GENESIS

I've listened to several interviews with the members of Genesis, and a recurring topic of discussion is how much better the band sounded live than in the studio. (I believe it's Tony Banks who usually makes that claim.) I make it no secret (not that anyone asks) that the three "Paul Whitehead albums" are my favorite among Genesis' corpus. Seeing as this live album is a collection of songs from that period, I thought it worth my time to check out. Fittingly the album has Paul Whitehead's last logo for the band, as these songs are all taken from the albums with his covers. The images on the front and back very nicely present the uniqueness of early Genesis. The scene on the front shows Gabriel in his Magog outfit while the rest of the band are hunched over their instruments. I always found it a bit strange that the cover highlights a moment from "Supper's Ready" when that didn't make it on here. The back cover features closeups of all the band, but Gabriel is shown multiple times, the centerpiece being his famous batwing headpiece. (I can see why there was some resentment from the rest of the band about his theatrics overshadowing their playing) But the main reason I bring up the packaging is because much like Nursery Cryme did and the Lamb will, this album includes a short story. It's very surreal and has nothing to do with the songs or images on the cover and I love it. The urban setting and tone definitely show where the band would be heading in a year's time. I like how it's presented as if it's a report of some kind. It really gives this album the mystique present in their best works, like something not of this world that found its way into ours. I really wish Gabriel had continued his writing.

The track listing is a very good selection of early Genesis classics, but then it really is hard to go wrong. If someone were unfamiliar with the band, and was for some reason too intimidated to go through full albums, this would be a good place to start. We start with the iconic "Watcher of the Skies". The famous mellotron intro is about the same as the one on the album, but I think the "morse-code-rhythm" is better pronounced here. I think Mike and Phil have the most to gain from being heard live. Next is "Get 'Em Out By Friday", which for some reason doesn't sound as good as the rest of the album. Still Peter's voices are fun and he goes a little more over the top than on the studio version. The opening to "Hogweed" is given a little more power than in the studio, and Steve adds some nice guitar flourishes. I will note that whatever keyboard Tony is using doesn't give the song that same horror vibe as the piano on the original, and Peter's vocal effects are missed. But the ending is more explosive than ever. After an unaccompanied bass pedal solo from Mike, we get my favorite Genesis song, "The Musical Box". It lacks the darkness and intensity of the original, but is still an interesting alternative. Steve's guitar lets out a monstrous groan as the heavy part starts. I think Tony stands out more here than he did in the studio. I also like Phil's drummer at the end, which is probably the only part more intense than the original. Finally, we get to the one everyone's been waiting for, "The Knife". No offense to Anthony Phillips or John Mayhew, but Phil and Steve really take this one to the next level! This heavier style is more suited to them. I don't think I've ever heard the band play this hectically! Once again Peter's vocal effects are missed, but the playing more than makes up for. Overall, this was an interesting look into one of my favorite bands and a good guide for newcomers. The quality of the recording isn't the best (apparently the band hated it because of that) but it's never so bad it's distracting. For the most part I prefer the studio versions, but I can certainly see where Tony was coming from. Well worth a listen, and "The Knife" is good enough to replace the original on your playlists. Definitely watch footage of their performances as well!

We Can't Dance is not without its flaws, but I always feel that there are also flaws in how it is approached by the majority of fans and reviewers. If one accounts for these flaws, there is actually a pretty good Genesis album to be seen here. One which maybe not entirely hearkens back to the old days, but does return to those and reinvents them to a certain extent, and as such would have been a satisfying and exciting start of a new chapter in Genesis' development, had the band continued to exist in this form.

First, let's address the obvious flaws. Yes, it is bloated, and it is so because of the advance of the CD-era, which led bands and artists all around to experiment with album length, in the assumption that it would be great to just put almost everything that came out of their recording sessions on the album. That idea has since proven to be mostly false, and the average album length these days (writing this in 2025) is almost back where it was during the vinyl years (albeit still a little longer). The problem with this argument is, obviously, that everyone who says it is bloated would leave different tracks off. Some would ditch Hold On My Heart, for being too much like Phil Collins solo, but that could be countered with the fact that the chord progression and interplay between chords and bass notes are unmistakenly the work of Tony Banks and would never have even occured to Phil. Others would leave off Since I Lost You, but even though Tony Banks has since almost disowned the track, back in the day he would call it one of the most satisfying ones on the album for the fact that it just sprung up in the studio spontaneously. Some people call Driving The Last Spike a boring version of old Genesis, or would simply leave off I Can't Dance because of its hit- quality, even though both songs actually break new musical ground for the band and are lyrically much more aligned than one would think and would fit on an other, more concise version of the album, with the songs more thematically connected (of which more later).

The other flaw is, simply, that by this time, Genesis' prime as a playing band is really over. That prime occured between 1972 and - depending on who you speak to - 1983, 1981, 1980 or 1977 (my money is on 1982, the release of Three Sides Live). It is ironic that, by their own word, Genesis built The Farm to capture how they sound in the rehearsal room, and subsequently used it to produced heavily edited albums like Genesis and Invisible Touch, which, however one feels about them, don't sound like a live band at all.

This is where my appreciation for We Can't Dance comes in though. An effort is made here to sound like a live band again. Gone are the electronic drums, the guitar synths, Mike and Phil are sounding like they play an actual instrument, keeping their sound really really simple. Even Tony is sounding more like he is in a room, rather than plugged into the board. This is completely in line with where pop music was going at the start of the 90s: away from the synthesized sound of the 80s, towards a more natural, rehearsal room sound. Genesis were entirely part of this shift on We Can't Dance, but because the album wasn't followed up (I mean, it was, but not in this formation), it stands alone and this timely quality of it gets a little bit obscured.

Another way the album was timely at the same time as classic, was in the lyrical content. There is a very strong current of critique of commercialism on the album, maybe not from a thorough theoric anticapitalist point of view, but certainly from a more layman desire for realness and honesty. 'Jesus He Knows Me', 'Driving The Last Spike', 'I Can't Dance', 'Living Forever' are direct jabs at commercialism and the exploitation of the common man by feeding on and playing into the common man's desires. These songs could have been the backbone of a more thematically concise album, with other songs about longing for realness weaved around it: 'No Son Of Mine' (wanting to speak truthfully with an abusive father), 'Never A Time' (wanting to speak truthfully with an estranged partner), 'Dreaming While You Sleep' (the fear of speaking truthfully about a grave harm one has committed), 'Hold On My Heart' (the fear of speaking truthfully to an impossible love), and 'Fading Lights' (speaking truthfully about the end).

The fact that this thematic consistency is achieved in what are mostly story-songs, is a feature that only few reviewers, past and present, seem to acknowlegde as a return to a form that Genesis traditionally employed. The beautiful thing is that this return to old ways, is at the same time a renewal of them, because the stories are not about goblins and faeries, but are thoroughly rooted in reality, often social reality. This is where the traditional Genesis story-song connects to the current of the times, with songs like Pearl Jam's 'Jeremy' (who 'spoke' - truthfully - in class), all these grungers wearing their hearts on their sleeves and critiquing commercialism, and a few years later Soul Asylum's 'Runaway Train', an obvious distant cousin to 'No Son Of Mine'.

Did the lyrics - mostly penned by Phil - always work? No. Case in point is 'Tell Me Why', which sounds like a rich man feeling guilty when watching the news, just crying out that everything is so bad, but neglecting to think about why that is. This song must be one of the most spectacular failures in the Genesis canon, because not only is it musically very very good, sung very well, it also reportedly started out lyrically as a cry of solidarity with the plight of the Kurds, before morphing into the generic philantropic misandric form we hear on the album. Oh, what could have been!

Overseeing the words that I typed here, I would say that probably 'Tell Me Why', 'Way Of The World' and 'Since I Lost You' could be axed from the album, at least thematically, although I must say that I really do love 'Since I Lost You' for what it is: a beautiful, heart-wrenching song about the death of a child. Speaking truthfully here. Other voices always want to include one of the B-sides, 'On The Shoreline', but while that is a fine, quirky song, I feel it fits neither with the directness of the album, nor with it's ideological content. It's nice, but it wouldn't have made the album stronger. This also goes for the other B-side, 'Hearts On Fire', but for very different reasons.

Finally, something about the title. Clearly, this title is there because someone must have said that like 'Invisible Touch', the album should be named after what was expected to be the biggest hit. I've heard rumors that the albums was originally going to be called something like 'Fathers, Sons', which would fit not only a thematic current running through a number of the songs (and which would render 'Since I Lost You' a vital part of that current), but also with themes running in Phil's solo work around that time. Also, it would make the beautiful artwork actually make sense. 'Fathers, Sons' would have had as thematic backbon: 'No Son Of Mine', 'Jesus He Knows Me', 'Driving The Last Spike', 'Since I Lost You'. Augmented by a couple of other tracks, maybe along the lines of the anti- commercialism theme, and/or speaking truthfully, with of course the brilliant 'Fading Lights' as the inevitable closer, the potential of this album would have come out more than it did.

That's not what happened though. We have the album as it is. Still, I think this could have been the start of a regenesis of Genesis in the 90s. No, it's not a perfect album. Yes, it is their best since Duke or at least Abacab. And yes, it is a return of sorts to what makes Genesis Genesis, a return that also renews, and therefore could have served as the spring board for the band to stay relevant in the 90s.

Upon its release, I genuinely hoped that this would be a brave stab at the slightly darker, edgier sound and themes of the Peter Gabriel era- all foxes in dresses and games of croquet with human heads! The new singer Ray Wilson certainly has Gabriel's croaky warmth but aside from a cracking burst of guitar riffery on the title track, musically this is a very static album. Weirder still, it is an album distinctly lacking in direction. Not quite a pop album because the hyper-famous Phil Collins has left the band and taken all the catchy hooks with him (Perhaps only 'Congo' but little else) and it's not quite Prog either. The song 'The Dividing Line' feels like a call to arms for the old fans but it arrives out of a fog of string pads and nondescript melodies a bit too late in the album to provide hope. The drummers sound like Phil Collins, the vocals sound like Peter Gabriel but the music is a pea-souper of vagueness and if you manage to get through its interminable running time, you kind of wish you'd just listened to Foxtrot or Duke.

Call me a fool, but I actually bought this set (at a firmly reduced price, of course) because I wanted the best tunes from the 1980s/1990s Phil Collins era. As a great admirer (since 1975!) of Gabriel-era Genesis, I never used to listen to the radio and only occasionally saw a clip or two on MTV, but of course some of those Collins-led tunes are inescapable, and I have to admit I even like a couple. So let's forget about Bret Easton Ellis, I ended up with this PLATINUM COLLECTION, what did I make of it?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, some of the tunes were as good as I'd hoped for and perhaps (when you don't hear them pouring out of a speaker in a noisy bar) even better. Songs like 'No Son Of Mine', 'Abacab' and 'Turn It On Again' can only be described as superior pop. 'Jesus He Knows Me' is as delightful as anything Peter Gabriel ever did, and 'Mama' actually starts out like one of PG's early solo tracks - what a shame it had to end on a 'screaming skull shrieking' fest. Yes, I'll admit that right from the start I had problems with Mr. Collins' insistent emoting, but that doesn't mean he can't sound deeply affecting as well: tracks like 'Many Too Many' and 'Undertow' actually bring a tear to my eye. And much to my surprise, 'That's All' strongly reminds me of the Dutch prog band Kayak, and of Genesis anno 1971 ('Harold the Barrel', to be precise).

Alas, I also found that discs 1 and 2 contain a number of tunes I didn't enjoy at all ('In Too Deep' for example, and that horrible little thing from CALLING ALL STATIONS), while one or two of Genesis' earworm songs (like 'Invisible Touch' and 'Tonight Tonight Tonight') proved deeply irritating. When the second disc reached WIND AND WUTHERING and A TRICK OF THE TAIL, I was disappointed that the most ambitious songs from those albums ('One For The Vine' and 'Robbery, Assault and Battery', for example) were nowhere to be found. Instead, I got offered relatively bland fare such as 'Afterglow' (I just can't stand Phil Collins singing falsetto) and (Lord help us) 'Your Own Special Way'. Couldn't they have picked 'Blood on the Rooftops' instead? It's at least twenty times better... Anything to avoid giving Steve Hackett his due, I suppose... Well, at least the compilers had the guts to include both 'In That Quiet Earth' and 'Los Endos', which are the closest Genesis ever got to 'progressive jazz rock' à la Brand X.

With Disc 3 we enter a different universe, and the great news is that the best track is included from each of Genesis' classic 1970s albums. (I would also have loved to see 'Dancing With The Moonlit Knight' instead of 'I Know What I Like', but I guess you can't have everything.) As soon as the disc begins, we hear a new voice which has the kind of dignity Phil Collins - for all his virtues - never possessed. I wonder how that third disc will go down with unsuspecting non-proggers if they pick up this collection in a thrift store, just like me...

While I do understand that this Genesis is not a past Genesis, that's not why I think that Abacab lacked a lot of quality compositions, or consistency for that matter. After the outstanding Duke, there is a drop-off, but it's not the worst album ever. One big difference is the solo works, which this time are limited to one by each; that turns out to be a good thing. Tony Banks' "Me and Sarah Jane" is a rather uneven piece, with some great moments but some rather overdone ones. Meanwhile Phil Collins' "Man on the Corner" (a minor hit), and Mike Rutherford's "Like it or Not" seem routine and somewhat boring, let alone generic; the former two pieces also further Collins' obsession with drum machines.

The rest of the album? The title track is a great composition, but Banks tends to overdo the synths and drown out everything else, a sign of what you'll hear for the entire album. "No Reply at All" is one of the couple gems here, a pop radio staple augmented by the same horn section from Earth, Wind & Fire and great bass work by Rutherford. "Keep it Dark" is not a bad song, but again I fault Banks for being too heavy with the keys. "Dodo/Lurker," the other long track here, is the other truly good piece; it likely has the best lyrics on the entire album, and Rutherford gets a chance to shine some on the six-string. I don't need to comment on one of the worst Genesis pieces ever, "Who Dunnit?" for every other review echoes my comments on that song. "Another Record" closes, which is somewhat bland, but at least Banks' piano is near its best for this album.

The eponymous follow-up would be a nice rebound for me (if that proves that my problems aren't because of Genesis' identity), but I found Abacab to seem rather run-of-the-mill and not easy to get into.

3.0

This album is perfect from start to finish. A perfect, extremely melodic opening, with zany lyrics that reflect the current state of England in the early 1970s, where America was just beginning to make a killing with its economic siren. From lines like "There's a fat old lady outside the saloon" that guide you through imaginary passages where you truly feel the reality of the lyrics. It's not Collins' best drumming. It might have been his best on ATOTT or LLDOB. But with Hackett at his best, Rutherford bringing the soul he always gave to Genesis, Banks perfectly crafting the most beautiful melodies I've ever heard, and Gabriel at his most creative. Surpassing Foxtrot was only possible with this album. It continues the socioeconomic narrative but leaves a bit of a gap, or rather the religious theme that hadn't been fully addressed since the first album. For me, In the Court is only better for what it means to the history of rock in general, but this album is the most divine delicacy the genre has ever created. If I had to choose just one album to save, it would surely be this one. A beautiful cover, referencing the second track, which is super progressive in its lyrics, although it had pop and radio leanings, but it encouraged young people to do something that's still being done 50 years later: Doing what you love.

{Note this was Google translated and then edited for accuracy by admin. Only reviews in English are allowed.}

''Spot the Pigeon'' is the most famous Genesis EP for a good reason.It contains three ''Wind & Wuthering'' leftovers, which the band made public in May 1977 through this edition, practically seeing back and forth.And that's because the short cuts ''Match of the Day'' and ''Pigeon'' are closer to Pop/Art Rock with commercial leanings, heavy on acoustic guitar and dreamy on keys with some sort of BEATLES-esque atmosphere, while the longer ''Inside and Out'' is more of the lyrical/theatrical Prog Rock of the band, maybe a bit too soft, but with some epic vocal sections, great keyboard work after the middle (Moog synth runs) and a nice acoustic prelude.Later in that same year it was announced that Steve Hackett would no more be a member of the band. 4.0, these are three great pop tunes that in my opinion deserved to be on wind and Wuthering.

This album was originally planned to have a long song cycle on one side and some shorter songs on the other side. The song cycle would be made up of "Behind the lines", "Duchess", "Guide vocal", "Turn it on again", "Duke's travels" and "Duke's end". It wasn't to be, but during the tour that followed the band did play the song cycle as they had originally intended it. It was the absolute highlight of the Duke live shows and the album would have been a lot better had it included the songs this way.

The album opens like the song cycle opens with the excellent "Behind the lines" with its two minute intro leading into the drum machines of the great ballad "Duchess" with its coda "Guide vocal". Then we get three solo compositions with Mike Rutherford's "Man of our times", Phil Collins' "Misunderstanding" (the first song he wrote for Genesis, also the band's first US hit single) and Tony Banks' "Heathaze". Then comes the great "Turn it on again", as far as I know the only single ever with a 13/4 time signature. Then it goes again with "Alone tonight", "Cul de sac" and ". The album ends in a great way again with "Duke's travels" and "Duke's end". Had they left the medley as it originally was (and how it was again on tour), the medley have made it a great Genesis album. But this conversion of pop and prog made some fans lose interest l. This is one of the albums that made die hard Genesis fan to lose interest but I love it. 4.0

Probably the most polarising of the band releases up to that point, the album sees Genesis, now as a trio, trading some of their grandiose, complex ideas for increased pop sensibility. Maybe due to the fact that Collins and co. weren't exactly sure in which direction they want the music to go, ...And Then There Were Three... sits awkwardly in the canyon between progressive rock and pop rock, somehow being neither and both at the same time. While the fusion of the two genres was done better on the next album, Duke, this LP spawns a few very worthwhile tracks (Down and Out, Snowbound, The Lady Lies) in between filler and failed ideas. A classic transition-era album. 4.0 it Is forgotten about sadly.

After Gabriel had left the band, the remaining quartet developed in an incredible way and released two of their best albums. While A Trick of the Tail already was outstanding , Wind and Wuthering turned out to be one of their masterpieces after Peter Gabriel's exodus.

"One for the Vine" and "Blood on the Rooftops" are two epics belonging to the greatest prog songs ever, but all other tracks (maybe with the exception of the fairly nice, but very, very simple "Afterglow") follow quite close behind.

Master guitarist Steve Hackett left the band after this album. With "And Then There Were Three"(1978) Genesis managed to overplay this significant loss pretty sovereign, but thereafter it all started to go downhill in the prog point of view although they became more and more successful commercially.

I'm absolutely sure, that I will love this album as long as I live. Wonderful cover artwork, by the way. 5.0