Posts by Schrottrocker

    There's been a recent study that claims evidence the very sentences "An old proverb says" and "An old Chinese proverb says" traces back to the 19th century. Looks like we've been used for ~200 years to add this introductory clause to any proverb, particularly modern proverbs that are anything but old and by no means Chinese.

    I put my bets it will be a matter of less than 5 years until some really incredible surprise will be announced - a brandnew compilation featuring more of the same old songs, extra brickwall-limited for all you loudness lovers out there! 8|8):sleeping:

    Thanks, there is lots of contradictory information around about the timing of events at that time. I recall news from around 1998/99 that said their record company wanted them to record something with their old bandmates, on which Mike and Tony supposedly answered they first wanted to record their second album with Ray. It is often difficult to reconstruct the true events behind such news reports.

    Last year a friend of mine left me her entire CD collection because she only listens to streaming these days. I am still digging through these ~300 CDs.


    Playing right now:

    Annie Lennox - Diva.

    I fell in love with this album right away. The song writing, the production, the keyboards, the vocals, the moods, the grooves, everything is totally my cup of tea.

    I swithered over posting this here as I'm not sure it counts as politics. I'm not sure what the term for this is! It's Penny Mordaunt at the tory conference. As the poster says, watch through to the end if you can stand to. In the canon of Things I've Seen it's simultaneously one of the worst and funniest.


    Someone nailed it when they said she's like the Head Girl at school who can't act but gets a starring role in the school play because she's the teachers' favourite. She certainly seems to have only just learned how to hold up an index finger and do pauses and has yet to master either.

    To me as someone from a different country who doesn't know who this is and what she is talking about, this was still pure entertainment. The kind of real-life satire that leaves comedians unemployed ;)

    1. When did you buy Selling England By The Pound (or have received it as a gift)?

    I still haven't made it to buy this album. My dad owns it, since I loved this record when he played it he copied it on cassette for me, I still have this cassette. Much later, a friend of my sister's copied me the 2008 remaster on CD; later on, in the high times of illegal file-sharing, I found a download of the original master and burned it on CD. I've been wanting to purchase the original album in some form for ages but I never made it. I did however buy Steve's live CD on his Selling England show in Stuttgart.



    2. How old were you when Selling England was released?

    Wasn't born yet, at that time my parents didn't even know each other. My mum was in her first marriage, my brother was 3 years old and my sister 1 year old. My dad had a girlfriend as far as I know. No sign of me on the horizon yet.


    3. Was Selling England your first Genesis album? If not, how many Genesis albums did you own before getting Selling??

    See above, yes, the first if the cassette copy counts. The first album I actually spent money for must have been Duke, which I bought in 1996. It was one of those albums my dad didn't have in his collection. I could try to trace back which albums I bought on CDs or LPs up to this day but it doesn't relate much to the question because my dad had a lot of Genesis albums in his record collection and I had access to all of them before I ever started buying anything.



    4. If you had to rank all Genesis albums, where does Selling England stand?

    1


    5. Which track was your favourite when you bought the album?

    Firth of Fifth


    6. Which track is your favourite today?

    Firth of Fifth


    7. Which track do you think is the best track on the record despite your own taste?

    All of them. Yes, I even include More Fool Me since it is part of the album.


    8. How many versions of the album have you bought / owned? (Vinyl, CD, Remaster, Cassette, SACD etc)

    See above

    Always enjoyed this song. It became a classic radio evergreen, a lot of radio stations kept playing this song way up into the 2000s. Production-wise this is a pretty unusual song, there's no bass guitar, no actual drum set, a strange rotary speaker effect (or sth similar) on the whole mix, a keyboard that is hard to make out if it is strings or woodwinds or something else.


    And yes, it is nearly impossible to talk about this song without mentioning the time signature. Aside from Dave Brubeck's Take Five, this might be the one song that became most famous for its odd-time signature. The cool thing about it is how unnoticeable the 7/4 is. Pretty much every song in an odd-time signature will give you the feeling you are tripping over the beat, as if someone is trying to mess with your dancing feet. This one doesn't. The rhythm is seamlessly flowing, and the song will be stuck in your ear.

    I still have to purchase this album. I remember I almost bought it some time in the early 90's when I saw it in a second-hand record store. Should have got it.

    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.

    No need to apologize. I don't know why everybody who talks about 80's music always feels compelled to apologize. "The synths are cheesy, I still like it though..." As if it was guilty pleasure. At the time, the synths were revolutionary.

    I was born in 1981, as the youngest of 3 kids in a family in which everybody listened to a lot of different music I grew up with 80s music. I love those 80s synths and I missed them in the 90s; '1984' is too much though. At that time there were other album productions that had better sounding synths.

    Well. I am a fan of Ant's and I enjoy a lot of his albums. I am also a fan of 80's music and of synth music too. On top, I do have to admit 1984 is actually quite an interesting album by the actual musical composition. But. Nevertheless. No matter what. I just can't get myself wrapped around this game boy sound of this album. I can't listen to it. It makes me feel like I am listening to one of these "8-bit version of Supper's Ready" videos that circulated on youtube a couple years ago.

    That would be a treat. 8) He already performed Robbery Assault & Battery on his Seconds Out tour, right? I guess Mad Man Moon will be the deal breaker. I would love to get that song live but I can see the problem in performing it. Even Roger King might run into trouble with that one.

    It is one of the good moments on this album, though the downside is it is one these incomplete tracks - when regarded on its own, without Broadway Melody of 1974 - that The Lamb has a number of. You just started, it gets going really strong, and you're already in another song. In this case the transition works well but I still wished they would have gone for more complete songs.

    There has to be a way to crack this thing, sooner or later some nerd will find out. Something like hold a photo of a pink rubber boat and you're in. I really don't get all the people who "celebrate" this kind of big brother bs. Ooooh, you haven't smiled enough lately! The system wants you to be happy! Seriously. Why do people love nanny bots like this.

    Steve: "John Lennon said Genesis were the true sons of the Beatles."

    There's other instances when Steve would say John Lennon said Genesis were the most interesting new band from England, and similar claims. Not to rain on Steve's parade but it would be interesting to find other sources confirm this. Some youtuber that I can't remember had a video in which he claimed he searched thoroughly but could not make out any sources for these statements of John Lennon's, except Steve himself who has seemingly repeated citing John Lennon from the early 70s onwards. Steve doesn't come across as if he is making things up but he appears to be the only person that can remember John Lennon say these things about Genesis.

    Thanks, I'll check this out. I am not an expert with these things, my dad and my brother are, I just enjoy using the stuff but I have no clue how to fix things. Sounds easy enough. Easier at least than replacing the belt in a floppy disk drive, I managed to break the one in my old KORG keyboard, then I found a USB floppy converter which works fine... Not an option for a vinyl player.

    Anyways, yes, then I will get Selling England.

    Since both my dad and my brother are audiophiles, I have an audiophile stereo in my apartment. I am unable to explain all the technical backgrounds but I listen to CDs as well as vinyl and by direct comparison my experience has been old LPs from the 70's mostly sound way inferior to digitally remastered CDs. Those old LPs usually have a muddy sound, the CDs reveal a lot more details and have more dynamics. However, with LPs from the 90s it is the other way round, those newer LPs totally beat CDs: unbelievably bright, transparent and clear. CDs don't get close to them. It's still just a rule of thumb, there's humongous differences between LPs even from the same era. The original Seconds Out LP sounds remarkably great even though it is from the 70's. CDs don't have such vast differences, they usually sound good enough and it's hard to find any with real crappy sound.


    That "analogue warmth" thing is a myth imho. It might come from crappy vinyl players and crappy stereos with a lot of saturation and distortion, noise, hissing and humming.