FOXTROT

I recall a bright summer's day in 1974, on the front porch, discussing the music of Genesis with a girlfriend. I had recently aquired "Selling England by the pound " and was busy expounding it's virtues in gushing expletives, but she cut me short: "Forget it! - Foxtrot" is SOOO much better!" Then she left me to get a milkshake.

Of course, I promptly bought it, listened to nothing else for about a month, and had to admit: She was spot on. Selling England was incredibly good, but Foxtrot was the stuff that dreams are made of..I remember thinking there was NO way ANYONE could make music as exciting and inventive as this for ALL ETERNITY to come!

That was 30 years ago. I still think Foxtrot is the best album - ever. There has been some great music in a variety of genres since, but this magic box of tricks has never been surpassed. Its the only prog album I carried with me into my "punk rules OK" period later on, when I sold off much of my prog-collection to buy Clash albums.

I can only marvel at the rich variety of musical landscapes filling every tiny piece of every single tune on Foxtrot. The opening track "Watcher of the skies" spins me reeling around the universe with Peter Gabriel as a High Priest calling to the Maker from a stone age-monument. Next, "Time table" pushes me gently into a romantic rumination of the Middle Ages. "Get 'em out by Friday" on the other hand, is like a superb radio- play, with a very Orwellian taste. Frightening stuff. "Can-utility and the coastliners" I could never decipher the lyrics of, but Gabriel is the Player-King supreme in this. And the tune is so colourful, with instrumental breaks of immense skill and invention. Where did they get the inspiration for music as original as this?!

"Horizon" - Steve Hackett - like floating on luminous air...before the cascading ebb and flow of "Supper's ready" with it's convoluted musical themes and very vivid lyrics describing notions of Britishness, the Divine Being and imminent Apocalypse.

"Supper's ready" was and remains my fave prog composition. Close to 23 minutes, and thus totally unplayable on commercial radio, it's something else. I remember listening to Radio Caroline back in 1979, when listeners rated this THE best song of the 70ies.

OK - the sound is thin and one can only wonder what it sould have sounded like if recorded and engineered with better technology. Doesn't take anything away from this being my desert island disc, though! Listen to this before you die...or else....:o)