Posts by Lazlor

Quote from FeelItComing

Both of these claims are just such sweeping statements which leave no room for any argument or doubt, that it is obviously pointless trying to continue. It's a shame.

Continue what? We can only agree to disagree

And that's fine. We're just talking about two different bands—only one of which as any claim to posterity.

(But you knew I was going to say that.)

Thing is, the need to make a living is a (the only) redeeming feature AFAIC - wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise, and probably shouldn't have.

You do realize that saying HBTS is your favourite Genesis song is akin to claiming that Shakespeare's last letter to his landlord has to be his finest work, dontcha?

Quote from thewatcher

Do you think Wot Gorilla is better than Home By The Sea?

Honest question, I'm not looking to be judgemental.

Please be judgmental - otherwise we're all gonna get back to sleep

And yes, Wot Gorilla by a country mile. It has er... b*lls, imagination, and it doesn't outstay its welcome, while Home By The Sea is the apotheosis of the snooze fest hinted at by One For the Vine.

Guys, guys, just think about this: in 1982, an allegedly washed out Jethro Tull released Broadsword and the Beast

A post-modern jazzman's take on King Crimson's music:

Quote from thewatcher

I've always hated this line of thought. And I still do!

That there's some intrinsic purity to the older material that only fans who have reached a certain level of enlightenment such as yourself can appreciate. You have grown wise enough and sophisticated in your tastes to recognize that even if you enjoy a song like Paperlate (to choose a representative example), it's a 'blind spot', and the song is somehow objectively garbage despite your enjoyment of it. This argument is drivel of the lowest order. There is no inherent value to one song over another, only different attributes that you might enjoy more than another person. I personally prefer Firth of Fifth to Paperlate but is that because it's a 'better' song and I know what a good song sounds like because I'm a smart person with refined tastes? No, because that would be bullshit. I just prefer it because I like a long dramatic song for one, and I love the melody in the opening piano bit and the atmosphere in the guitar solo. Could I understand someone preferring Paperlate? Of course. To each their own.

Finally I like to think the band would cringe at the ideas you espouse. They became good at writing taut, short rock and even pop songs. Success followed and was bloody well earned. This concept that they turned into an atm and sold their souls, left their muses wailing in despair, is about beyond my ability to express in words how condescending I find it.

I totally get it if a huge fan of their stuff from the seventies doesn't enjoy the later material (especially someone who was 'there'), but I do not get these intellectual calisthenics to justify preferences that in the process cast those who do enjoy or even prefer the later stuff down to some inferior fan/connoisseur level.

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Everything being equal to everything else?

'The band would cringe' - which band exactly?

Forget any purported 'intellectual calisthenics': the truth of the matter is we had THE 'prog' band, a band that pretty much defined an era thanks to its honest approach to making both ambitious and accessible music—one that opened 'lontananze d'azzurro' (Franco Battiato reference) to countless disenfranchised children of the Seventies, at a time when what you might call art mattered, a time before absolutely everything became ruled by accountants and fashion designers.

Then that band turned into something else entirely, which I will refrain from defining for fear of sounding like 'a smart person with refined tastes'

OK, I'm not one for reining in (much) my (refined) views: one of those bands made art, the other made money - simple as that.

Quote from Backdrifter

I'm not entirely sure this is what Lazlor was saying, though I'm sure he/she will confirm or otherwise. But regardless, I really like how you express this as it certainly does nicely rebut a certain kind of old prog-head attitude I see and hear often. As you said, it's one thing to say "Wind & Wuthering was the last proper album they did" when that means "I don't like anything they did after Hackett left" which, although it's not a view I share, I think is fair enough. But when it comes with this much more dogmatic assertion that everything post-Hackett or post-Duke is definitively rubbish because it isn't Cinema Show or Vine and it earned them hit singles and huge audiences, that's what I have a problem with.

It's on the same part of the spectrum as another gripe I've heard before, that when they packed out stadiums and mega-arenas on the IT tour it mainly wasn't "proper" Genesis fans, and only "true" fans would appreciate the old songs in the set. Now that really is arrogant codswallop.

There are no 'old prog-heads' as opposed to new ones.

Only progheads (for lack of a better word) on the one hand, and blind love from indiscriminating fans on the other hand.

Which is OK, again - happiness lies in lack of perspective

('he')

Quote from Backdrifter

Are you sure? The manner and frequency with which you mention their latter-career earnings suggests you do have some kind of problem with it.

What are the 'blind spots' you refer to?

It's a problem only from a musical/artistic point of view.

Regarding the 'muse' thing: you guys might reread what I wrote, 'cos it infers nothing pretentious at all

Quote from thewatcher

Exactly.

And more exactly!

It's a toxic, condescending attitude I find very off putting.

You guys go for this explanation because it suits ya, but the truth of the matter is: the music is rubbish regardless of the sales figures.

The short answer: seeing Duke ranking above Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot in this poll is proof that there are many more Patrick Batemans than music lovers around us (how's that for a planet-wide blind spot?).

But then we always knew that, didn't we?

(Key to this inflammatory statement: PB was only incidentally a serial killer...)

I'm probably the most relaxed of the lot around here: since Genesis died in 1977, I haven't the slightest expectation

Quote from Fabrizio

I've been a Genesis fan for over 40 years, albums have been released , played, listened to, reviewed and criticized ad nauseum. It's safe to assume their relevance in the Genesis catalogue has sunken in by now. Polls are an indicator, more or less precise if you will but they are. If the most recent albums which have the huge advantage of being the most recent, almost invariably occupy the last positions, perhaps it isn't a coincidence.

The band is no more, they haven't released an album in over 20 years and I reckon they won't anymore.

With all this in mind, as long as I make clear that I'm expressing an opinion and I am respectful of anybody's taste and opinions which is not always the case here, as I was able to appreciate from very recent comments, I see no point in tiptoeing around or mincing words and I reserve the right to call it as I see it. Sure, some fans might think that say, Another Record, just to mention a dud is a great song, I happen to think they can write stuff like that in their sleep and by gravity a song like that, with time, gets the relevance it deserves. None. It doesn't mean somebody cannot possibly like it, more power to them but we seem to be unable to break out of the equation I like it=it's great or at least it must be great. I wish my favorite band had only released perfect albums with perfect songs, unfortunately for them, as for any other artist it wasn't always the case and I think we should be able to say that. Very few bands are able to keep the fire in their belly with a decades-spanning career, I would say that U2 for instance, whether one likes them or less, deserve a lot of respect because they constantly tried to do just that: keep the flame alive. Genesis simply didn't imo and I don't feel like blaming them, I just liked them more when they were less sleek smooth and glossy but so very intense, original and unique. There is no sin in saying it, I reckon.

We all have our pet songs and albums, our guilty pleasures and our blind spots, but as you infer, we also should be able to get some perspective after all this time.

To put it simply: there was one band that was 'intense, original and unique' - young musicians listening to their muse(s), learning their instruments based on the demands of the material they came up with (more or less) as a unit, and in the process offering the world a string of albums second to none - from Trespass through The Lamb, with TOTT and WW excellent additions to the definitive body of work.

Then that band gradually morphed into a cash machine, which (again!) I'd never hold against them - we all need to make a living. It just needs to be said that to make money, though, one needs to get out of a failing niche market/put out a product with mass appeal whose artistic relevance can only ever be both thin and incidental.

Music used to be more than serial killer fodder (hehe) - it used to be the soundtrack to people's life, not just another fashion accessory.

I don't mean to be arrogant (I know I sound it), but a lot of people need to work on said blind spots

Have you seen the (totally bonkers) 'Toyah & Robert's Sunday Lunch' series of short films?

Hi Christian.

I'm partial to The Changeling - very moody, gothic and inventive, with a punk streak IIRC - it's been a while. I bought it on cassette tape in 1983, haven't heard it in a few years, but :

In another style, this recent, feelgood tune is very good (complete with spoken intro by a little known musician and guitarist ) :

Works for me.

Quote from TheWestSide

erm - no!

More Fool Me is a nice interlude on that record. Quite often tracks like this make an album special.

But not always

Backdrifter, 'lucrative' isn't necessarily a bad thing—and they did need to make a living, after all. I certainly don't begrudge them that.

I just can't abide the sickly sweet stuff (post-Hackett Genesis+Collins solo career) they chose to peddle to that end and which was prefigured by MFM

Currently rediscovering an old homemade mix CD of Hackett instrumentals.

Now playing: The Steppes

SEBTP would be a perfect album without MFM, a twee portent of horrendous but lucrative wagons of pap to come.

The album's still perfect AFAIC: even the most wonderful land has its muddy spots, after all

I never understood the dislike some have of After the Ordeal : it's a wonderfully melodic and uplifting little instrumental, and an apt and relaxing coda to Epping Forest. Could it be that people only heard it with Tony's backhanded dig (making a point of not liking his own playing on it) in mind?

'Prog' rather than "progressive rock' is a usefully noncommital shortcut for this kitchen-sink type genre, while being punchy enough to give pause to kneejerk detractors.

Having said that, l like Steve Hackett's definition/manifesto: 'permissive rock' or, more recent, 'pan-genre approach'—compositional freedom in popular music, what a concept!

Erm... It's wayyyyy overrated here - above Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot?

Preposterous.