GENESIS

When the magnificent Duke came out I forgave these guys for the tepid "And then there were three..." album. Unfortunately, the two albums following this mess did not vindicate them. Somewhere in the MTV revolution that was boiling over in the early 1980s a serpent invaded Genesis' Garden of Eden and its name was commercialism. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that but there's a question of integrity involved in the concept and Phil, Mike and Tony lost theirs on this one and never regained it in my ears. On first hearing, "Mama" is promising in its approach but, tragically, that mediocre offering is as good as it gets for the rest of the way through. I've read where some think "Home by the Sea" is decent prog but we're talking about Genesis here and there's no way I can consider it anything more than a song that goes absolutely nowhere for over 11 minutes. "That's All" "Illegal Alien" "Taking it all too hard" and "Just a job to do" got lots of airplay but it might as well have been Starship as far as I'm concerned. Toward the end of the milktoast "Silver Rainbow" you hear Phil singing something about not knowing if he's "coming or going" and I think that might have been a better title for this poor collection of songs. And even the cover art with its obvious lack of imagination stinks to high heaven! I dearly love Genesis but this one is a total disgrace.