SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND

The status of this album was my biggest jaw-dropper on first discovering Prog Archives. As a long-haired teenage Genesis fan, I had purchased it as a new vinyl LP release, back in the 'classic era'. I listened to it a fair bit at the time, but mentally filed it away as pretty medium. Genesis had produced some of my favourite ever tracks, but equally much of their material never ignited for me. SEBTP, I recognised from the start, contained some magnificent moments on a couple of the tracks - and the fact that I don't need to specify them testifies to the problem. As more than a few other reviewers have remarked, SEBTP has a proportion of lame and some downright irritating tracks. One's overall rating of this album depends on how well one tolerates the latter. The musicianship is indisputably stellar, I grant you, but the composition is a matter of taste.

There was also, for me, a concept problem with this album in the era when it was released. At the time, I was a student at one of England's elite universities, where it was possible (and I'm being truthful) to encounter people who believed the working class should take an intelligence test before they were permitted to vote. Genesis themselves were a product of England's elite public school system, and their T.S. Eliot-inspired song concepts are laden with a disdainful and sneering vision of the common masses. This probably doesn't come across to either non-British or younger fans. It's social history, but my own perspective on this album's concept has always been one of deep suspicion.

Verdict: Brilliant in places but questionable throughout.