Last semester, my son took a History of Rock class.* I admit that I grilled him on what they were covering when, artists, albums, songs, and I was waiting for certain movements? sub-genres? in particular--like so-called "Prog Rock," which I had never heard until someone on Facebook called Jethro Tull by that label (thanks, Peter). I learned that, well, I have a strong affinity for Prog Rock or Art Rock or whatever you want to call British artists of a certain generation with a penchant for orchestration, storytelling, and long, long songs that could never be released as singles. Between that line of inquiry, a discussion of what a "concept album" is as compared to an album that coheres well, and our ongoing Sirius XM subscription, I found myself drawn to an old favorite: Genesis. In the 80s, when my aunt (whom I called "Ahdee," presumably because someone said she was my "aunty") was in a huge Phil Collins and Genesis phase, she was the first in the family to buy a really nice stereo with a CD player, and she bought all of the Phil Collins/Genesis CDs she could find, and made me tapes.
At the same time, I've been obsessed with physical media. Again, hearkening back to the "album" as a unit for the delivery of music, arranged as carefully, in ideal cases, as a book of poetry, I wanted to get away from listening a track at a time. So I bought a CD player. Because my youngest had wanted a cassette player (Walkman) a few Christmases ago, I bought one with a tape deck so that she could listen to her cassettes and I could listen to mine, which she brought home from a visit to my mom. Alas! My Genesis CDs were not in the collection. I'm not sure what might have happened to them, but no matter... I've started collecting some of my favorites.
We already had the self-titled Genesis album and Invisible Touch, from the 80s. But I liked some of the weird earlier stuff, even back to Peter Gabriel (though I might only get The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway--eventually; it gets stuck in my head in awkward and uncomfortable ways). As it turns out, over the weekend, while researching the track listings of various albums, I found this video, featuring one of the great songs from one of my favorite albums, A Trick of the Tail, which was the first produced after Peter Gabriel's departure:
This was a fun watch, because I rediscovered a song that I still knew quite well. Okay, I knew it backwards and forwards. Each transition. Every lyric. Drums. The whole nine yards. And it was really cool to see someone else appreciating it, though I didn't necessarily buy into his "allegory of the departure of Peter" reading. It's too trite an explanation given the band's history of storytelling and evocative lyrics, as well as the context of the album as a whole. Seeing it also cinched my purchase--though I was pretty sure A Trick of the Tail would be one of the first I bought. It arrived today, and I popped it in, and I wasn't disappointed. I was, in fact, surprised by some new perspectives on the CD that I still know so very well. I can't begin to reconstruct how many times I listened to the cassette over... and over... and over...
It's really an English major's CD. There's not a single track that doesn't tell a story. The final song, "Los Endos," the instrumental, tells the story of the album. "Ripples" is the weak link, but even it has a Helen of Troy reference, so I'll give it a pass. The chorus is nice, too. Sometimes I listen to old music with literary allusions and I think, yes--in the past, everyone with a basic education would have known this. Forgive me if I'm nostalgic. It's nice to have an extended idea of what "literature" is, but it's also good to read literary works that other works (by diverse authors) have built on or worked against. Otherwise, there's an incomplete picture and incomplete understanding. *shrug* But I have no influence there.
"Dance on a Volcano"
The album starts with a bang with "Dance on a Volcano." It's fast-paced because it has to be... and the lyrics start with a bang, too: "Holy Mother of God you've got to go faster than that to get to the top!" The lyrics are sung jauntily as the speaker urges "you" to dodge the lava. There's probably something interesting happening with time signature, but I'm only being descriptive in layperson's terms--such things as "time signature" are beyond me. Every now and then I can get one of my more musically-educated family members (literally all of the others in my household know more about music than I do) to confirm that yes, there is something interesting going on there. The song rather works itself into a frenzy as the speaker urges the figure into this dance, which I'm just going to take as a literal volcano because it's much more interesting to have rock music with fantasy settings than it is to project some kind of allegorical or metaphorical reading. Dancing on a volcano is about frenzied, dangerous risks, and it evokes primal sacrifice (primarily because of fiction and likely because of colonialist writing) and it's a little bit sexy:
Through a crack in Mother Earth
Blazing hot, the molten rock
Spills out over the land
And the lava's the lover who licks your boots away, hey hey hey
If you don't want to boil as well
B-B-Better start the dance
D-D-Do you want to dance with me?
You better start doing it right
It finishes with the music of the dance, continuing well past the lyrics like a good Genesis song.
"Entangled"
After the rousing beginning, we are cooled by an eerie but calm, lilting melody. "Madrigal music is playing" says one of the lines--this captures it rather nicely. The intro could be a music box, but softer. "Entangled" is notable for both its subject matter and the music--because both evoke Pink Floyd pretty strongly. The subject of a patient being sedated, studied, experimented on is thematically adjacent (or closer) to "Comfortably Numb," which, incidentally, was produced three years after this album. Musically, however, it reminds me more of earlier Pink Floyd, at least at some moments in the song. Having said this, the harmonies in the first chorus are oddly reminiscent of the song "Dance with Me" by Orleans. "Dance with Me" was released in July 1975, while A Trick of the Tail was recorded in October to November of the same year. I doubt an influence of one band on the other; I do wonder what their mutual influences might have been. Nothing else in the styles of the two songs is similar--perhaps they just hit similar notes in similar vocal ranges. Listening to the song tonight, the comparison just stood out to me in those very few notes. (It could well be that both are "A"--so, I believe is the lyric "Goodbye Blue Sky.) Another comparison I would make (to avoid having anyone get the wrong idea about this song from my comparison) is between the lilting melody of "Entangled" and the repetitive motif that begins the song "Stories I Tell" (1991) by Toad the Wet Sprocket--one of my favorite by that band. Both introductions follow a similar shape, but inverse. Both set a tone of mystery. This one is perhaps more well-deserved. The use of synthesizer of the end is firmly Pink Floyd.
"Squonk"
The third track, "Squonk," purports to be about an ugly little creature that weeps at its own ugliness, leaving itself vulnerable to tracking by hunters, though it dissolves into tears if cornered or caught. Rather than being a slow tune, "Squonk" is entirely rock and roll--except that its unpredictability (and my husband tells me, percussion) makes me think of jazz. It is not jazz, just reminiscent of jazz. The intro has some pretty hard rock guitar, reminiscent of Jethro Tull. If you sense that this is an album full of different styles that aims to create vague impressions--musically and in terms of feeling and sensing meaning--in the listener, that would be correct. While musically this is not my favorite song, I love some of its moments and some of its lyrics--usually when it steps away from the wailing rock lyrics (totally incongruent with the meaning) to punctuate the tale: "All the while and in perfect time/ his tears are falling on the ground,/but if you don't stand up, you don't stand a chance."
Interesting that here you have a kind of connection to "Dance on a Volcano": if you don't act, you will fail. In "Entangled," the patient is effectively prevented from acting as she (presumably) takes refuge from dreams. In "Mad Man Moon," the speaker tries to fly away but becomes trapped in a desert. There seems to be a real fear of stasis in this album, though "Ripples," as the longest song, is inaction itself with its 8 minutes of nothing-much-happening, and "A Trick of the Tail" is about taking the risk, finding out that you were wrong, and heading back to the homeland that you underappreciated.
Some other gems from "Squonk":
Mirror mirror on the wall
His heart was broken long before he ever came to you
Stop your tears from falling
The trail they leave is very clear for all to see at night
All to see at night
and
Walking home that night
The sack across my back the sound of sobbing on my shoulder
When suddenly it stopped
I opened up the sack, all that I had
A pool of bubbles and tears, just a pool of tears
Just a pool of tears
and
All in all you are a very dying race
Placing trust upon a cruel world
You never had the things you thought you should've had
And you'll not get them now
And all the while in perfect time
Your tears are falling on the ground
Most of my favorite lines are the pauses in the story's dialogue of pursuit and capture. Musically, they are more melodic and predictable, and in general they comment on the story from the narrator's perspective. (This album's lyrics have a lot of voices.) The middle section of the three I quoted is the outlier--the rhythm and the melody (in context) are the same, but the speaker seems to be different--the hunter who has captured the creature, not the sympathetic narrator.
Fun fact--it appears that this creature (and song) may be based on the book Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by William Cox, available online. I will need to investigate this (or get a physical copy). It is another that people wish to read as an allegory of Peter Gabriel's leaving, but early Genesis is much more about storytelling and imagination than I think most people look for in a band. Fantasy can comment on reality, but let's not reach too far. The painfully specific is perhaps not what's most interesting here.
"Mad Man Moon"
"Robbery, Assault and Battery"
"Ripples"
The longest track on the album, "Ripples" is a little hard to pay attention to. I can definitely remember fast-forwarding through the song to get to my favorite, "A Trick of the Tail." Even though the chorus probably has the most "pop song" feel of any song on the album--and I mean 1980s or beyond pop song, though this album was released in 1976--the verses in between are just not very smooth. It seems to be a song about aging--letting go, realizing that experiences will never come back, being aware of who/what you are now. The best moment is a variation in the (incessantly repeated) chorus:
Dive to the bottom and go to the top
to see where they have gone....
It is a slow, lingering song--definitely the weak link on an otherwise quirky and jaunty album, even though it does have a reference to Helen of Troy.
"A Trick of the Tail"
Sgt. Pepper - "A Little Help from My Friends"
C. S. Lewis
"Los Endos"
I looked up the title of this one to confirm: it certainly does not mean "the end." I did not, in fact, think that it did; it looked to me like a bastardization of Spanish rather than any real language, and it would mean "the ends" (plural) rather than "the end" (singular), adding to the impression that it is intentional mock-Spanish.
[Sorry for the cliff-hanger. In a strange twist of fate, I returned a defective boom box with the CD in the CD player. That pretty much took the wind out of my sails.]
*I'm sure there are a lot of opinions out there about the place of popular culture in higher education--and a class like this in particular--but his degree is in performance, his interest is music, it was an online class that kept him off of campus one more day a week and rounded out his schedule. Besides the fact that it was well-taught and informative (for the most part) and that I'm a firm believer in the value of popular culture (because there's good stuff out there--not all of it is crap just because it's popular) and, well, this was probably one of the least stupid classes that he is taking, because his so-called "performance" degree has devolved into "performance as activism." (The program was started by an ethnomusicologist, but apparently shifted when he left and the new hires came in.)
