Now Available: Five – count ‘em – Five Genesis Reissues on CD
The Genesis reissue campaign soldiers on, this time with the band’s studio output during the half-decade between 1976 and 1981, all of which you can now hear individually with the remastering that was done for the Genesis catalog back in 2007. The 1976-1981 era was a transitional period for Genesis on a couple of different occasions, but the music that emerged within those years helped take a prog-heavy gang of musicians and turn them into proper pop/rock heroes. Now, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is all down to individual opinion, but we know for a fact that all of these albums have their fans, which means that we also know that you’re going to love how they sound.
Trick of the Tail: Otherwise known as The One After Peter Gabriel Left, but even though this was definitely a key album in the band’s catalog, we’re not going to spend a lot of time chatting about it today because we just devoted an entire piece to its anniversary.
Wind & Wuthering: Genesis was working its way through some growing pains with this one. After Gabriel’s departure, things began to shift within the band dynamic, and the flux was particularly felt by Steve Hackett, who – not unreasonably – felt that his songwriting efforts were being given short shrift compared to those of Tony Banks. The material is still solid, particularly the opener, “Eleventh Earl of Mar,” and the Hackett / Collins collaboration “Blood on the Rooftops,” but the end was nigh for Genesis as a four-piece.
And Then There Were Three: Like the title suggests, this one’s otherwise known as The One After Steve Hackett Left, but it’s also where the tide began to turn commercially for the band, and in a very good way, indeed. The album features “Follow You Follow Me,” which provided Genesis with their first top-10 single in the UK (#7) and their first top-40 single in the US (#23), while also spotlighting the members’ individual songwriting skills, with Tony Banks contributing “Undertow” and “Many Too Many” and Mike Rutherford offering up “Snowbound” and “Deep in the Motherlode.”Okay, so Phil Collins’ contributions were all co-writes rather than individual compositions, but give the guy a break, he was singing and playing drums, too.
Duke: It’s like prog never happened! Okay, not really, but this album was definitely the line in the sand for those who preferred their Genesis to have a bit more of an experimental bent to their music. “Turn It On Again” went top-10 in the UK (#8), “Misunderstanding” went top-20 in the US (#14) and actually topped the charts in Canada, and once Duke topped the charts in the UK, there was little question that this was the direction in which Genesis would be heading for the long haul.
Abacab: The most curious thing about this album is that the band wrote an entire album’s worth of material, discarded it because the material made them feel like they’d become a caricature of themselves, and started anew. We may never know what might’ve been, but at least we know what Abacab turned out to be, and between the trifecta of the title cut, “No Reply at All,” and “Man on the Corner,” it certainly seems like they made the right decision.
