Where Were You When You First Heard These Albums?

Ooh goody, I have specific memories for all three of these!

Selling England By The Pound:

This may not have been absolutely my first listen, but I think it was more than likely. It was summer, I think between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college. I'd recently gotten into Genesis in earnest, and Supper's Ready had really sold me on what I was picking up off of Nursery Cryme and Wind And Wuthering. I'd checked out Selling England By The Pound from the library, and I guess I kind of had two first listens. I think I had one before the school year ended sitting in my room where the brooding choir synths on the opener paired very well with a storm brewing outside my desk window in my bedroom. But I have another vivid memory from that summer of sitting around a hotel room with my family and my best friend (who my family had agreed to bring along for this couple day trip to a big theme park hours away) and listening to this album along with Tarkus and The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin. All very weird and synth heavy, which was new to me. I can remember sitting there just being absorbed by all the fantastic, warm and cool keyboard work with my best friend while we talked about what coasters to ride the next day. Excellent time.

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway:

I was a full fledged Genesis fan by the time I got this, and it was really the last Genesis album with either Phil or Peter singing I got to. I was adamant about buying this on vinyl for my first listen, and at long last the summer before my junior year of college (which I spent abroad in Italy) I found it for about 16 bucks at my local record store. I came home with my slew of records all excited about finding The Lamb, showed off to my parents, sat down at the computer in the living room (hooked up to my record player for Audacity and sitting on top of the stereo where I plugged in my headphones), put the first record on the turntable, set up my recording software, dropped the needle, and started reading along with the lyrics. I sat that way reading and listening and recording for the full duration of The Lamb, only stopping to flip the records. Despite all my excitement and hype I'd built for it over time, it managed to live up to my expectations, and I was thrilled by the fantastic story.

A Trick Of The Tail:

I got to this one a bit later as well, though not as late as The Lamb. It was around Easter my sophomore year of college. I'd spent an iTunes gift card on a few new albums, this among them. I believe I sat down for my first listen while having lunch in the dining hall next to my dorm, looking out the window at Spring finally just starting to come around. It was a great listen and I listened more over the following days and weeks as I continued to find this was really one of Genesis' best albums.

Here's how I rate these three:

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

A Trick Of The Tail

Selling England By The Pound

Whereas Pink Floyd was more of a high school band for me, and Yes has split themselves pretty evenly between high school and college, getting into Genesis has been more of a collegiate adventure. Though I'm about finished collecting their albums now (I still don't have And Then There Were Three or that last one, nor have I ever heard the last one), Genesis were really the band that got me to dive seriously into prog. Because of Genesis, I revisited Yes and Floyd a bit more often, gave ELP, Tull, and KC a real chance, and found this website where I've discovered quite a treasure trove of amazing music! :)

More followed (Tarkus, Thick As A Brick, etc.) and my life was never the same.

The 70s were awesome!!!

Hi,

Even though many of us can tell you some stuff that is not exactly worthy of a lot of ... anything! ... in the end, your reaction and appreciation is no different than mine ... well, I wore jeans a lot then, and some Space Pirate Radio T-shirts ... but nothing else is different.

My experience, is not to make ... yours ... seem unimportant ... mine is an example of how the TIME AND PLACE was so important to me, THEN, and it still has a lot of values associated with me that I stand up for here on this board. Your time is here and now ... just take today's music seriously and 30 or 40 years down the line, you will feel pretty much the same as I do, and tell some youngsters, how to appreciate their art of today, not just the stuff of yesterday ... remember that history of the arts is hundreds and hundreds of years old, and seeing things a bit more artistically, engages your inner mind and self a bit more ... it also makes a lot of the new music you hear sound a bit better or worse ... the only difference for me is that the almighty riff goes down the toilet really quick!