CALLING ALL STATIONS

"Calling All Stations" is the fifteenth and last studio album of Genesis and that was released in 1997. It was recorded following the Phil Collins's departure from the band in 1996. Vocalist Ray Wilson, the brother of Steven Wilson, who had fronted a short lived but popular grunge influenced outfit called Stiltskin, was brought on board after a lengthy auditioning period. Wilson's darker vocals were more reminiscent of Peter Gabriel than Collins. The drummers Nir Zidkyahu and Nick D'Virgilio, the Spock's Beard drummer, were called to supply the drums. The album met negative reviews upon its release, saying that Wilson was a good vocalist but that the album suffered from lack of good material.

"Calling All Stations" has eleven tracks. All songs were written by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford except "Not About Us", "Small Talk" and "There Must Be Some Other Way" all written by Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Ray Wilson. The first track "Calling All Stations" is the title track. It's a good and interesting track that sounds different from what the band have ever done before. It's a song much more heavily that what was usual on the band driven by the sound of the keyboard and the guitars. We may say this is a surprising open for a Genesis' album. The second track "Congo" was the first single from this Genesis' album. It marked the debut of Ray Wilson as the vocalist of the band. It's a song with a clear pop tune with an African style drum beat. This is a song that became a hit across the Europe. It isn't a bad song indeed, but in reality it sounds too much to a pop song. The third track "Shipwrecked" was also a song chosen to be released as a single from this album, and it was only a minor hit. It's a simple ballad with a very simple musical structure that became a little bit repetitive. This isn't also a bad song, but it seems very clear that it was mainly made to be a big hit single. The fourth track "Alien Afternoon" is, without any doubt, until this moment, the best and most progressive song on the album. This is, in my humble opinion, the band's first attempt to return to their progressive roots. In reality, we are in presence of a pretty good song that sounds to the neo-prog style. The fifth track "Not About Us" was the third and final single taken from this Genesis' album. It was also the last single to feature Ray Wilson. It's a nice and beautiful ballad with great melody and full of emotion. It's certainly a song with the hand of Ray Wilson, which is beautifully and superiorly sung by him. The sixth track "It That's What You Need" is a great and another emotional ballad. It's a very slow and melancholic song very romantic, nice, catchy and pleasant to hear. This is, in my opinion, one of the better songs on the album. The seventh track "The Dividing Line" is with "Alien Afternoon", one of my two favourite tracks on the album, until now. It has an excellent drumming work and it's also, in my humble opinion, with "Alien Afternoon", the second song one the album with some progressive lines. The eighth track "Uncertain Weather" is another good song on the album. It has interesting lyrics and some beautiful musical moments. It's a track dominated by the synthesizers performed by Banks, which simply flows along the musical structure of the song. This represents another beautiful musical moment on the album. The ninth track "Small Talk" is one of my less favourite songs on the album. It's a song with some funk influence, but sincerely, I think they failed their objective. This is, in my opinion, a repetitive song with some pale creativity musical ideas. The tenth track "There Must Be Some Other Way" is with "Alien Afternoon" and "The Diving Line" the third highlight on the album and represents also their most progressive song on the album, too. This is a good song with the nice and crystalline vocals of Ray. This is, without any doubt, a song with some beautiful musical moments and also with clear progressive lines. The eleventh and last track "One Man's Fool" finishes the album in a very quiet and slow way. Despite being not a bad song, this isn't, for me, a brilliant song. It's also a very repetitive song without any kind of musical creativity. This is probably my less favourite song on the album.

Conclusion: "Calling All Stations" was almost a completely deception to me. I'm not saying this is a bad album but definetely I expected much more of it, really. Apparently, it had all the conditions to be a great progressive album. In the first place, Phil Collins quit the band leaving the door open to Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford left the pop influences of their last albums and return to the original progressive roots of the group. In the second place and in my humble opinion, their previous studio album "We Can't Dance", despite some pop songs, had a less pop oriented direction. In the third place, we were in the end of the 90's, a time when the progressive music has returned in force. There were also the times were many new prog bands arrived. So, is "Calling All Stations" a bad album? No. We can even say that it's a good album. But, it can be a good album to some other band, but not for a band like Genesis. So, this is the reason why I'm saying that "Calling All Stations" was almost a deception to me. It represents, without any doubt, an opportunity missed by Genesis to can return to their previous progressive roots. And I really think that their faithful fans deserved completely it. So, "Calling All Stations" became, in a certain way, a completely waste of time in Genesis' musical career.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

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