Very good, but I think I actually prefer the Face Value version.
In contrast, I initially so disliked the FACE VALUE version that it almost singlehandedly kept me from listening to the album for years. Now I at least tolerate it.
Posts by DecomposingMan
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DUKE was my first Genesis album. I decided to check it out after hearing "Turn it on Again" and "Misunderstanding" on the radio. When I first put the record on and heard "Behind the Lines," I knew it was going to be a great album.
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Contrary to what seems to be a popular misconception, "A Call to Arms" did not emerge from the "Shapes" sessions as anything close to a complete song. There was just a "bit" from the rehearsals that neither Tony nor Phil wanted to develop further, which Mike built a song around with his M+M cowriters.
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HIGHLY STRUNG can perhaps be considered the album where Steve made it clear that he was going to be doing most of his own singing going forward. With HS, Steve became the first (and only) "non-singing" Genesis member to sing lead on more than one entire solo album. It may not be Steve's best album, or the one with his best vocals, but it's a consistent work.
On the original release "Camino Royale" is the opening track, but I prefer the U.S. LP track order that has it as track 3.
Note that "Camino" centers around an instrumental theme that's also heard in "Cell 151" and comprises most of "Hackett to Pieces."
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1. When did you buy Selling England By The Pound (or have received it as a gift)?
1982
2. How old were you when Selling England was released?
12
3. Was Selling England your first Genesis album? If not, how many Genesis albums did you own before getting Selling??
No. I bought DUKE first, then bought almost all of the rest of the band's albums (FGTR thru ABACAB) on the same day in 1982. (I had to get FOXTROT a little later as it wasn't immediately available, but I'd already heard it.)
4. If you had to rank all Genesis albums, where does Selling England stand?
I'd say 4th
5. Which track was your favourite when you bought the album?
The Cinema Show
6. Which track is your favourite today?
The Cinema Show
7. Which track do you think is the best track on the record despite your own taste?
Dancing With the Moonlit Knight
8. How many versions of the album have you bought / owned? (Vinyl, CD, Remaster, Cassette, SACD etc)
1. Vinyl LP
2. CD (Definitive Edition Remaster)
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To be fair, that is easy for any keyboard player with the right keyboard.
That was actually the point of my joke: Holding down keyboard notes for a long time really isn't an accomplishment!
the Mellotron can only hold a note for 8 seconds, due to the tape length, but on "The Voyage" on the Moody Blues "On The Threshold Of A Dream", Mike Pinder holds a note for 11 seconds, without studio trickery. How?
I have no idea, but I've heard that he was able to do things with the Mellotron that others couldn't.
the 3 [instrumentals] on ACF are just lifeless filler.
Wow, I don't agree with that at all.
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OK, here's a Genesis-related album that doesn't seem to have been discussed much around here... What do you think of Tony's SOUNDTRACKS album?
I didn't know the album existed until I came across it in a used record shop within a few years of its release. I bought it right then & there.
At the time I didn't know who Fish was, and probably had not even heard of Marillion. I initially didn't like any of the three singers' voices, and still don't care much for Jim's or Toyah's. (Jim sounds better on the song he did with Steve Hackett. I've never heard anything else sung by Toyah.) Nonetheless, I consider Toyah's track ("Lion of Symmetry") to be a highlight of the album. On my CD copy of the album, "Lion" starts out too loud and has inconsistent volume until a minute or so into the track; I had to do some work on it with recording software to get it evened out.
Overall, the synthesizers and drum machines are typical in their '80s cheesiness, but I'm accustomed enough to '80s sounds that this doesn't bother me much.
"Quicksilver Suite: Gypsy" is nicely creepy. Like a lot of the music on the album, it's clearly better than the movie it was recorded for.
"Redwing Suite: Redwing" has some interesting keyboard effects and is my favorite of the instrumental tracks. For the record, the initial (rather weird) chord is held for a full 1:26. (When I listen to this track, I recall Steve's "Twice Around the Sun," which he claims has "possibly the longest sustained guitar note in the history of recording" -- i.e., about a minute -- and jokingly think, "Well, Tony topped that with his sustained keyboard notes!")
The music to "Redwing Suite: Lorca" was recycled in the BANKSTATEMENT track "Queen of Darkness" (which I consider to be much better).
I have several soundtrack albums from movies I've never seen (and probably wouldn't want to see) just because some or all of the music on each is from an artist of interest to me. The one movie I have seen related to a soundtrack album I have is "Quicksilver," which a friend showed me a tape of in the early '90s; I watched it simply so I could see how Tony's music was used in it. As it turned out, Tony's instrumental tracks (adding up to a mere 12-1/2 minutes) managed to serve as almost all of the background music for the film, which seems pretty atypical. (I recall there being just one short section of background music that was clearly Tony's but wasn't on the album.)
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No matter what. I just can't get myself wrapped around this game boy sound of this album. I can't listen to it.
Wow, interesting to hear how the album sounds to someone else. It sounds fine to me. I guess living through the '80s as a young adult must have made me immune to cheesy synthesizer sounds!
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This was actually the first Ant album I ever heard, within a year or two of its being released. At the time it seems to have been the easiest Ant album to find, either in the cut-out bin or as a used LP.
I prefer "1984," both parts, over "Prelude" and "Anthem."
I eventually got the 2-disc extended version, signed by Ant. It has a nice collection of bonus tracks that aren't just alternate mixes of tracks from the album. Besides the alternate "Anthem," which has a very different feel without the drum machine, I didn't care to hear the alternate mixes again after hearing them once.
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In retrospect, I don't consider HORIZON to be Steve's "last great solo album," but think of it more as being the first of his "not-so-great" ones -- not terrible by any means, but in roughly the same category as the albums that followed it.
Random thoughts (some of which I've said here before):
- There's an odd gimmick, on this album only, wherein 2 consecutive tracks basically sound like one longer song -- i.e., "Loch Lomond"/"The Phoenix Flown," "Wanderlust"/"Til These Eyes", "Prairie Angel"/"A Place Called Freedom," etc.
- "A Place Called Freedom" (in combination with its aforementioned intro) is, IMO, the album's best song.
- "Catwalk" has a serious "chorus problem." It's like Steve literally didn't know what to do between the verses.
- I always considered "Turn This Island Earth" to be pretty much a mess. When I made a CDR copy of the album for car listening, I put this track at the beginning so as to basically "get it out of the way" first.
(Bonus disc:)
- "Four Winds: East" (which, as has been discussed here before, is basically a rip-off of an old Peter Green composition) is identically the same track as the Japan-only bonus track from DARKTOWN "The Well at the World's End," except that the beginning and end have been trimmed a little. To avoid redundancy I left this off of my CDR copy of the album. Fortunately, "South" happens to flow nicely into "West."
- The classical piece "Pieds En L'Air" is not only not a Steve original, but he doesn't even play on it.
- "Enter the Night" is the third incarnation of the tune previously known as "Depth Charge" and "Riding the Colossus." IMO it manages to be one of Steve's best attempts at writing a straight pop song.
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I guess I'll add "Walpurgis Night" from the "Scottish Suite II" on ARCHIVE COLLECTION VOLUME II -- Ant's brief foray into musique concrète!
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Digitize it yourself? As in Record the LP to computer, if you didn't like it enough to buy the CD, or it wasn't available? Yes, did that too!
I have a number of vinyl (and cassette) items, generally non-mainstream stuff, that do not exist in CD (or downloadable mp3) form. I've either had someone put these to digital form for me or I've recorded them to computer (and ultimately burned them to CDR) myself. In a few cases CD versions have eventually become available but the digitalized versions I already had were satisfactory to me.
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you get the artwork (though I admit the LP beats it, obviously, but it's the only area it does).
Totally agree. While all my stuff on vinyl has long since been replaced by CD (or however I could get it digitally, even if I had to digitize it myself), I still keep some LPs around just for the artwork. (Ant Phillip's BACK TO THE PAVILION just isn't the same when shrunk down to CD size, for example.)
P.S.: Boy, did this thread get off-topic...
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What stands out in my recollection of playing vinyl are the crackles, occasional skips and the sound of surface wear from albums played repeatedly.
I also recall having the occasional issue with records getting warped.
I thought CDs were a blessing in comparison, and I haven’t moved on from that format - though I know most others have.
I haven't moved on from it either. I don't understand why anyone would consider it less a preferable format than anything else.
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With only occasional exceptions, I usually don't prefer live versions over their originals. This is especially true with Genesis, whose live versions don't tend to add much to the originals. Some Genesis live versions do have little touches that I like, though, such as (from SO specifically) the whistling in "Squonk" and the "megaphone" voice in "Robbery."
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Not that I've ever been a particular fan of either of these, but:
Jimmy Buffett (Sept. 1, age 76)
Gary Wright (Sept 4, age 80)
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It's the old use (maybe only in English?) of "mama" to mean a girlfriend, lover, etc. It also shows up in "Many Too Many."
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Excuse me? The difference in the violins arrangement is striking. The album version's arrangement is much sparser and leaves more room for the actual song.
Sorry to go back to being off-topic here, but... I just did a quick comparison between the mono and stereo versions of "(The) Silent Sun" and the string arrangements are identical from everything I can tell. If there's a "real" single version that's not the mono "bonus track" on my CD of FGTR, I'd be interested in hearing it.
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I bought the 12" single just to have the long versions of "Mama" and "It's Gonna Get Better" that were not on the album. (As I'm sure I've mentioned countless times, I don't bother with the shortened album versions at all.) The first time I heard "Mama" on the radio it was the long version, and the DJ specifically commented on how the new Genesis song was over 7 minutes long.
I vaguely recall thinking the "ha-ha" part was kind of weird, but in general my tendency was to accept music the way it was without giving much thought to its stylistic features, etc.
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The difference in the violins arrangement is striking. The album version's arrangement is much sparser and leaves more room for the actual song.
I'm unable to spot the difference simply by listening to one version followed by the other. Maybe if I do a "side-by-side" comparison in some recording software I'll be able to pick up on it.
This is the first time that I’ve ever heard that the members of Genesis had any control of the strings/brass. Everything I have ever heard/read is that the members of the band ( especially Ant) were really pissed off when they heard the brass and strings all over the album.
That's what I've always heard as well.
