Trick of the tail at the time |
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M27Barney
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 09 2006 Location: Swinton M27 Status: Offline Points: 3136 |
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The title track is very poor. And I feel that some of the tracks could be improved with extension and reprise of the musical motifs. Not better than any of the four albums that precedes it...
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richardh
Prog Reviewer Joined: February 18 2004 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 26230 |
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Agree about Robbery, Assault and Battery although it is the only low point for me on Trick (although I mentioned I love the drumming before so that is something at least) . Nothing on Epping Forest much appeals to me. It starts promisingly enough but as soon as the 'posh vicar' pipes up I just switch off. It does make me think that you can hide a multitude of sins in prog by just extending songs by 6 minutes! They did estue the long form approach on Lamb and that works brilliantly apart from the weird psyche stuff on Waiting Room. Trick was powerful and to the point and knew its boundaries. W&W ( weaker than Trick imo) was their last attempt at Symph prog but they were obviously not alone in moving away from long tracks towards the back end of the eighties. However they could make it work for a while then the 80's fried everyone's brain for a while.
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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator Prog Folk Joined: April 29 2004 Location: Heart of Europe Status: Offline Points: 19667 |
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The title track is amazing and quite witty (a bit like Counting Out Time). Sure it isn't an epic, but I could've struck as a single as a minor hit (the lyrics are still too obtuse for mass consumption), if marketed properly. Furthermore, TOTT had one of the best artwork ever, with that engraved cardboard gatefold sleeve and the amazing inner sleeve to slide the disc in.
RA&B is indeed a return to opera rock (multiple characters signing or speaking), something they'd done ever since Harold The Barrel, then Get Them Out By Friday, Epping Forest (and I Know What...) and a couple tracks on The Lamb.... And They would do the same on W&W with All In A Mouse's Night .... and to a lesser extent in One For The Vine. In terms of humour, RA&B and Epping are definitely the funniest ones around. Even Zappa never managed to be as that witty , and Ian Anderson only succeeded successfully in Aqualung and TAAB (I gave up trying to understand APP) Now of course, I've always thought that the "vicar on the prowl for Staffordshire plates" passage was somewhat interfering with the rest of the tune, but it is at least as equally funny as the gang warfare description, and it's quite a feat to include it gracefully and successfully inside the epic Edited by Sean Trane - September 24 2019 at 02:22 |
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Braka1
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 22 2019 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 1171 |
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Re the original question: Gabriel left Genesis when I was about 12 and just
as I was getting into music. I was bigtime into Floyd and Hawkwind by
1975-76 in the calm before the punk storm, and I may have been aware
that a band named Genesis existed, but it would be a year or two before I
started paying attention to them. This is how it happened from my POV. It's a bit back-to-front. At
the start of 1977 I saw the clip for Peter Gabriel's 'Modern Love' and
was utterly gobsmacked. I still am. It was an incredible song,
especially as a proggish song coming out right at the birth of punk. So I
immediately got the first Gabriel album (for some reason I remember
getting the second album first, so maybe it wasn't immediate). Then at
the other end of the same year, Genesis had a sizeable hit in Australia
with 'Follow you Follow Me'. This seemed a pleasant tune, but compared
with 'Modern Love' seemed lightweight and hardly an auspicious
introduction to the band in the year of The Sex Pistols and The
Stranglers (it probably didn't help that there was an Abba single with a
similar title). I had just gotten into
music as a prog fan, only to be enthused by new wave, which left me
with a permanent guilty feeling about prog (if you weren't there at the
time you have no idea how hostile the music press was to it, and how
desperately uncool it was to like anyone who's first album was from
before 1976, unless it was the Velvet Underground) Genesis needed to be more not less edgy to capture my alegience. But
I did backtrack into the Genesis discography because of Gabriel. Loved
nearly all the Gabriel albums to one extent or another. When I got to
'Trick of the tail', which was a couple of years old by then, it just
seemed to lack any real edge to me, and it still does. I had friends who
were nuts about it, but to me Genesis after Gabriel were never more
than mildly interesting at best. I preferred 'Wind and Wuthering'
(perhaps becasue nobody was telling me how great it was), but not by a
lot. I had an uptick of interest when 'Duke' came out, but from memory
by this time Gabriel had his amazing third album, and again, Genesis
just sounded like a proggish pop band whereas Gabriel seemed both
genuinely progressive and had a new-wavish edginess as well, in a
similar way to Hammill (who I was discovering by now). |
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Braka1
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 22 2019 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 1171 |
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I wrote "if you weren't there at the
time you have no idea how hostile the music press was to (prog)" I should perhaps have been a bit more specific and said 'English music press', or even just got down to naming names: Melody Maker, and especially NME. These papers had a virtual stranglehold on what it was acceptable for a musically literate person to like in the late 70's in the UK and by extension Australasia, and they were utter snobs, which is ironic since it was one of their main objections to prog. Fripp still seems to have a major bee in his bonnet over this, if some of the later KC sleeve notes are any indication.
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M27Barney
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 09 2006 Location: Swinton M27 Status: Offline Points: 3136 |
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The music industry have always been able to influence the gullible fashion following sheeples...The great rock and roll swindle of 1976 is just the instance which resonates with us as prog fans...
Edited by M27Barney - September 24 2019 at 11:08 |
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