Posts by Ikhnaton

Quote from Trick of the Wuthering

Great summary. Out of interest, what's your 10-track version? (Not sure CAS was mentioned much in the rearrange an album thread)

My version:

1. Calling All Stations

2. Sign Your Life Away

3. Not About Us

4. Alien Afternoon

5. The Dividing Line

6. Run Out Of Time

7. There Must Be Some Other Way

8. Uncertain Weather

9. One Man's Fool

10. Anything Now

I know this takes off some of the singles, but I never felt that Congo or Shipwrecked felt fully cooked...I'd rather keep them off and maybe they can spend more time cooking for a potential follow-up. I would have had Sign Your Life Away or Not About Us as the first single instead, though I don't think either would have had much commercial success.

The biggest pushback I've gotten when sharing this in other fan communities is that people really like One Man's Fool as the album closer. I do think that can work, but I think Anything Now is a more upbeat (and uptempo) final note to go out on.

Again, I don't know if it would have improved the commercial reception...but I think this feels better as a Genesis album.

If I had to guess (and I don't, but I will anyway), this three-week time is to do overdubs for the i/o tour concert film followed by some studio work on new songs.

I do hope they at least spend time working out schedules for a tour later in 2025. But I agree that it seems unlikely that's what this meeting is for, unless Peter is going to do a very quick launch of ticket sales.

Great discussion in here, and people have touched on a lot of things I've thought about since tracking the release of the album as the first new Genesis record coming out since I became a fan. (I do recall them trying t play up the "we are looking for the replacement for Phil" on the band website in 1996, with a ten-day countdown revealing people who didn't get the job...Darth Vader being the reveal I most remember. Seemed fun at the time, but maybe "jokes on our website" in the mid-90s wasn't the attention-grabber they needed.)

Anyway, I think the big problem was one of expectations. Over the 70s, Tony and Mike had kept losing "irreplaceable" band members. First Ant, then Peter, then Steve. And they kept going and just got more and more successful. So of course they thought they could carry the Genesis mantle with Phil gone. And they did realize they wouldn't be as big as they had been on the IT and WCD tours...but downgrading from stadia to arenas was clearly not enough.

Instead, they needed to do what Fabrizio suggested: treat this like the start of a new project and be prepared to build back up from scratch. I don't think that going under a different name would have made it more commercially viable (surely it would have hurt sales and attention)...but it might have re-centered their thinking to see that, yeah, they needed to act like a new and hungry group. Tour theaters, build up a following, bang out songs and do two or three albums in quick succession.

But...I don't think they wanted to do that. Whether it's because they thought they could maintain a greater degree of success or because they (especially Mike) liked swinging between their own projects and the band.

Add in the fact that, whether through personal taste or memories of their commercial peak, Mike and Tony's instrument sounds have seen stuck in 1989 for the last 35 years, and 1997 was maybe THE peak moment of when that sound was incredibly uncool (too old to be fresh, too new to be nostalgic)...they were stuck in an unwinnable situation.

Anyway, I still have affection for the album. Though I do listen to the 10-track version that has four songs swapped out for three of the b-sides. Is it the band's worst album? I hate saying that, because of my fond memories of it. But it really is down to FGTR and this one. That speaks more to the quality of their 1970-1991 career and less to failures of these two bookends.

New track up today: a 1986 demo of This Is The Road, which has an opening lyric/melody re-used in both Make Tomorrow and This Is Party Man.

I know this has been out there for a while, but the quality is much higher here than the previous version, and I believe it's a couple minutes longer. A fine addition to the collection.

First blush, my reaction was underwhelming, since this is one of those mid-70s demo songs I never cared for.

But then I remembered I didn't care for it because the sound quality on the bootlegged version was so poor. So...yeah, I'm excited to have this in an official capacity. Won't ever lap Down The Dolce Vita for me, but happy to listen to this early iteration of some of that song's ideas.

Quote from Backdrifter

You say this is likely unrealistic but it's beyond that and won't happen.

You're right, of course -- but I took a moment to follow the advice of your signature when I thought about it.

Quote from Zaar

It would not be a surprise would they throw in a Lunatics in the big room track every month - I also am looking for different stuff, such as "Make Tomorrow"...

If the Lunatics In The Big Room is a bonus track on top of 2-4 other releases in a lunar cycle, then I'm fine with that slowly being built out. A nice side dish, if you will. But if it's the main course, it'll always be disappointing. As others have said, I have quite a few live shows from the era. This one has been strong, but if they were going to drip-release a concert, I'd rather it be from a tour/era that isn't already so well covered. (A monthly song release from a professionally mixed 1980 "Tour of China 1984" show? Then you would have my attention.)

Don't think I commented in here, but very happy that the Make Tomorrow release was a new version and not just Make Tomorrow Today -- the latter version is fine but I do think the track benefits from the extra couple minutes to breathe a bit. And Peter's vocals on it are stellar.

Listen...if part of the outcome of this project were to be Tony, Peter, Ant, and Mike getting together and recording new versions of Charterhouse-era Genesis songs? I'd be way into that.

This is really exciting news to me. Even if it is just a new mix of the album that the band likes more than King's (perhaps in line with some of the "50 Years Later" versions that came out briefly a few years ago), that would be worthwhile. But I have some (likely unrealistic) dreams that it could be even more.

I've been working on an "alternate history" Genesis Early 1970 Album playlist that includes some of the Charterhouse demos, the BBC sessions Trespass-adjacent tracks, and a few songs from later Anthony Phillips' releases that were written in '68/'69. So I've been wasting a bunch of time reading up on the songs they had then.

So my lofty hope is that the band would be able, and willing cost-wise, to use some of the recent AI tools that helped Peter Jackson make Get Back and the surviving Beatles extract Lennon's vocal and piano for Now & Then, and get demos of the unreleased songs from '67-'69 out into the world. There are a number of songs that have been named but not heard, as well as songs that have come out as Ant solo recordings later in the 70s, but the recordings from that era haven't been. If there were any sound quality issues, they could theoretically be cleaned up with new technology.

If the issues are performance or composition based...well, I hope time and age have made them less precious about sharing their nascent offerings with the world. C'mon, boys...we already love you, and we promise to still love you even if Little Leaf or Barnaby's Adventure are terrible songs.

Quote from Backdrifter

There's information in this earlier thread, which itself points to an even earlier thread, and for Trespass there is this wiki entry setting out individual lyrics/music credits

That's helpful, thanks -- really shows who wrote the songs on the albums.

I remain curious about the demo songs that came out on the first Archive box set...but that information just may not be collected anywhere. I've taken to assuming that any of those songs that's not mentioned in the Ant Phillips compendium started with Tony and Peter...maybe that's over-simplifying, but seems reasonable, especially when they are generally very piano-centric.

And looking at those FGTR breakdowns: man, Tony had his stranglehold on the songwriting early, didn't he? 9 out of 12 songs, with half the album being from the Banks/Gabriel partnership. Interesting how few Phillips/Rutherford songs there are at that point -- every credit with that pair ends up shared with at least one other member. Despite the expansion of their percentage of the work on Trespass, it's clear why Ant at his departure had the proto-Hackett feeling that there just wasn't enough album space to go around for all the songwriters in the band.

Quote from Schrottrocker

The linked page for the FGTR songs credits In Limbo as Banks/Gabriel/Phillips/Rutherford/Silver, opposed to individual credits for the other songs. Is this intentional? What kind song writing input would John Silver have had? This seems odd.

Good question -- I have no information on this, but assuming it is accurate, I would deduce the song might have come out of a full-band jam. Since Silver was taking part in the jam, he gets a credit. Maybe?

I may be missing an obvious central repository for this information, but I'm curious if anyone knows the actual songwriting credits for the early years of the band when Ant was still around.

Officially, the songs were all credited to Banks/Gabriel/Phillips/Rutherford. But I know the Ant recording compendium indicates songs he had a hand in writing, and that this site's review of FGTR breaks down individual songs.

But I'm curious about the non-album songs that have come out; it's easy to assume that any song not listed in the Phillips compendium is from the Banks/Gabriel team...but the FGTR credits show that there was plenty of cross-pollination in the songwriting. So does anyone know a resource for breaking down who wrote, say, Hair on the Arms and Legs or Build Me A Mountain? Thanks for any help...

Really enjoying this new album -- Ant never ceases to amaze with the number of seemingly simple yet distinct melodies he can find on his guitars and keyboards.

There's also a video of Peter posted in the members page. It is a short one (30-40 seconds), thanking people for sticking with the Club even though it has been archival material ("digging up stuff from my past") instead of new material. He also notes how happy he is with the Big Room show from 2003 and that he thinks it "sounds pretty good to me." He ends with a very Peter-y vagueness about how that concert is something "we will be giving you over the coming period."

I'm hoping "over the coming period" doesn't mean 1-2 songs every new/full moon phase. But I guess it's good that it seemed important for him and/or his team to recognize the connection between the Club and releasing new material. I am digging the archival stuff, but if new songs are getting ready to roll out, I'll be quite happy.

Strong agree, Christian -- I liked getting officially released and easy-to-download versions of stuff like Full Stretch and those two Gabriel/Hall demos. But this was the first time this year we got something that couldn't have been heard before...at least not these recordings.

Looking back at the 1978 recording compendium entry and seeing that the scant information available includes that they were recorded at Trident Studios...which, according to the Full Moon Club release artwork for the tracks, is where these "Early Incarnation" versions were recorded...I'm growing more and more convinced that these three releases are the three August 28th, 1978 demos from the compendium.

And that leads to the question...if that's right, which song is which?

No. 1

Yesterday's Song

The One That Doesn't Sound Like Genesis

I don't have an opinion, but my first guess will be the songs were released in the order they were recorded, and the listing on this site's page coincides with that order of notation. So No. 1 is Family Snapshot, Yesterday's Song is Games Without Frontiers, and The One...Genesis is Not One Of Us. Wild guesses tho! Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

New track up on the Club today: the third and final early demo from 1978, this time Not One Of Us.

Quoting myself, but...

Quote from Ikhnaton

Furthermore, since they primed this lunar cycle's releases as "demo songs that all became tracks you know well" from Melt, that means there won't be any cleaned-up version of the Tom Robinson co-written songs or the unreleased tracks recorded during '78 and '79 sessions (No. 1, Yesterday’s Song, and The One That Doesn’t Sound Like Genesis).

I feel foolish that it took until someone else said it on Reddit, but it's possible the three future-Melt songs we are getting this cycle (Family Snapshot, Games Without Frontiers, and the unreleased third one) are these three songs bolded above...they just had different working title names than their released version.

For now, I'll tell myself that's the case so I feel like we are crossing off songs on the "never heard these before" list...

That is a nice surprise...both the unexpected early demo and the promise of at least a couple more during this lunar cycle.

I am not an expert in studio outtake bootlegs, but I don't believe I've ever heard anything like this when hearing early versions of Family Snapshot...let alone any PG3/Melt recordings from 1978. I'm very curious what else they come up with.

I also like that, between this and the Real World Notes EP on the New Moon, they are moving towards releasing multiple songs over both the New and Full Moon cycles. That's a trend I hope they continue to embrace until it's time for new music again.

The choice and phrasing of the release does dash (or at least delay) a couple dreams of mine. Since we've moved on to 1978 and PG3, I guess we aren't going to get official releases of the rest of the "Before The Flood" bootlegged songs from '74 and '75...let alone anything from the mythical 1976 demo recording session with Ant, Mike, and Phil.

Furthermore, since they primed this lunar cycle's releases as "demo songs that all became tracks you know well" from Melt, that means there won't be any cleaned-up version of the Tom Robinson co-written songs or the unreleased tracks recorded during '78 and '79 sessions (No. 1, Yesterday’s Song, and The One That Doesn’t Sound Like Genesis).

I'll keep my fingers crossed that such treasures could make their way to us sometime down the road -- and be happy to get fun demos of eventually-released songs/

I'm torn about another tour vs new music. My initial instinct is that I want him working on new music -- I agree with agentsage that new songs last forever. But I also know Peter, and it's possible that "oh I'll just finish off these five or six leftover songs and bang out a couple more" could lead to many years of fiddling, even if his plan were to start doing monthly song releases. And...I selfishly really want to experience him and his band on stage again and again.

Despite that, I like the new pattern that the releases have been falling into: New Moon(ish) releases of previously released collections and Full Moon drops of previously unreleased songs. Yes, the two "new" songs that have come out have been widely bootlegged...but these are the first official releases. I have my wants of what I hope he gets to, and I would certainly prefer to get official versions of new songs like What Lies Ahead and Show Yourself, but if this is the plan for the foreseeable, I'm on board.

Spent too much time with too much hope, and started dreaming of what songs could come out of this new FMC model now that Peter is opening the vault and letting those pre-Car demos out. I ended up with this pretty extensive list (spoilered below for size).

I, of course, leaned on the excellent recording compendium put together by the good people of this site. I focused on “new” unreleased songs or demos/versions of songs that are either from an earlier era than it actually came out or have an interesting group of personnel on it (esp in the early years). Regular demos of already known songs are fun and all, but I’m more interested in these.

A bunch of these are available as rips or bootlegs, and a few were even part of the old FMC releases...but fresh and cleaned up versions of these songs (particularly the bolded ones) would be a dream to have. Along with, of course, any newly recorded music he wants to release...

Quote from Christian

See our news item linked above. We known Ant and Phil were part of the session but not 100% sure also on this particular track. We are investigating.

That's what I get for replying before reading the link I opened in another tab -- thanks for the clarification and for examining it further!