MAN ON THE CORNER

I'm inspired by Matti's review to add my 2¢ here! "Man on the Corner" was one of the first Genesis songs I encountered, probably on the radio, or possibly from one of my friends who had MTV at home. I soon joined the Columbia House Record Club, and "Man on the Corner" undoubtedly inspired my choice of Abacab, which led to me selecting Three Sides Live. Some years later this would lead me to Seconds Out.

Anyway, like Matti, I was 11 or 12 years old when "Man on the Corner" was a minor hit (#40) here in the US. This was a time when you could hear a fair amount of prog crossover on Top-40 radio (Queen, Asia, ELO, Styx), and when "new-wave" music was rock-based (Police, Blondie, Go-Gos). So early-1980s Genesis and Phil Collins music fit right in.

Even though "Man on the Corner" wasn't guitar-based, in the US it was a bigger hit on album-rock radio (#14) than it was with pop listeners. "Misunderstanding," and especially "Abacab," had paved the way for Genesis to receive AOR airplay, and as the synthesizer- heavy "Abacab" took a step away from "Misunderstanding," the use of a drum machine on "Man on the Corner" moved another degree

The single reaches the bridge "for you and me - - are we just like all the rest?" about fifteen seconds sooner than the album version, and the fade begins about thirty seconds earlier. The mix also seems slightly different; on the single mix, the bass seems more prominent, and in general there's a little more separation among the instruments. In all, a nice piece of new-wave rock.

As a rule, I don't think the quality of a b-side should hurt the rating of a single - - although it certainly should help if the flip side is something special. That's not the case here, as "Submarine" is an underdeveloped idea, atmospheric in places, which was, I'm sure, appreciated by fans. The single version of "Submarine" fades out about thirty seconds sooner than the version that appears on Archive #2, but the mixes sounds pretty similar.