You listened to "Turn This Island Earth" and thought "ho-hum, I've heard lots of stuff like that"?
No, I listened to "Turn This Island Earth" and thought, "Wow, this is a mess, and it doesn't add up to anything! What a waste of effort!"
I've come to appreciate some of the various bits in it, but I'm still not impressed by how they're put together, and to me it remains a low point in Steve's discography.
I recall reading that he chose it partially because it didn't indicate any particular ethnicity... which seems strange since Rael is specifically supposed to be Puerto Rican.
Those Golden Wings is about as long as Turn This Island Earth, but doesn't make the same impact. To me, anyway.
"Turn This Island Earth" makes an impact??
Anyway, I've ordered the Japanese edition of LIGHT, so I'll have to wait a bit to get it.
Perhaps I am easy to please, but I like Steve's singing.
Me too. I guess I'm one of those listeners who can't tell an actual good singer from a bad one. Frankly, I think I'd enjoy a lot of music a lot less if I could tell the difference!
Really? How interesting! Would have loved to have seen that!
It can be heard on the (clearly unauthorized) LIVE IN POLAND album. And probably some bootlegs I don't know about.
How did it come to this?
Not a fan, huh? I'll bet you don't like "Who Dunnit?" either!
I love the riff & the way Phil used to mime playing harmonica.
And when it was performed with Ray, he'd really play the harmonica -- the only time that instrument was used with Genesis, as far as I know.
Not a bad song -- strikes me as a cross between "Behind the Smoke" and "Skeleton Gallery." But the video is a textbook example of why I don't care for music videos.
Speaking of FOXTROT, here's a bit of trivia I mentioned once on the old message board: It's the only Genesis studio album on which Phil Collins appears without singing at least a short lead vocal.
18 Tracks Of The Week so far, and nothing from Ant Phillips yet?
FOXTROT is often spoken of as being one of Genesis' all-time great albums. In my view, however, it would only have been a great album if the whole thing was roughly as good as "Watcher" and "Supper's" are. As it is, the remaining tracks on side 1 are relatively weak -- not terrible, just the kinds of songs where I'm likely to agree with most comments from those who dislike them and from those who like them. (As for "Horizons," it's nice, but for me it really highlights the silliness of crediting every early Genesis track to the whole band.)
As for the linked-to article: Sort of funny. (But "Supper's Ready" did NOT take up the whole 2nd side! Get your facts straight, people!)
A good song and a nice finale to the album, although the fadeout arguably goes on a bit too long.
Just a thought/observation: Has there ever been an artist whose "new" albums have such a high proportion of archival material as Ant?
I have 25 Ant albums, and over a third are in some way collections of archival material. He was releasing archival material as early as his third album (the first PP&P)! He even has more than one type or level of archival material -- "normal" archival stuff (as on some of the PP&P collections), "really" archival stuff (the ARCHIVE COLLECTIONs), and library music.
He has sort of a unique solo career in that way, doesn't he?
Still following the formula he seems to have adopted these days, vocal section, instrumental till end.
Well, not quite, since vocals come back in during the last third. Anyway, this sounds to me kind of like the younger brother of "Black Thunder." Not great but not bad either.
On the 67-75 Archive Lamb live, on Anyway, PG sounds like he sings "(something-something) fish" instead of "time to meet the chef". A nice bit of in-the-moment authenticity in his overdubs there.
Yes, he sings "time to meet the fish." I wonder if he got tongue-tied on "chef."
There is a part where Phil sings a different lyric in the live version of ITC. The original lyric is "In a trap, feel a strap. Holding still. Pinned for kill." Not exactly sure what Phil sings in that part but I'm pretty sure it's on both the TSL and Live Over Europe versions of the songs. Does anyone have any info on that? Like what the lyric is, when it originated and why?
The different lyric was discussed in another thread (here). Basically, I hear Phil singing "Feel the fear, dressed to kill."
Hmm, perhaps not great, but not bad either. At first listen I'd say the melody and chords have sort of a "I'm running out of ideas for melodies and chords" feel to them (similar to what I hear in "Out Of The Body" from WOLFLIGHT). But, like FeelItComing says, it will most likely grow on me. I especially like the fact that the overall song structure is fairly basic (vocal part / quiet part / vocal part); I would have expected a new 7-minute Steve tune to go all over the place with no sense of direction (reflecting one of his more obnoxious tendencies in recent years).
Overall, LAMB is a problematic album for me. On the one hand, the music is incredible, with the band at or near their peak. On the other hand, the story -- however cleverly told in the lyrics -- just doesn't do much for me. At best, it's surrealistically strange in a way that doesn't quite capture my imagination. At worst, I find it rather unappealing. "The Lamia" may be the one track that best represents my mixed feelings toward the album.
On another note: LAMB gives me the impression that the listener is invited to come up with their own interpretations of it (though I'm sure this was not Peter's intention at all). Given that, I have my own interpretation of it which (1) is not thoroughly thought out, and thus is subject to variation; and (2) is not anything I would attempt to convince anyone else of. Part of that interpretation is this: that certain parts of Rael's experience/hallucination/drug trip/whatever are symbolic of various past events in his life. In the context of that, the Lamia/Slippermen sequence would represent a set of circumstances that was not, shall we say, the high point of his life.
The clunky fade-out on the Archive 2 version is annoying and unnecessary. There wasn't much of the track remaining anyway, why not just let it run to its nice original conclusion?
That always ticked me off too! Fortunately, someone (from the old board) supplied me with a flawless digital version of the full original.
Anyway, IY almost seems like it was made to be a B-side. I have a hard time picturing it as an album track.
There was someone on the old board who actually did edit the two songs together to see how it would sound.
As far as audible connections between the two, there is a part in the middle of "From the Undertow" that hints at "Undertow" musically, specifically the second section of the chorus ("Stand up to the blow...").
