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Genesis - Spot the Pigeon CD (album) cover

SPOT THE PIGEON

Genesis

 

Symphonic Prog

2.98 | 168 ratings

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ClemofNazareth
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk Researcher
2 stars I’m not the Genesis guru that most of the other members of the Archives are, but I do have the rather dubious distinction of owning an original vinyl pressing of this EP (or big single, or whatever this disc is supposed to be called). I really only got into Genesis briefly about the time ‘Lamb’ was released, so when I saw this import in a local record shop nearly thirty years ago I picked it up mostly out of mild curiosity.

So with that in mind, my apologies in advance to the Genesis hard-core faithful if I overstate the obvious or tread on any sacred cows, but this is really a pretty forgettable piece of promotional fluff in my opinion.

“Match of the Day” is a silly little ditty about some hooligans (er., ‘fans’) acting out the soccer equivalence of armchair quarterbacks, cussing out the referees and generally pontificating on their expert knowledge of the sport. This is an early glimpse of the Phil Collins-inspired pop phase of the band post-Gabriel. I gather these were songs that were written for ‘Wuthering’ that didn’t make the cut. No surprise there once you listen to them. Collins shows his masterful talent for deep lyrics with lines like “each side’s eleven men with numbers on their backs” and “there’s the reds and there’s the greens… they’re accompanied by three men dressed in black”. It sounds like he plagiarized from a soccer rules book to get his lyrics. The music is just very simple pop, and one of those songs that clearly doesn’t translate very well if it travels west across the Atlantic.

“Pigeons” is another short pop tune that’s a tribute to those smelly flying rodents that congregate along city blocks to drop crap on everyone and everything. I’m guessing the tourist bureau will never come knocking to see if they can use this in a travel commercial. The music itself is pretty much monotone, as in there is a single note that basically takes up all but the few last seconds of the song.

The flip side contains just one song, the longer “Inside and Out”. This one is a bit meatier, a song about a poor guy who’s wrongfully convicted of rape and ends up spending twenty years behind bars. Once he finally gets out, he finds he can’t live down the stigma of what he’s been accused of. Not the kind of subject matter that Genesis has become known for either in their actual prog days, or after this album when they started their male-Britney pop phase, but it is certainly more substantive than pigeon sh!t or corner kicks, and in Hackett’s swan song with the band he shows off some decent guitar licks, so it’s not a total waste.

This isn’t something that would inspire me to spend any time on Amazon or in old record shops trying to find today. However, I suppose for hard-core fans of the band it makes for a necessary finishing piece to the collection if they don’t already have it, so we’ll mark it as a two star effort and put it back in the stacks so the grandkids can rediscover it someday.

peace

ClemofNazareth | 2/5 |

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