A CURIOUS FEELING

I bought this album when it was first released and have loved it for many years.

The Story: The actual story has some similarities to that of the play "Flowers for Algernon' which was later adapted to a movie called "charley" (1966) with Cliff Robertson. In the movie a mentally retarded man is a test subject for a sceintific experiment which causes his mental abilities to continuously expand past those of genius. Eventually his mental powers peak and then begin to decline until he is returned to his original mental state. My interpretation of the story of A Curious Feeling is that a child tempts fate by suggesting bargains in his mind while playing games. Fate becomes an actual character who takes the child up on his bargain setting up a scenario for him to become extremely intelligent and gifted but with the added 'bargain' that if he ever falls in love with a woman he will lose his mind. Other reviews I've read suggest the story is about 'memory loss' and try to suggest things like Alzheimer's or self-delusion to explain it. What they are missing here is Tony Banks' penchant for imaginative story telling along with his considerable experience with mythology, fable and the supernatural. Trying to explain this story based on reality or science totally misses the point.

The Music - My primary love of this album is of course the music. Tony Banks has a singular talent for constructing unique songs which are intricate, interesting and often very beautiful. Along with his talent for imaginative and moving chord progressions he also has a great ear for instrumentation. The thick textures and layers throughout this album are still evocative and pleasurable for me to listen to after thirty years. Some reviewers have complained that Tony should have had another guitarist perform on the record singling out solos they found lacking. The original members of Genesis saw themselves as song writers above everythng else and thie album is clearly about a singular vision. I would guess that Tony would have brought in any talent he thought was necessary but was happy with what he was doing. I certainly am.

The recording - Like many of the early Genesis LPs, the quality of the original album was terrible. I originally thought that the hole inthe record must not be quite centered because of the horrible warbling I was hearing. I went through three LPs before I finally gave up on this. The CD is better although I've been hoping for some time for a remix of this album to surface.

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