Genesis: Foxtrot - 1972
Watcher Of The Skies, after a low-key keyboard intro breaks out into a beautifully bassy, Gabriel-dominated and deceptively heavy rocky number with Deep Purple overtones. I have to say that I really like this one. Mike Rutherford's bass is genuinely inspired on this, as indeed are Collins's drums. For some reason, Collins (like Sting) is an easy target for collective ridicule, yet he was/is a great drummer, something that is often overlooked. His work on this track is stupendously good.
Time Table is a beguiling slower but still dramatic number that I find myself liking more than I thought I would. There are hints of The Beatles in this, and Pink Floyd. I love the subtle bass and Tony Banks's beautiful keyboard bits. Incongruously, the group of ex-public schoolboys decide to reveal a social conscience on the rock-opera strains of Get 'Em Out By Friday, which sees Gabriel adopting several different hammy voices on a tale of a council-led eviction of tenants of houses about to be demolished. It sounds like something Pete Townshend would have come up with. Musically, it is fine, with some fine bass and lead guitar, but the whole concept is unconvincing for me. The lyrics are too hard-hitting and real for a prog band - stick to the tried and trusted enigmatic intransigence eh lads? As I said, though, musically I quite like it. Gabriel is also (second to Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, of course), one of the best exponents of the flute in rock music.
The strangely-titled Can-Utility And The Coastliners is a typically overwrought and mysterious Gabriel number that again is not without its good moments, again in Collins's drumming. Horizons is a nice instrumental influence before we get to the big one.
Supper's Ready is a twenty-three minute prog behemoth that pounds out of my speakers with a huge oomph, but, unfortunately, just doesn’t really do it for me. Yes, it has a titanic sound, is chock full of innovation, Phil Collins’ drums are precociously good, as is the bass and Peter Gabriel’s vocals are typically enigmatic but there is no moment in it when I am moved, excited or inspired. Sure, I can appreciate many parts of it, but I like my music to take me somewhere higher, emotionally, and I just cannot achieve a connection to this, however hard I try. That is not to say that it isn’t any good, because it clearly is a special creation, but I just wonder where are the bits when the listener’s heart just soars. No doubt there are many, many Genesis aficionados who will say “it’s the bit at seventeen minutes” or “it’s the keyboard swirl at nine and a half minutes”, and that’s great for them, but I just can’t get there. Sorry. Personally, I consider it the worst track on the album, much preferring the old "side one". As always, though, it seems, I gave it a few more listens and I found myself getting into it. Incidentally, I find it quite Beatles-esque in places, although maybe that’s just me.
While Genesis tapped into the prog rock thing for extended suites of varied music within one track, I really think that Supper’s Ready would have functioned better as four or five separate songs. You could say the same for the lengthy suites of Jethro Tull and Yes as well, mind. Indeed, Yes took parts of their suites and released them as singles on several occasions. With this track, I find that I have lost interest after eleven minutes only to gain it back after eighteen. Maybe separate tracks would have stopped that happening, or maybe I’m just a non-proggy who doesn’t really get it and should stick to his Motown.
That may well be true because although I have been enjoying appreciating the musical brilliance of prog rock recently, I find that when I return to pop, soul, reggae or conventional rock I breathe a sigh of relief and feel that I am enjoying music once more from the soul as opposed to intellectually appreciating it. There is a big difference in my emotional response.
