Visions of Angels

Bear with us a while longer.

Something we WON'T be seeing tonight.....

While BG and Z wax ecstatic over the glory that is Eric! Claptoon, I have been thinking about this Genesis obsession.

Odd stuff, especially the early days with the Sainted Gabriel. The Lamb (I'll bet snag can't listen to it all the way through cuz he gets hungry) is a warped and impressionistic descent into a shallow young man's subconscious, using imagery overt, blatant and subtle. But as a story, it's jarring and near-incoherent. Which is, I suppose, part of it's appeal; there are dozens of ways to relate to it.

And the early songs are replete with mythical characters and magical realms, as with so many prog bands. At least they never stooped to writing about their dogs as mythical warriors, I guess. But still; kind of hard to relate to outside of the use of illegal substances.

Supper's Ready, the precursor to Lamb, is a paean to A Savior (not explicitly named as JC, but near as dammit) but the imagery leading up to that is just as scattershot and open to interpretation. Ikhnaton? Itasacon? Narcissus and Willow Farm? in 9/8 time? No wonder they were slagged by punks, eh?

But.... but. There's something beyond, something deeper, that kept the band relevant to me while otherwise I was reveling in the urgency and energy of punk music. Maybe it's the self-taught musicianship that refused to follow any real rules, except what sounded right. Maybe it was the incessant communal character of songwriting, where very rarely was a single individual responsible for an entire piece, but everyone contributes pieces and bits. Maybe it's just that they had more talent than most of the other bands, and could pull this crap off.

In the song Firth of Fifth, there's this guitar solo. It's not flashy, like a Clapton bit. It falls in toward the end, after the song has established it's themes and counterthemes, and that's where it starts, kind of seamlessly and organically growing from what's come before. By midway through, though, it's taken on a life of it's own and by the time it ends, it's driven the song through the stratosphere and the rest of the time the song works to just bring the listener back to ground. I have seen and heard Steve Hackett, The Musical Box, Mike Rutherford and Daryl Stuermer all put their own stamp on this solo without altering its basic character, but each one has an individual interpretation. That's a bit of magic that you don't hear very often.

All through the worst pop excesses (really, Phil, those horns on No Reply At All!), they still manage to bring that magic, and keep it fresh. The muted beginnings of latter days like "Dreaming While You Sleep" and "Driving The Last Spike", the supernatural driving rhythms of "Home By The Sea" . The spare open spaces of "abacab". The warm, medieval feel of "Dance On A Volcano" and "Squonk".

And the instrumental work. Always, always a sublime part of the concerts, the place where they re-work old material and meld it with new. The "Old Medley" incorporates parts of The Lamb, The Musical Box, Cinema Show, Watcher of The Skies, One For The Vine... disassociated, for the most part, from the semi mystical lyrics of the kids they were when they wrote them, the music exudes even more power. And always, always ending with "Afterglow" where they finally dispensed with the goofy lyricism and sing a perfectly sentimental, elegiac love song, framed in epic grandeur.

I have heard that newer fans, who are attracted by the popular hits of the latter days, are often put off by the extensive instrumental work. I would wager, though, that if they find themselves delving deeper into the band's catalog, they find many avenues, nooks, and crannies that appeal in a far deeper way than the ephemeral treacle of "Hold On My Heart" (the only other song Genesis released with Heart in its title was "Hairless Heart" from The Lamb, which, obviously, was NOT a simple love song).

Love songs are hard; I realize that. Pop songs are hard. Or rather, a single pop song may be easy, hence all the one hit wonders, but returning to the well without becoming trite or repetitive is hard.

But that's never been what I get out of Genesis' work. Even the lyrics rarely touch me in a way that is memorable, although I will probably sing every word of every song tonight. But the music.... like other immortal music and art, it reminds me that for all of humankind's faults, all our wars, idiocies, superstitions, hatred, and ugliness, people can still create art that moves the listener, that echoes within the small, still spaces of the heart, that set up sympathetic vibrations in your neurons....

.... Visions of Angels, indeed.

See you tomorrow.