Posts by Fabrizio

Quote from StillCan'tDance

You clearly didn't watch a quarter of a million Italians lapping up Invisible Touch and I Can't Dance in 2007.

Yet in 82 the new material didn't go down very well. They hadn't been in Italy in years and the audience, including the 17 years old myself, was expecting something else. They obviously had an album to promote but it wasn't well received, they changed a few songs for their concert in Rome a few days later which was I think very gracious of them. I had a bootleg tape of that concert, I obviously lost it now but I still remember an incredible performance by Phil on the Lamb lies down on Broadway.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Oh, that old saw

Hey! I resent that!!! LOL

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Sinatra was a what? A "capo"? What on earth...? He was a bona fide manic depressive and yet you claim he never "felt bad".

Anyway, you're wrong in thinking that being more successful makes you care less about what people think about you. Dead wrong, mate.

A mobster. You need to brush up on you Godfather I might be wrong sure but remember, I am not making broad sweeping statements here and I am not generalizing. I am just saying each is different and copes with it differently, the level of success notwithstanding.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

I don't think there's any point in asking you to clarify which artists because I clearly disagree, having thought highly enough of them to list them above.

I would like to believe we can go beyond the boundaries of personal taste and particularly with the benefit of hindsight, admit some artist have been relevant for a certain period and then not so much. I might not like Duran Duran but they had their say. I might like Alison Moyet with Yazoo and solo but she stopped being relevant a while ago. Nobody can dispute the legacy of bands like the Police or Talking Heads and if you are into that even George Michael will be regarded as a gifted songwriter, particularly after his death but artists like: The Specials, Madness, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Ultravox are really not in the big league

Quote from StillCan'tDance

It happened once out of sixty-eight gigs. At Leiden, I believe.

Make it two. Pisa, Italy, 1982

Quote from StillCan'tDance

And I'm still listening to them

And in some cases so do I but it is not enough to qualify them as artist who left a mark.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Oh god, yes, tons! He also happens to be considerably more successful than his peers in Genesis. I'm sure - as I said before when I mentioned Frank Sinatra - that the response to negative criticism in artists who are mind-boggingly successful is not just a coincidence.

By that criteria people like McCartney or the Stones, Sting or U2 should be murdering journalists. I will not dispute Phil was more successful than his peers in Genesis, although Peter didn't do too bad either but granted, he was treated far better. I don't really think the amount of success is tantamount to thinner skin. If anything it should make you immune and give a 'whogivesashit' attitude. Sinatra was a Capo, a hot-tempered Sicilian with mob mentality. He didn't complain or felt bad, he downright threatened and sometimes even punched critics.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

And for me, the eighties was the last truly great period for music. That's the decade when I started listening to music and a lot of great artists came out of that era - The Police, The Specials, Madness, Duran Duran, Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw, Ultravox, Phil Collins, Soft Cell, Tears For Fears, Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, Alison Moyet, The Smiths, George Michael, Talking Heads, Metallica, Iron Maiden...and they're just the ones I can recall off the top of my head.

As for producers, Hugh Padgham, Bob Clearmountain, Steve Lillywhite, Daniel Lanois, Giogio Moroder, Nile Rodgers, Trevor Horn, Prince, Quincy Jones and Rick Rubin are a pretty impressive list.

I am perfectly fine with the 80s up to a certain point and indeed there were great bands emerging in the beginning of the 80s by the the mid 80s after say the Live Aid, things really unraveled for me. Phil was pretty much the mirror of that era, I guess that's why he took so much flak. I loved Face Value, I was still on board with Hello I must be Going although his lyrics began to irritate me but he lost me completely with No Jacket.

And again that production, that sound...The horror, the horror....LOL. Only two songs I like on that record.That was too much fo me to take. Some interesting artist in your list, needless to say that I don't quite compare to 70s or 60s artists but that's a matter opinion and taste. I would only say that many of some you listed seem to have left to legacy to speak of. The came and went.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

What claims? They haven't made any. You're presuming that most artists aren't thin-skinned individuals who dislike criticism based on the little you know about a few members of Genesis.

Whereas I, who have worked in the business since the mid-nineties, have given you an informed opinion that being sensitive to criticism is endemic in the arts. That's not enough for you? Fine, continue to presume the contrary if it suits you.

Easy. We are not arguing here, merely debating and I have no interest in prevailing and nothing ''suits' me here. I have no agenda and no dog in this fight. Tony and Mike said they stopped reading the reviews and caring about their content long ago. That's a claim. Made several times. Again, it may not be true but there is no evidence to the contrary. Peter, while pondering on Ant's departure decades later has clearly said you have to be ready to face and not care about people who hate you. That's another claim. Their behavior have been consistent with those claims. There are no reports indicating otherwise. I don't think I am the one presuming here. I am certain there are many artists who feel awful about things said about them and their artistic output. Some, I am sure, cope with it better than others, Phil doesn't seem to cope with it particularly well. There is evidence for that, isn't there?

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Personally, I have greater issues with the production of Trespass and Nursery Cryme. Who was it who produced the latter? Was it the same producer that Van der Graaf used? Whilst their albums sounded pretty good, Nursery Cryme just sounds appalling.

You get no argument form me over how poorly Genesis albums up to Trick have been produced. What I cannot stand about IT is how ''glossy'' the production is, mind you, it wasn't just our heroes that was the sound of the time. An era I find particularly bad for music.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

You're presuming that they don't dislike negative criticism because they don't have a history of writing to newspapers.

That and the fact there are no incidents reported or documented to dispute their own claims. If you have other elements or infos, by all means...

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Well, that's certainly true of the title track and some of the other tunes but certainly Tonight Tonight Tonight, The Brazilian and Domino are not immediately accessible.

I don't know what to tell you, personally, I find everything on IT cute and pretty, too much for me, when it is not the song per se, it is the sound, the excessive use of drum machines and the production. It just grates me and the accessible stuff: IT, Anything she does, into deep , Throwing it all away is just too much to take for me.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

I think the key word here is "seemed". I think the more successful the artist, though, the more vocal they are about criticism. Not because their ego can't take it, quite the opposite in fact. It's their receptiveness to criticism that has put them at the top of the tree. I mentioned Frank Sinatra earlier, a man who was exceptionally thin-skinned and who was arguably the most overt in his behaviour to his critics. He also happened to be the most successful entertainer of the 20th century.

Well, of course ''seemed'' is the word to by if we don't take Phil's words at face value, there's no reason to do it for the others. Yet, there is no contentious episode, regarding other band members and the media recorded and they all had a quite rough deal as a band.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Not really. I don't question why Stephen King is writing books like The Outsider and Revival these days instead of Carrie and Salem's Lot. It's just artistic progression, that's all.

Oh, I was referring to actually listening to FGTR and then how they decided to proceed in the coming record. There is of course progression but there also distance between what they wanted to be and what JK was trying to get out them.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Like who?

Tony, Mike, Peter and Steve never seemed to suffer much from it. Peter said clearly that you have to be ready to go out and accept people might hate you. Tony is rumored and I don't know whether that's true or he just said that, of having stopped reading the reviews altogether once he realized they weren't going to get a fair chance from the media and they were generally misunderstood. Not Phil. He read everything and on occasion made it a point to reply publicly to the articles.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

he first big change I had to deal with was Calling All Stations. And it took me twenty years to adapt to that particular change!

I can see that but the difference is stuff like IT is unlikely to grow on you. It is conceived to be immediate, if it doesn't hit you immediately, it sort of misses the point. It is great record too, it serves the purpose extremely well, only that purpose makes me draw a line. I am much more likely to listen to Abacab, no matter how 'thin' I think the material is than IT which is a much more balanced, stronger and smoother record but lack the edge, the quirkiness and the energy of Abacab.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

From Mike Rutherford: "We always wrote short songs, it was just that they were crap."

And as someone who is a professional performer, I can tell you with some authority that being thin-skinned tends to come with the territory. Rare is the performer who doesn't take criticism to heart.

Again, it sounds to me they are selling and touting the new course, the way they would promote a new album. It's not that I am inclined to question it because Phil says it or Mike. You look at they way the went along in their career in the first years you just question it. They could have remained on the FGTR course, there was enough pop talente to develop there. They didn't seem to want though. I don't blame Phil for being thin-skinned, they were brutal to him during the 80s and it became fashionable and cool to hate him. I was merely offering an explanations as t why he would say things that don't seem to be backed up by their history. It comes with the territory alright, just some people seem to be more impervious to it

I like to think that I was open to the change, I kept on listening they really lost me with IT but to be fair there's another element to be taken into consideration which is age. I was younger when started listening to Genesis, as such much more intense and one tends to romanticize that period I guess. I feel I could have embraced the new course, had the material been stronger according to my personal taste of course. Take the first side of Shades amd perhaps Silver Rainbow 3-4 songs from Abacab and You might Recall and I personally would have hailed it a Masterpiece, no matter the style. There were for my money too many throw away songs though and I simply wasn't used to that with Genesis.

Quote from StillCan'tDance

As a fan of Genesis with my own opinion and tastes, I will take what a member of the band said over anything that I or any other fans have to say. So, you may well dismiss the comments of the band's erstwhile drummer, singer and front man as being no different to the platitudes of a politician...but I don't.

I don't dismiss them, I simply take them with a grain of salt. Just like when they tell you that their last album is always the best. Phil has been massively and imo unjustly attacked for years for 'ruining' the band and it is well documented that he doesn't respond well to criticisms, he is by far the more thin-skinned in the band with regard to how people respond to his music and I've always found his comments in this area were really about him being on a defensive mode. It wasn't me, they always wanted to do that, they just didn't know how to and so on...

Quote from StillCan'tDance

Yes, quite an odd one that but a reminder that they were courting a much larger audience long before the days of Invisible Touch.

That was the format of the show, it couldn't be escaped and as such they adapted, a bit of a stretch, taking that as an example of their lust for popularity but the point is another. You seem to entertain or wanting to push the idea that they always wanted to be a pop act, they just lacked and subsequently honed the pop-songwriting chops to make it and that too is imo incorrect for several reasons and there's evidence to the contrary, even though Phil said it but you know, sometimes artists or athletes or politicians, public figures in general just feed stuff to the press and fans. They broke away from Jonathan King who wanted them to be a pop act. They worked on several albums without any kind of interference from the record company, basically insulated from everything around them. They occasionally came up with easy listening tunes to which they wrote lyrics which would practically kill any chance of of being decent pop singles. Think of I know what I like for instance and a chorus going: ' I know I love you and you know you love me' and then go with some equally inane verses. Much more likely to chart higher than it actually did, don't you think? I think if you change the lyrics to Carpet Crawlers you have yourself a nice single but apparently they didn't wanna. Now, to be fair, did they want to be successful? You bet! Up to a certain point though, it was always on their terms, they certainly didn't cater for anybody's taste but theirs and most importantly; being famous, successful and commercially viable in the 70s was completely different from having that very same status in the 80s, particularly the mid-80s which is when things imo really started going downhill. A quick review and comparison of the charts from say 70 to 75 and from 85 to 89 would give a general idea of what I am talking about. Perhaps, it is true, perhaps Mike couldn't have never written something like Invisible Touch in the 70s and thank god for that, that songs should have never seen the light of day, as far as I am concerned, somehow though, I think he wasn't really interested in that, nor I think were Ant, Tony and Steve.