some singles which was clearly not what they wanted to do. They recorded the whole SEBTP without even a single music executive checking in. Fast forward to the 80s and I am more inclined to believe Phil's version. With a decade of records under their belt, they were still not a major act. On Abacab they consulted with Ahmet Ertegun which songs ought to be included on the album. Word is we have Ahmet to thank for the inclusion of Whodunnit. Be as it may, this signals a major change in attitude. I believe Tony, after Phil's and Mike's success must have been itching to do something similar. He had always been after all the backbone of Genesis and imho the most gifted songwriter within the band but perhaps he is simply not a good pop writer. I personally find stuff like Illegal Alien and Anything she does quite bad.

    Oh, I love Illegal Alien and Anything She Does!


    As for record executives dictating the direction Genesis took in the eighties, the only evidence to support that is Ahmet's insistence that they include "that" song (as he called it) on the album. That's hardly a damning indictment of the band buckling under. More like respecting the opinion of a man who was rightly revered in the industry. RIP Ahmet, we won't see the likes of him again.


    I was surprised when I saw on the SEBTP documentary that Peter didn't like I Know What I Like. It was his lyric, after all. If I were him, I'd be more ashamed of songs like Kiss That Frog.


    As for Phil's comment about wanting to get songs on the radio, he was only repeating what both Mike and Tony have said at various points.

    Quote from StillCan'tDance

    As for record executives dictating the direction Genesis took in the eighties, the only evidence to support that is Ahmet's insistence that they include "that" song (as he called it) on the album. That's hardly a damning indictment of the band buckling under. More like respecting the opinion of a man who was rightly revered in the industry. RIP Ahmet, we won't see the likes of him again.




    As for Phil's comment about wanting to get songs on the radio, he was only repeating what both Mike and Tony have said at various points.

    Not damning at all, just an episode marking the difference and a departure from the the previous policy or MO. I think they were trying to capitalize on Phil's success, his voice, his drums sound and in doing that they strategized which they clearly didn't do before.

    As for Kiss the frog, not a good one but considering the masterpiece of the album, I am inclined to be lenient :)

    Edited once, last by Fabrizio ().

    Quote from Fabrizio

    Not damning at all, just an episode marking the difference and a departure from the the previous policy or MO. I think they were trying to capitalize on Phil's success, his voice, his drums sound and in doing that they strategized which they clearly didn't do before.

    With Who Dunnit? I could understand someone saying that about No Reply At All (they'd be wrong but I'd understand someone making that error) but not with Who Dunnit. I've always heard more of Tony in that song than Phil, to be honest.

    Quote from StillCan'tDance

    With Who Dunnit? I could understand someone saying that about No Reply At All (they'd be wrong but I'd understand someone making that error) but not with Who Dunnit. I've always heard more of Tony in that song than Phil, to be honest.

    Nope: the capitalizing part is clear with the streamlined and more straightforward approach in songwriting of Abacab released soon after Face Value and a year after Duke and how hard and fast they pushed in the following years with albums and tours.

    The strategizing is represented by the unprecedented move of asking a record executive about which songs to include on the album, I don't remember it was only about Whodunit, it was more of a general discussion in which Ertegun suggested to include 'that thing' on it.

    Yes, it was Tony's. Apparently Phil and Mike agreed to record it to shut him up.

    Quote from StillCan'tDance

    Really? It was never out of the set-list since its release (only being dropped during the We Can't Dance tour when Phil lost a lot of his mid-range after getting a cold in Miami) and was always given a rousing reception by the audience. The album upon which it was featured went to Number One in England and was a top five hit single in the UK. And yet you had no idea it was so popular with the fans.


    Oh, and Steve Hackett apparently claims it to be his favourite Genesis song since his departure.

    Really!


    I've never seen Genesis live, I don't know anything about their setlists post-Duke, and I don't follow the UK charts.

    Quote from Old Miss Mort

    Really!


    I've never seen Genesis live, I don't know anything about their setlists post-Duke, and I don't follow the UK charts.

    Better to forget everything post 1980 imho. If there's a gold filling in that mouth of decay, I sure can't find it! Even on Duke, there were worrying signs of the direction of travel with those two ghastly solo pieces by Collins. (Thank God, for playlists!)

    ~ My talents may not be obvious but they are always...always...delicious! ~

    Quote from Fabrizio

    Nope: the capitalizing part is clear with the streamlined and more straightforward approach in songwriting of Abacab released soon after Face Value

    Yes, everything changed after the success of ‘Face Value’. Genesis became Phil’s band. Hurrah!!

    I've never bought into this idea that with Abacab they aimed to capitalise on Collins's solo success. There was already greater simplicity in evidence on Duke yet it still had a very Genesis sound in some ways; Abacab sounded like a logical development of that, and the way they describe abandoning a load of material that was starting to sound too samey comes across to me as a band who were thinking clearly and, as many bands don't, recognised they were in danger of becoming a self-caricature. They've never seemed to me to be a band who'd consciously make that kind of move - "let's capitalise on his success".


    By the way, regarding their decision to move away from their 'usual' sound - they're sometimes quoted as including "the tambourine on the chorus" as a trope they'd overused. When have they actually done that?


    Illegal Alien was mentioned - musically I like it, but the lyrics and accent are horrible.

    Abandon all reason

    Like 1
    Quote from Backdrifter

    I've never bought into this idea that with Abacab they aimed to capitalise on Collins's solo success. There was already greater simplicity in evidence on Duke yet it still had a very Genesis sound in some ways; Abacab sounded like a logical development of that, and the way they describe abandoning a load of material that was starting to sound too samey comes across to me as a band who were thinking clearly and, as many bands don't, recognised they were in danger of becoming a self-caricature. They've never seemed to me to be a band who'd consciously make that kind of move - "let's capitalise on his success".


    By the way, regarding their decision to move away from their 'usual' sound - they're sometimes quoted as including "the tambourine on the chorus" as a trope they'd overused. When have they actually done that?


    Illegal Alien was mentioned - musically I like it, but the lyrics and accent are horrible.

    Obviously, I cannot possibly know what the real intentions of the band were but it does seem plausible and commercially smart. It is true that a greater simplicity was on display on Duke, at places, but not to Abacab level and if we accept the argument that they dumped the material they already had, in favor of a more direct approach, it would seem to validate the fact that were wasn't an evolution per se but a total departure , both sound and songs would seem to validate that.

    After all, depending on whom you ask within the band, In the Air Tonight was discarded but suddenly they had no problem with Man on the Corner and we are absolutely in the same territory. They released Duke 3 years after W&W, then things suddenly accelerated: Abacab was released only a few months after FV and a year after Duke, a year later they released 3SL, where they payed arenas for the first time and a year after that Shapes. It was the right thing to do imo, they had to push , they had the momentum and that momentum was provided by Phil's success. Without it, all that pushing would have probably unjustified and moot. They were definitely thinking what to do and how to do it, for the first time accepting external input from the execs. I agree that they were at risk of becoming self-caricature and as such I applaud their decision. I would only maintain that perhaps due to the workload the quality, meaning the material suffered. The best songs on Abacab and Shapes together would imo make the definitive album of the 80s but on two separate albums they are, for my money too little.

    Edited once, last by Fabrizio ().