Posts by Progatron

    Yes - 50 Live


    I traded in some stuff to the local shop and picked this up since it didn't cost me anything.


    I'm glad it didn't.


    Embarrassingly awful, barely a shell of the band they once were. I can't think of any reason why I would ever want to listen to these versions of these songs at any point in the future. The single worst official release in their catalogue, IMO. :(

    Personally I’ve always liked CAS. As an overall album I’d rank it higher than And Then There Were Three and Trick Of The Tail. I know this will be a controversial view but I’ve always thought ATTWT was the weakest and Trick and Wind And Wurthering have enough great tracks combined to make one great album between them.

    Wow! Well, at least we can learn from these threads about the different tastes out there in fan land. :) Trick is my favourite album, and ATTWT is in my top 5.

    You may have misunderstood my statement. I didn't mean, finished studio material that wasn't included in the album; I meant total material including both the album and any omitted material from the same sessions.


    The sessions for LAMB, the longest Genesis studio album, produced about 95 minutes of material. No other Genesis album's sessions produced a total amount of material that comes anywhere close to that... except the CAS sessions, which produced about 107 minutes of material.

    Oops! I did indeed misunderstand (I waited in the rain for hours, you were late). I thought you were talking about music that was recorded but left off the album.


    That's interesting, I never realized or thought about just how long CAS sessions ended up being. Nowadays, it's common for huge, sprawling albums of that length (bands like The Flower Kings, etc.) but for Genesis, 107 minutes is a huge amount!

    Bonus trivia: More finished studio material was recorded at the sessions for CAS than any other Genesis album... including LAMB.

    That's correct, 8 songs (one of which still remains unreleased officially) totaling almost 40 minutes. That's like a second album! Abacab would be the next choice, with 5 songs/24 minutes.

    Lamb had none whatsoever, so that's not the best comparison to make. ;)

    These always seem like pointless negativity threads to me, but perhaps something constructive can come out of the conversation that ensues. For me, if I was forced to rank the albums I would probably have CAS as the second-to-last place with FGTR in last. But I still get loads of enjoyment out of both albums when I am in the mood for either of them.


    FGTR barely qualifies as a band album, as they weren't really a 'band' yet, they were just teenagers lucky enough to record the songs they had written. Nonetheless, it contains a lot of nice melodies and some earnest singing. It's an early taste of the talent they would all hone as the years went on - and things improved dramatically between then and the recording of Trespass. Playing live, learning what worked and scrapping what didn't, improving their technique as players and writers...


    CAS, at the far end of their career, had lots of great melodies as well and some wonderful and dramatic moments. I think it suffered from a bit of aimlessness though, and some confusion with regards to direction. Furthermore, there seemed to be an inability to properly end some of the songs (lengthy fadeouts hurt some of those quite a bit), and perhaps some very outdated sound choices (Banks' solo in Congo is a bit cringeworthy). I don't think the blame for any of this stuff falls on Ray Wilson, he seemed to do a good job in his role. But Phil is just not someone you can replace. For some of the fans/audience, but more importantly, from a group dynamic perspective when it came to the writing and recording of the album. It had been the three of them for a long time, they were a well-oiled machine, and Phil was an important component of how songs ended up sounding. And when you took him out of the equation, and his replacement was not really given a say in those arrangements, you were left with an album that sometimes wildly shifted between lightweight Mechanics-style ballads and quirky Banks pieces that maybe needed a bit of tightening, and would have been better suited for one of his own albums. As good as a lot of that raw material was, it didn't quite add up to a fully fleshed-out Genesis album IMO. It isn't bad by any means, it just doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of their catalogue.

    What ever the odds, you need to get the 2cd version of this . When Road of Bones came out, I much preferred the 2nd cd. :).. Not why IQ do this, but there is an option. :/


    ;)

    I would only ever buy a 2-CD version of any album if there is one. I don't think there is a 1-CD version of this coming out, is there?

    Auto-buy!

    I saw them last October in Montreal and it was an excellent show. One of these songs was played, but they were calling it "Mome" back then, so I don't know which one it was. I bought the Ever 25th anniversary set that night, it's glorious!

    I note that he mentions the STRICTLY INC. leftover "Back to You," saying he didn't think it was worth including as a bonus track. He talks about it like it was never released, but actually it's available on the "Walls of Sound" single. It's not that bad of a song either.

    Yep, I have that CD single, and to be honest the best thing on it is the instrumental version of Only Seventeen, which actually sounds just like a typical Banks instrumental, as though it was never meant to have vocals! I love that version of the track. Back To You is okay, but nothing earth-shattering. Walls Of Sound itself is a different mix to the album as well, so technically everything on that single is unavailable anywhere else officially, which makes it quite collectible considering Esoteric didn't include the b-side track on either of the recent boxed sets. So if you're a Banks fan/collector, I'd recommend seeking it out!