Genesis just hit me

Well I think that the start of Watcher of the skies is VERY influenced by J.S Bach Organ works....and Banks, Rutherford, Phillips and Gabriel were all very much exposed to classical Choral works at Charterhouse on an everyday basis I would imagine. And their music teachers would all have been classically trained as well.....and I am assuming that Banks, Gabriel, Rutherford and Phillips could also read and write music...Makes them sort of classically influenced eh? Not a negligible input on their output....Take the intro of Salmacis...very symphonic and a lot of their instrumental breaks owe more than a nod to soft woodwind melodies.....To say that Genesis 1970-75 wasn't influenced at all (or negligibly) by Classical music is preposterous!
Oh, and I shall completely ignore the childish insinuation that I have mental health problem...I'm as sane as any average hominid.....

Edited by M27Barney - July 28 2014 at 10:43

AEJOTZ wrote: Sometime in the early to mid 70s a show on PBS played a clip of some guy in a flower suit prancing around a stage to some very silly music. I thought it was funny but it sure wasn't life-changing. Then one day in the summer of 1976 I was listening to the local FM rock station when a tune started off with a piano going at "flight of the bumblebee" speed. This was followed with an orchestral-sounding multi-layered crescendo wave and the impossibly beautifully harmonized words, "and the lamb... lies down... on Broadway." My mouth literally dropped open and stayed that way for much of the song. I called the radio station and found out who the band was then drove to two or three record stores until I found the LP. I tried very hard to play the grooves off the album for the next week or two and then went in search of more Genesis music. I knew fully well that I could not have the top of my head removed by them again but surely there was something else worth listening to. What I found was the double LP repackaging of Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot called "Genesis, the Best." As fate would have it, the first tune I played started with Tony again, only this time playing an organ from Mars. The top of my head came off again as I heard my favorite song of all time for the very first time: "Watcher of the Skies." Well, at least my head would stay on for the rest of the album... and it pretty much did (I had to use both hands to keep it on during the climax of "Can Utility...") but there was nothing on earth could keep me together when Pete wailed with a full-throated, Daltry-like but heartbreakingly plaintive "new Jerusalem..." I think I sobbed. I had to take a break before having my head removed by "Salmacis" all over again. What distinguished Genesis from the other prog bands? Theatricality! And you didn't need the costumes. It was heavy drama and broad comedy and romance and yearning. One of my many wives described them as "majestic." I first saw them live in 1977. I remember feeling disbelief. I didn't think they were mere humans. They played the tunes even stronger and better than the recorded versions. Was that possible? Weren't bands supposed to sound like crap live? And what was the deal with that hairy dwarf who alternately sang the roof off and disappeared behind a huge wall of drums? The drums sounded better than fine when Chester was playing, but when Phil started playing something indefinable and magical was added. WTF? Genesis gave me a very big problem. They made other bands seem amateurish, unimaginative and weak.

Isn't it strange that I like many of the Gabriel and Hackett solo stuff but I can't get into Genesis in general except the Wind & Wuthering album?

ExittheLemming wrote: ^ was it the day you were released back into the community? I never made the connection between early Genesis and classical music because it's at best negligible. When anyone strips most of the blues and jazz ingredients out of Rock they invariably earn the epithet of 'classically influenced' which is plain silly really. Someone posted on the forum recently (Dean from memory) that the so-called Symphonic Prog bands simply made rock music sound orchestral by dint of texture, instrumentation and size/scope etc as none of them wrote any music that displayed the the sorts of formal academic rigour found in symphonic orchestrated composition. (perhaps ELP and the Enid were exceptions)

The biggest Genesis myth is that they declined after Gabriel left. What they achieved with Collins at the helm is quite extraordinary. Still managing to produce 3 blinding prog albums to boot!

AcademyNYC wrote: I recently acquired a copy of what is probably the rarest Genesis vinyl item of all, the London pressing of the Winter's Tale 45. As many of you know, this was originally released on UK Decca, but it seems that a few promo copies were pressed on London for export to the US. Even stranger is this version was pretty much unknown until a lone copy was rediscovered some 40+ years later in 2009. It has apparently never been offered for sale. Pic here, I can't get the embed feature to work:    https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3912/15172656086_7907c5b42b_z_d.jpg I'm a newbie and not sure how vinyl-centric this site is, but I thought it might be of interest.

AreYouHuman wrote: Did it feel like a kiss?

Okay, nobody asked, but here's the inspiration for that post anyway:

Kirillov wrote: There's a Genesis documentary on BBC2 TV tonight. I'll have to miss it unfortunately but I wonder if anything new will be revealed.

See this thread