Tuesday, October 02, 2007

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.

19 comments:

  1. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Really.

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  2. Have lots of fun!

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  3. That WAS beautiful. I'm all choked up and crying like a baby after reading that.

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  4. But I have to take issue with your comment about the horns in No Reply at All. As a former trumpet player, I feel you can never have enough brass.

    Especially when it involves the tight funk of the Phenix Horns! Care to have me wax rhapsodic about Earth, Wind and Fire?

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  5. Care for me to wax not-rhapsodic about having to always scroll down to see if there's a new comment cuz Blogspot is so lame? I'm getting carpel tunnel syndrome!

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  6. I hear you Blue.

    Scroll, scroll, scroll.

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  7. Aww, dudes. way to harsh the buzz I had after wrapping up that post.

    Zel, come on. I didn't malign ANY horn players. Ya know, there's a place for it. You don't use marble veneer on a Wal-Mart. You and your trumpet are safe. When it comes down to it, I don't even mind the horns on Paperlate all that much. But on NRAA, they are overbearing and misplaced. Genesis themselves even realize this, I think, because live they opt to just use a more standard keyboard fill. You think they couldn't afford to put horns in the song live? Of course they could. But they regained their sanity.

    Yeah, BG, Blogspot is lame and I wish someone would give me the code for that "below the fold" trick; I am no hand at HTML. Or barring that, maybe I should steal the 'recent commenters' code from your site....

    meanwhile, haven't you guys heard of scrolling mouses? or the Page Down key?

    You guys serving any cheese with that Whine?

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  8. You're right, I need to get my head in the game. Right now I'm listening to Turn It On Again and I've got goosebumps all over. Billy, wherever you are sitting (front row?) I guarantee you will hear me screaming from the cheap seats when they launch into this one.

    I'll give you a jingle when we arrive in the Windy City and figure out where we're stopping for refreshments before the gig.

    Have you got a pre-show plan?

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  9. First Zelmo, I missed your first comment up top earlier. Gotta love that sarcasm! After my own hear, I tell ya.

    Secondly, what's a scrolling mouse? Would Snag eat it?

    And lastly, BP -- you hit the nail on the head in this post -- why I love this group so much. Being a singer, I normally just automatically listen to the vocal line and the words. Of course, "the music" has to be good -- but I've always focused on the vocals first.

    Not with Genesis. Ever. Like you, I can sing ever word to every song -- but, it's the instrumentals -- it's the *music* -- the longer the better. I don't have the words (like you do) to be able to explain the magic of their music to me.

    When I posted that lame "Keep It Dark" video -- even though I *do* love that song -- I loved that I could see Tony's ring and pinky finger on that little keyboard, quickly going to the right to hit that funky chord.

    I'll be driving and anticipate all the chord changes in Abacab -- God I love those dramatic, funky chords Just love 'em.

    Zelmo, I listen at about 8:25 to see if I can hear you screaming. It'll pretty much be right off the bat.

    FYI -- they started late in Cleve, but don't count on that, cuz you don't want to miss a thing!

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  10. I keep checking my pocket to make sure I've got my tix.

    heh. nervous.

    ZEL- we're taking off a little before 4. Allow for sucky traffic, getting lost, finding a restaurant, and not being rushed to eat.

    We've got a list of restuarants in the Loop, and Little Italy is just south across 290 from the UC....

    But we're not like you kids, who can just head down there and barhop, winging it all the way.

    Meetup at one of the concession stands before the show? If we miss before, I mean?

    BTW, are you getting my text messages, or did you change your cell #?

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  11. I don't have the words (like you do) to be able to explain the magic of their music to me.

    I'm blushing. Since I first ran across your site through your eloquent posts on Vonnegut, that's quite a compliment.

    Thanks.

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  12. You're only allowed to be as cool as me once.

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  13. Cell's the same. Try me again.

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  14. I hope the concert was all you hoped. Genesis has a special place for me, although not in the same way it does for you and BG.

    You may well be right that I can't make it through "The Lamb" without eating. That's also true with something as pedestrian as the Spice Girls' "Wannabe."

    This Genesis album, though, came out not long after I'd started to listen to music, real music. One of my friends at the time, J., played it for me. We listened to it over and over, trying to figure out what it meant.

    We asked another friend's older brother to listen to it with us. He did, and played it for his friends, gaining us entry to that hallowed club of older brothers, where we stayed until that older brother died from an overdose and the group shattered.

    After high school J. moved away, and so did I. We stayed in touch, intermittently, and when we talked it was often about Genesis, the Peter Gabriel version. J. eventually joined the seminary and began to question much of popular culture, including music. We had long beer-fueled talks when he was in town, about Bach, and Captain Beefheart, and Genesis of course, and what they meant in the larger world. The band wasn't what defined our friendship, but it was a common theme.

    J. left the seminary shortly before taking his vows. He married, had children, and died in his sleep almost three years ago. I think of him when I hear "The Lamb."

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  15. Oh, AG, way to totally cobag on Snag's thoughtful post.

    Snag, I appreciated your comments. Sounds like quite a story; in fact, part of a life story.

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  16. Snag, I know you never listen to AG anyway, but DON'T LISTEN TO HER EVEN HARDER on this post.

    She's just jealous of 1992.

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  17. That's a great story Snag. Genesis actually performed Carpet Crawlers as an encore.

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  18. Zelmo, you want to be kewl, baby love?

    You want to get out of 1992?

    You want to hang with the kewlest of the kewl? Then should you come over to RoD.

    This place reaks of Jean Nate and stale chili dogs.

    So.
    Um.
    Well.
    Ya.

    1992!

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  19. Not listening to AG is something I'm quite good at, thank you.

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