Box Set Spotlight

Part Two: 1973-1975

By ’73, Genesis had made their first U.S. tour to support Foxtrot, an experience that both confused and excited the group. Peter Gabriel’s stage presence had become more and more a part of the band’s image as he tested out new masks and outfits to bring a visual element to the challenging music they performed. The rest of the band was getting tighter and more experimental, and they would bring their new confidence to the studio in an attempt to create a distinctively “English” sound.

The product of this effort is Selling England by the Pound, a record with a far more clean sound than their previous releases. Beginning with the first track, “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight,” a new clarity is struck with Gabriel’s a cappella voice and Tony Banks’ simple piano intervals. About two-and-a-half minutes in, Steve Hackett bursts forth with a speedy, clean-cut solo. The organic fuzziness seen on Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot is left behind, but the complexity and rapid-fire time changes remain. It’s certainly a shock to the system if you’ve been listening to the group’s original couple of incarnations.

The album features one of Genesis’ most memorable early tracks, the bouncy quirk-pop of “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe).” Here we have Genesis poking fun of middle-class English life again, but probably on their most approachable song to date. With its syncopated rhythm, simple keyboard wash, and sing-along chorus, the song sounded like their big chance to have a cross-over hit. The group had actually been asked to play it on the British music show “Top of the Pops” and turned down the chance because they didn’t want to be confused with the pop music of the time.

“Firth of Fifth” seems like a forgettable enough song until Banks’ jazzy piano, found through the first half of the bridge, shifts over into a drums-and-synthesizer exercise that leads into a dramatic full-band ending. As an unrepentant fan of Phil Collins — especially his work in the ‘70s — I will admit to a supreme unhappiness with the existence of “More Fool Me,” featuring Collins on vocals, backed by only some jangly guitar and a little harmony from Gabriel. Thankfully, this is one of Genesis’ shortest songs.

But what follows more than makes up for that brief mistake. “The Battle of Epping Forest” is one of those perfectly idiosyncratic Genesis tunes. Starting with an explosive charge of energy, it tells the story of rival gangs fighting over territory. Gabriel’s lyrics, however, connect to bigger historical themes and anachronistically mix time periods and literary characters to paint a broader, mythological version of the British psyche. Social class is on the agenda, as a group of limousines have parked to watch the violence ensue. But what makes “Epping” such a dazzling number is the incredible amount of change that goes on here. To another band, the ideas here would have been three or four very complex songs. But Genesis finds a way to tie them all neatly together through a series of themes.

The last major song on the album, “Cinema Show,” would be performed into the ‘80s by the group. Featuring two very distinct halves, the song begins with a rather laid-back exploration of the Greek seer Tiresius as well as a modern Juliet. The second half is more of an adventure in rocking out with a ‘70s-era synthesizer. I didn’t dig this song so much until I saw a concert video of the group playing it in ’76. First of all, this was some heavily high-tech stuff. Second of all, the band fits together like clockwork on, moving from dreamy soundscapes to mathy jerks in melody and time.

DVD Extras: This disc comes with the standard reissue documentaries as well as an Italian TV performance and a live concert from France.

All of Genesis’ experimentation and transitions would come together in their crowning art-rock masterpiece, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, an immense concept album that has garnered most of the attention and praise given the band’s early incarnation. Usually, I would say such praise for any single album has its faults, but on this I agree: the praise and attention is warranted. Genesis took a broad leap forward here, adding to their already diverse palette the influence of Krautrock and epic cinema. The final product is a work of rather astounding complexity and adventure that pushed the limits of what rock could do both in its sound experiments and its lyrical and thematic courage.

To look at it simply, Lamb is the story of a Puerto Rican teen living in New York who slips into an alternate reality of dream and fantasy that has its allegorical corollaries in ‘70s NY culture. It is a bleak, sometimes harrowing tale of nightmarish events spread throughout the city as the album’s protagonist tries to achieve freedom. Not exactly the type of pop-singles collections artists put out these days, the album is a challenging but rewarding experience that almost never fails to win over a listener. Beginning with the tongue-in-cheek title track, we are instantly unsettled from your everyday thinking about the New York represented in old musicals. Where once people wanted to believe in folks striding down Broadway arm-in-arm, singing a song, here we have a place of sacrifice and sin, where actual human lives reside in a skid row environment.

From here, the group moves to the echo-chamber of “Cuckoo Cocoon,” a song that is at once reminiscent of the band’s earlier short pieces like “Harlequin” and yet still of the post-modern bent of the rest of the album. Things really get started, however, with the dramatic buildup of “In the Cage,” a swirling march that leads one of the coolest synth leads Tony Banks ever put together. The energy here never lets up, even as Gabriel’s lyrics drop in odd references to B.J. Thomas and Del Shannon. One of my favorite tunes is the quirky goosestep “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging.” A critique on mass production and consumerism that’s a little more pointed than Pink Floyd’s “Money,” the song stands out as the first Lamb tune to display the obvious influence of Krautrock’s production methods. It is also the first to remind listeners that Brian Eno sat in on the production of the album, a visit that would spark collaboration between that hero of art-rock and Genesis’ often-maligned drummer.

“Back in N.Y.C” shows the band at the height of their powers, mixing their new sound perfectly with the multiple-change adventures of previous efforts. Part soul music, part early-electro, the song sounds like the same band that recorded “Get ‘Em Out by Friday,” only shot off somewhere into the future. Two perfect pop tunes, “Counting Out Time” and “Carpet Crawlers” stand out at the close of the first disc. Both of these would go on to have a long shelf life in Genesis’ live performances.

Disc two opens with the bass-heavy Beatles homage, “Lilywhite Lilith,” another of the driving, dark tunes that spin off in intriguing new directions. One of the most impressive songs is the impeccable “Anyway,” another Genesis track led by a Banks’ emotive piano riff. This leads to the Gabriel-Collins harmony of “Here Comes the Supernatural Anesthetist,” that introduces some of Hackett’s most controlled, masterful guitar-work.

One of the more lasting parts of this gargantuan feat of a record, though, is the altogether weird “The Colony of Slippermen.” It’s one of those “Supper’s Ready” or “The Battle of Epping Forest” type Genesis tracks that show off a number of diverse song possibilities and mesh them together into one mind-bending final product. It’s got the bounce of “I Know What I Like” and then the run-up of “In the Cage,” the electro quirkiness of a sci-fi soundtrack and the dramatic punch of a ‘60s garage anthem. Finally, the album ends with “It,” featuring the best defense of art-rock’s sensibilities: “If you think it’s pretentious / You’ve been taken for a ride.”

DVD Extras: The DVD extras here feature an astounding performance of “I Know What I Like” and “Supper’s Ready,” as well as the standard interviews and a photo gallery.

The box set also comes with a CD full of rarities and unreleased material. Starting with the first track, “Happy the Man,” these are mostly early tunes from the Trespass era and just before. “Happy the Man” is the most finished track, and sounds as if it could have fit perfectly on their first full-length record, Genesis to Revelation. The rest is made up of a few live tracks from a BBC recording and a demo tape of four unfinished tracks. These latter recordings stand out because as you listen you can actually pick out a few of the riffs that will make in onto later Genesis tunes. But the best part of Extra Tracks is the DVD that accompanies it. Featuring the reissue interviews and a couple of live performances, the centerpiece is a full-length VH1 documentary on the band during this crucial era of their development.

Read Part One: In the Beginning 1970-1972

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