This is a tough one! Good question, has me thinking here a lot... Well the 3rd song on each album's 2nd side was released as a single. Other than everything that has been said before, I don't have an answer... Tony Banks played cross-handed technique on a song off each album's 1st side 😁 but I'm thinking that is a stretch.
Looking forward to the answer!
After a bit of research it seems Phil might play bass pedals as a keyboard on early live versions of Ripples so that might be it?
You got it! Bass pedals were played by hand on both songs. Phil played them on Ripples live on the Duke tour and Mo Foster on I Don't Care Anymore on the 82-83 tour live. Your turn!
Does it have something to do with who performs what on them?
Close, more how something is played than who.
This is a good question! So the first Genesis albums I knew were Abacab thru Invisible Touch because my family had those albums. The first actual album I bought myself was a tie between Selling England, Trick, and W&W, but I picked Trick because it was the first of the group I listened to. I bought them all on tape at the same time which was a lot of fun.
My first listen to A Trick of the Tail was extraordinary! When Los Endos faded out I was amazed at what I had just heard, an experience I don't know I've ever quite had in the same way with any other album I've ever listened to.
Funny thing about the Selling England tape was that the running order was different from the album and how I knew it to be for so many years. I think More Fool Me followed I Know What I Like, and I can't remember which came next between FOF and Epping Forest, but it was quite different when I heard the proper running order.
Ok, looks like it might be time for a hint: If you watch the available old performances of these songs live, you will see what they have uniquely in common.
It has always been a case though, in many different forums and throughout the years. Perhaps there are some Forums where later albums are top choices but personally I haven't come across any of them . Curiously enough, Duke which usually ranks quite high, as it should imo, is a 3-man era album and cannot certainly be defined as prog, which would appear to indicate there is no particular bias at work.
All main eras (outside of the Ray Wilson era and early era) are nicely represented in the top 5 as it stands now which is what is so interesting. There is no bias as you said, just a pure interest in the content of the albums.
I'm a sucker for polls and statistics so this kind of thing is intriguing 🙂
This list is quite interesting. The albums after Duke are way down in the polls. Fascinating to look at. I didn't help their cause, not that I don't love each one in their own way, but my picks were:
The Lamb
Trick of the Tail
Duke
This has been my top 3 for a long time.
Yep. July 18, 1986. Hard to believe they only had the one.
Your turn
It is hard to believe. So many songs play regularly on the radio to this day, but I guess IT seemed to happen at just the right time.
*Gulp* alright so my turn for a question... Here it goes. What unusual thing do Ripples and I Don't Care Anymore have in common from a live performance perspective?
Which Genesis song was the only one to make it to #1 in America?
Invisible Touch?
Display MoreMy first PG gig was, as I've tediously droned on about elsewhere, when I chatted with Phil Collins and frightened Robert Fripp.
Tue 11 March 1980, London Hammersmith Odeon, rear stalls. Having watched support act Random Hold (David Rhodes's band of the time) my brother, a friend and I were chatting, and leaned back to let a man and woman get past us to their seats on my right. My companions were suddenly then excitedly pointing and I realised the couple were Phil Collins and (we assumed) his girlfriend. By this point others had recognised him and were talking to him and getting him to sign their PG programmes, which were a mocked-up Mao 'little red book' with "Tour of China 1984" on the cover. Oh, that PG, he kerrrr-aaaazy.
We had a stack of 10 of these for ourselves and various friends & family. As I was next to PC I was given the task of asking him to sign them all. My nervous 14yo self querolously asked if he'd mind making 10 Genesis fans very happy. He looked at the stack of programmes, looked at me and said "What, do you run a fucking library or something?!" Then he laughed and said "C'mon, give 'em 'ere" and diligently signed them all, pausing to flick through and read one (I never knew who ended up getting that sanctified copy and didn't think to make sure it was me). He asked me what I thought of Random Hold, then we talked about what was playing over the PA which he told me was Larry Fast, then keyboardist in PG's band.
Shortly after, I saw Robert Fripp talking to someone in the aisle. Not believing my luck that I'd get autographs from and chat with two of my music heroes - for I naively assumed RF would be just as amenable as PC - I went up to him and brightly said "Hello, you're Robert Fripp aren't you?" at which he gasped, looked really scared, went "NO!" then turned and literally ran to the exit - his legs a blur like the Isle of Man symbol spinning in a high wind.
Oh and by the way I loved the gig.
That is a great story! Phil sounds personable, just as in most other stories I've heard about him.
My first PG show was not as star studded, but was MSG in 2002. Good show, I remember PG in the big ball knocking over one of Ged Lynch's cymbal stands which was quite humorous. The last song was Father Son and the place was quiet, listening attentively. One of the rare moments in a concert where I felt like all 10k plus of us in the audience were connected through experiencing one song. Quite something.
interesting choice.
I also think that Passion may be his best ever album, musically, but then egain I tend to see his "normal" album as more accessible, probably I want to hear him sing ...
Yeah, that would be the one negative on Passion - the lack of his singing. The pieces where does sing are great though, especially A Different Drum.
I've always thought The Reverend would've made a nice standalone single. I'm not keen on Battle but love that segment.
I think I'd heard that Willow was a single. My thought about the quiz question was that those tracks were re-recorded as singles but I don't know if the same applied to Willow Farm if it was indeed a single/b-side.
Totally agree about the Reverend section. I like the rest of the song but when that section comes up I always enjoy it as kind of a song within a song. Neat idea for it to have been a single. Imagine a song just starting "They called me the Reverend when I entered the church.....",neat!
Not sure about the Willow Farm single being re-recorded, but I see what you mean about the question. I kind of half forgot about the 1999 version of Carpet Crawlers but yeah that was a totally new version. I didn't care for it much myself but it was interesting all the same.
I'm wondering if it's that they both had truncated/re-recorded versions released as singles.
I think the Willow Farm section of Suppers Ready was also released as a single, maybe a B-Side of something else. I've never heard it but seem to remember reading about that.
Colours
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Find a Way to My Heart
OK. This should be an easy one:
What unusual thing (among Genesis songs) do "Watcher of the Skies" and "Carpet Crawlers" have in common? (Hint: It's nothing within the actual songs.)
This might be a reach, but each was the last song on the 2 medleys played during the ATTOT tour (TLLDOB/Windshield/Carpet Crawlers) and (It/Watcher)...
I went with Melt, Security, and Passion.
Melt is where he seemed to find himself as an artist.
Security has such a great mood throughout the album. It's almost an unsettled and creepy mood at times which is fantastic.
And Passion is one of my all time favorite albums. A masterpiece and a standout from the world of Genesis. It's a journey going through that album filled with sounds of beauty, happiness, sadness, uncertainty, all in one.
Display MoreI have perfect pitch, so changing the key alters how the song sounds to me significantly. It's hard to explain, but each key has a particular "character" and associations. It's like changing the colour of a room - it all feels very different.
Sometimes this worked. For me Dm is a more brooding and solemn key than Em, so that enhanced Mama to some extent (and also helped Phil hit the top notes better). D is sunnier, happier, less pastoral than E. So Ripples seemed a little less poignant. But it also allowed Phil to sing it with a gentleness and flow that would not have been possible in the higher key, so I went with it. Dbm is definitely darker than Ebm, so that worked for In the Cage. D worked best for Invisible Touch, with that sunny sound providing interesting juxtaposition with the bitter lyrics.
The key change worked less well for me with TIOA - B is a brighter, sharper key than A, so the song seemed to have less edge. And IKWIL seemed to lose a bit of pep going from A to G.
On a tangent, the change that bugged me the most was Tony taking the main Cinema Show melody down an octave. That changed a soaring high melody into something muddling through the middle.
Very interesting! I found In The Cage to work in the new lower key, though it totally changed the feel to a much darker mood. Must have been a pain for Tony to relearn the middle solo! Mama also worked, but I missed the higher key on the later verse after the drums come in. Of course at that point this would have been quite a stretch for Phil's vocal cords nightly.
In regards to Cinema Show, it did feel a bit less of a climatic musical moment on the second run of the theme. Phil had also started on the ride cymbal (which I have never understood for this tour's version) rather than hi-hats which took away from the more explosive change on the second run.
I have no idea my first record or cassette but the first cd I went out and bought was Seconds Out. I think I liked that a lot more when I first bought it than now. Nothing against the performances or songs or anything, just would rather a more "live" feel to it.
Since this tour was my first (and as of yet only) opportunity to have seen them I couldn't complain about the setlist. It brought back some of the classic stuff they got away from on the WCD tour (ITC medley and Los Endos) and even an older surprising one in Ripples. The only thing I remember being disappointed about was I Can't Dance starting the encore set. But even that I was ultimately fine with. The start with BTL into Dukes End and then the lower key TIOA I thought was brilliant and an emotional moment for me to finally see them play live. Starting with BTL was perfect for me and I will always remember the experience of that first note of the song.
Leads me to a thought though: With many of the songs tuned down in a different key for Phil's voice, did anyone else enjoy any of the songs more that way? I have to say I quite like the lower key of IKWIL, something about it feels better than the original, at least in that setting. In a weird way it seemed to fit the nostalgia trip with the videos behind the band in that key.
I have always put Duke up there in the top 3 albums of theirs. Phil's singing voice finally begins to sound like himself here rather than fitting into what existed before, Tony's sound gets an update and songwriting becomes a bit more concise, and Mike has an album of lead guitar under his belt to begin to develop his style here.
It sounds like they came together as a group here in the 3 man era. It's an interesting bit of conversation earlier in this thread regarding ATTWT vs Duke. I have always felt ATTWT a bit more disjointed in terms of the completeness of some of the songs, as if some were never fully developed into their full potential. I love the lush keys and overall atmosphere of that album, along with Phils take no prisoners drumming. That said, this one falls short of the more complete Duke album in my view.
For anyone lucky enough to have seen the Duke tour, what a show! I can only imagine from the bootlegs and the tour video. The Duke Suite, what a brilliant piece of music. And what's great is that it was hidden within the album in somewhat plain sight. That, plus Man Of Our Times, is enough to push this into my list of great all time albums. Add in the rest and it's just icing on the cake.
