CONGO

I was a bit surprised when in March 1996 I read in a newspaper Phil Collins`s announcement about he was leaving GENESIS then. I had doubts about the band carrying on without him...but Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford wanted to carry on as GENESIS. And they did it. Finally by mid 1997 I read in a Rock magazine an interview done with them and new lead singer Ray Wilson. So, it was until September 1997 when I finally saw their new album called "...calling all stations..." in the record shops of my city and I bought it. But before that, I thought that the new lead singer could have been very well Paul Carrack (of MIKE AND THE MECHANICS) or a lead singer of more or less the same age of Banks and Rutherford. But no...the new lead singer was Wilson, a lead singer who was born in 1968, at the time that GENESIS were recording their first album when they were teenagers...The differences in age and in looks between Banks and Rutherford with Wilson were very clear from their appearances in photos as a band.

The cover design of the "...calling all stations..." album was in fact very "dark" for my taste. I thought the same thing about most of the music of that album. I also thought that the change of lead singer was a drastic move, with the new lead singer having a very different voice and style in comparison to Collins`s (in a similar way as in the case of MARILLION with new lead singer Steve Hogarth when he replaced Fish). Anyway, the band still retained some of the "old" musical style they had when Collins was in the band, but now they were more focused in the "dark" aspects of their music and lyrics, like they were trying to re-create the moods of previous "dark" songs like "Home by the Sea / Second Home by the Sea", "Mama", and others which I don`t like very much from their discography. But the band lacked a balance of moods in their music and lyrics, now lacking Collins`s humour and his more "light" musical tastes. So, most of the songs of the "...calling all stations..." album sound to me in a very similar, "dark" way. Even some of the ballads are a bit sad in content. But I think that Wilson really was not very involved in the creation of the content of the album. In fact Banks and Rutherford have recorded most of the tracks before Wilson joined the band. So with the exception of a few songwriting collaborations between the three musicians, the new album was really more the creation of Banks and Rutherford than a real collaboration with Wilson. I think that he was recruited more as a lead singer than anything else.

With a song like "Congo" it seems now that the band wanted to update their music for the late nineties. A "dark" song with some good arrangements and some Pop Rock oriented lyrics, and also with a not very good promotional video clip for my taste (also "dark"), in fact it sounded to me very far from the "old" GENESIS`s musical style with Collins in their most Pop Rock music oriented songs. I still think that this song was not the best choice from all the songs from their new album to be released as a single. I still think that "If That `s What You Need", even if it is a ballad / love song, could have been a Hit Single. That song sounds more related to the Collins`s Era in musical style. But maybe Banks and Rutherford wanted to distance the name of the band a bit from that kind of songs.

"Papa He Said" and "Banjo Man", the B-sides of the "Congo" single, sound more Pop Rock oriented in musical style than "Congo", and even less produced and polished, mostly like the members of the band were thinking that both songs were not very good for their tastes, so both songs were relegated to be released as B-sides and nothing more. But both songs are good for my taste, and I think that both (with more added production work ) could have made their new album more musically varied and interesting, offering some less "dark" songs. These two songs and other songs from the same period which were released as B-sides of other singles are now more for the collectors and most die-hard fans of the band as they were ignored for their inclusion in their "Archive" Box Set series. I seems that their period with Wilson as lead singer, not being very happy and successful for the band, was ignored, like Banks and Rutherford were trying to forget about it. Wilson, of course, was not the main "guilty" person in the lack of success of their 1997 album and in their tour in 1998. Maybe Banks and Rutherford should have done more detailed previous market research studies (if even they did something like that, a thing that I think they never did) to learn more about the musical tastes of their old fans and of the new musical audiences of the late nineties. But it seems that they wanted to be more loyal to their own musical tastes and musical experiments than to anything else.