Thoughts on Duke

I was just wondering what people's thoughts were on 1980's Duke. In my opinion it has a lot of proggy elements but with a more accessible feel. It's the only 80's album that I thoroughly enjoy. The weakest song is probably "Please Don't Ask", which is obviously a Collins song both lyrically and musically but songs such as "Heathaze", "Duke's Travels/End" and "Behind the Lines" and more are great songs. I personally think it should be regarded as the last prog album. I think it's a better album than "...And Then There Were Three."

There are only about three stand-out songs on Duke for me, and the unsung hero of the affair is Mike Rutherford for penning Man of Our Times. Wonderful stuff that was showing his maturity as a songwriter at the time. Also, Heathaze lies within the upper echelons of Genesis tunes, once again attesting to the beautiful, lilting music Tony Banks was capable of composing.

Old King Cole wrote: I personally think it should be regarded as the last prog album.

RoeDent wrote: I hope you actually mean "Genesis' last prog album" here, and not the last prog album ever made. And even then, that is debatable. Prog = progressive, moving forwards. We need to get rid of the snobbish attitude that radio friendly = regression for prog artists. There are elements of prog in all of Genesis' albums; just because they found the magic formula for how to appeal to a large fanbase doesn't mean they suddenly stopped being "prog", whatever that even means.

I got my copy of Duke autographed when they put in a record store appearance.  Oh an amusing note my brother brought a copy of Moroccan Roll and Tony signed it.  They passed it around and all laughed at the back cover.  Yeah Misunderstanding was certainly some kind of mistake.  heheheh  I also thing Abacrabs should get more respect.  Whodunnit gets trashed but I think that is not deserved.  It was supposed to be silly.

Edited by Slartibartfast - February 22 2017 at 01:42

I believe that micky has stated over a thousand times that it's the best Genesis album.  Personally, I can live without it.

Horrible. Phil wrecked the band with his top forty bubble gum fantasies. I even have a problem listening  to the early material of Genesis because of Phil.

Kepler62 wrote: Horrible. Phil wrecked the band with his top forty bubble gum fantasies. I even have a problem listening  to the early material of Genesis because of Phil.

Ellington ?

I listened to it again after a very long period of having not. The music for the most part is painfully simplex. Duke's Travels is alright and is the most progressive thing on the album. Still, it's mainly of value to anyone seeking a lot of keyboard gratification; guitar fan? forget it. The timbres on the keyboard are nice. I like that. No interesting textures or interactive melodies or counterpoint and so on. Nothing too complicated; an atmospheric background of sound with cycling keyboard solos on top. Certainly there's more guitar on Dukes End, but it's very ordinary. The opening to Behind the Lines and Duchess have the "sound" of Prog, but have all the inner complexity and innovation of just about any AC/DC song, so they're not Prog. As for the rest of it, I can't detect Prog anything of any sort. I don't know in what way this can be thought of as a Prog album. Maybe an album with a glimpse of Prog. Although I like Phil Collins' vocals in large part on Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering (some exceptions), his vocals are annoying to me nearly all throughout Duke. He seems to be singing in an effort to charm teenage girls. The vocals have something the sort of which I can only describe as a sort of "Pop glee" that leaves me very uncomfortable.