The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway...

Frenetic Zetetic wrote: HackettFan wrote: It's the greatest album ever. Six stars out of five. Side three ensures that sixth star. The Waiting Room to me is core of the weird sheet I conceive of as Progressive Rock. The musical continuity went beyond song and elevated to whole album in a way that was never successfully accomplished before. 6/5 stars, ha!  So you're one of the rare few whom prefer Lamb to SEBT?

Yes. I even like Nursery Cryme better than SEBTP. When I was in school I didn't like SEBTP much because it was wimpy. It didn't hold up well against Hard Rock, while the Lamb did. Everyone I knew in school who knew of Old Genesis hailed the Lamb as a classic and were sometimes unaware of what came before it. It was the first Genesis album I ever heard (it belonged to a friend). I'm some number of years younger than most of the elders on here (53 y.o. in one half hour), and the interest for the time with me and my peers was with heavier music. But so there's no mistake though, I have indeed come to appreciate the merits of SEBTP since those youthful days.

Frenetic Zetetic wrote: The Anders wrote: I prefer Lamb to SEBTP too. I just listened to SEBTP yesterday, and to be frank I don't think it is quite the masterpiece it is often hailed as. I really like tracks such as "Firth of Fifth", but tbh. they kind of lose me on side 2. On Lamb I think the compositions are more focused and much more tense, plus sonically I find it much more elaborate. "More Fool Me" has always kept it from a perfect 10/10 score for me. It's still a 9.9/10; the other parts more than make up for it for me. Something about Gabriel's delivery and timing on Lamb really stands out to me.

I think Foxtrot is Genesis' best offering in this era. That album is perfect to me. SEBT is almost perfect. The parts that are good are some of the best, but the album overall from start to finish isn't as perfect as Foxtrot for me. Same with Lamb. The parts that are killer are really killer. It's not as consistent as Foxtrot all the way through.

I can't lie, friends; for some reason the entirety of SEBT just doesn't hold up to me as a "10/10" record compared to Foxtrot.

cstack3 wrote: No tomatoes from this Yank, I agree with basically everything you said!  Foxtrot had an amazing wealth of gems, including the under-appreciated (IMHO) "Can and the Utility Coastliners" and "Time Table."   SEBTP had some fantastic stuff, but not as consistently as Foxtrot, and "Lamb" was very inconsistent overall.   Amazing how we continue to discuss and analyze these works from over 40 years ago!

Edited by Frenetic Zetetic - January 16 2019 at 02:00

moshkito wrote: cstack3 wrote: ... No tomatoes from this Yank, I agree with basically everything you said!  Foxtrot had an amazing wealth of gems, including the under-appreciated (IMHO) "Can and the Utility Coastliners" and "Time Table."   SEBTP had some fantastic stuff, but not as consistently as Foxtrot, and "Lamb" was very inconsistent overall.   Amazing how we continue to discuss and analyze these works from over 40 years ago!     My take is that TLLDOB was not as well thought out as it was intended and that there was already a conflict in the band about its "story" and what the material meant.  SEBTP, is not exactly a concept album and fits their previous work better as a bunch of songs, some of them with neatly interwoven meanings and such, that are perhaps too subtle for many of us, unless you knew, or understood the English thing around that time, and some of the comments made.  The previous GENESIS albums were NOT that direct, although one could think that there were some of this and that on the history and what not … the cover of one of the albums, well, two of them … are not exactly kid stuff comments on some things. And the word pun on Nursery Rhymes, says a lot more about the desire to get more into it, and to the point, and this might be a signal of PG getting better as a writer. For my tastes, I have several feelings about TLLDOB … 1. There is more material that is missing, which would help make the story more complete and not so broken up, and accidently hijacked by a song that really popped in our ears. 2. Presumably some of this material might have clarified a lot of the Side 3 of this album, and there might have been some poetry or songs in the middle there, that were lost in the translation, specially at the time, when GENESIS was definitely aware that the press was trashing long cuts and making fun of a lot of bands, and just about only PF survived that! 3. The band, somewhere along the process decided that they did not want to do a concert/symphony and started cutting up things, which likely got PG upset … it's like a portion of your painting just got erased, as if it meant nothing. The cruelty of … reality, sometimes! 4. PG, more than likely, without thinking, really wanted to take this into the area of theater in full, not just a minute bit with 5 lines in one costume. The more modern idea/concept helped that as less costumes that were so weird and extravagant would not be necessary. It's not, English Theater at the time, was not adventurous and were doing a lot of visual things, and a REAL, ROCK THEATER AND SHOW, had never been really done, and something like this could have made it to the National Theater or Royal Shakespeare Company, if it had been placed in the hands of Sir Peter Hall, or Sir Peter Brook, people that had strong affinities for music and SHOW, that blew up the "visual" in English theater at the time with the same kind of color and explosive content that Ken Russell used to give us. 5. Some of the material in Side 4 was done to satisfy "fans" and try to "reconnect" with fans … the "it's Rock'n'roll" thing does not fit the story and its concept. It was likely, a way to tell everyone, that we still make music that folks like … and guess which song at our station got played the most by the folks that had no taste in music? For me, I would like to see PG go back in time, and finish putting it together as a complete stage show, leaving behind all the stuff related to "rock band" and fulfill the ability to write something much more and better than just a rock song. The sad thing for me, is that in this respect, despite some nice material, he has regressed in his writing … it all became a fun pop song, disguised in some fancy technology because he could afford it. PG for the past 10 years, has been "empty" … I think his tank was depleted during TLLDOB, and while he made do with some nice stuff and he has done very well as a solo artist, I seriously doubt that he is as happy with his work as a writer … I'm sure he is as far as success is concerned, but as far as taken seriously, and "advanced" to even become a film writer, or director … it didn't happen, and that suggests that what he wanted to do got cut off in its entirety and it broke him … so he took the easy way out. Lastly … your "vision", is the only love you will ever have and find. Nothing else matters, when you are a serious artist in your heart … it doesn't mean you can not love a person, but the work itself, is the most important part of it all … and while PG has gone mostly quiet, not silent, the music he is coming up with is really about a sad, unsatisfied and unfulfilled man … in his dreams! And life, without those dreams, has a tendency to seem quite empty! Despite all the riches, I'm sure!

Edited by Frenetic Zetetic - January 16 2019 at 11:34

cstack3 wrote: HackettFan wrote:  I'm some number of years younger than most of the elders on here (53 y.o. in one half hour)...  You make me feel like Gandalf!!  I am 63 years old, which confers advantages... I saw the CTTE tour, LTIA tour (sans Jamie Miur) and so forth!   Prog hath no regard for age....we are all the same!  Happy Birthday by the way!  Cheers, Charles

I listened to this all the way through last night..and it was the first thing I put on this morning. Still as monumentally beautiful and cleverly put-together as the first time I heard it...only now the lyrics make far more “sense” to me in that they invoke clear connotations to biblical tales yet at the same time dumps them into the Gabrielesque sanitarium funhouse so as to take on so many other hidden meanings and open analogies.
Matched together with Genesis at their most playful and labyrinthian it all comes together in, granted, shorther tunes but in a sharp and feverish manner that suits the band immensely imho.
Collins never sounded so ferocious as he did on this album - at least not with Genesis...yet still maintaining that brilliant and melodic sense of tomwork. One of my faves from the olden days.

The Lamb can not be reviewed as simply a songs album like Nursery, Foxtrot or SEBTP were. In an album like The Lamb the whole is more than the sum of its parts. You need to include the concept and how it becomes developed along all the album, you need to consider the several recurring themes and how they are treated in different ways.