ABACAB

This album was released a few weeks before the band would appear in Leiden, the Netherlands for an already sold out concert - the infamous booing concert. Very much to Phil's annoyance, the audience made it perfectly clear how they felt about Genesis' new sound. And at the same time, Collins made it very clear that he didn't give a d*** about how the fans felt.

This is the album where Genesis turned their back on the faithful fan following that had been with them virtually since the beginning and started to reach out for the much younger, and much bigger crowd that was going to make them into a stadium band.

Abacab is really a transitional album, and only with their next studio album one could say that the transformation into a plain, commercial rock band was completed.

None of the songs is really succesful. "Who Dunnit' is an insult to human intelligence, and even the songs that sound a bit like the previous album (Abacab, Dodo and Me And Sarah Jane) sound unfinished - more like a demo than an album track.

The album was released in four different sleeves (different colour combinations), perhaps hoping that the die hard fans would buy all four. But it's especially those fans that will have been severely disappointed with this album.

I have long hesitated whether to give this album one or zero stars. I consider myself a collectionist, and I did buy the cd when it was released, but I never take it of the shelf and probably never will. There is not even one song I would want to play to anyone. No matter how wuch I try, I cannot really think of anything to justify even awarding one star...