The River of Constant Change: The Genesis Album-by-Album Thread

This album sounds even more Victorian than Nursery Cryme.

This is a fantastic album from start to finish. I'll add another vote for "Can-Utility and the Coastliners." That middle section is downright orgasmic. And let's face it: for all the religious imagery contained within "Supper's Ready," when all is said and done, isn't "Supper's Ready" just a twenty-three minute document of two people having Solomon-worthy sex?

 

Unlike the episodic and almost anecdotal narratives spun in the previous albums, Foxtrot conveys an almost metaphysical sense of deja vu, cohesive echoes of other worlds at once familiar and unsettling. The melodies and playing are so strong and memorable that the lyrics become almost latent in many passages; narratives are present but yield to the music and overarching atmosphere of something fantastic.

Several of the songs had been written and even performed for audiences in the months prior to the recording of the album in late summer of 1972, notably 'Watcher of the Skies,' 'Get 'em Out By Friday,' and my favorite track hands down: 'Can-Utility and the Coastliners.' It's opening acoustic guitars and evocative lyric are transporting and finally, finally, the bass (is it pedals or guitar?) from Mike just come pounding in, both as foundation and to drive the melody. And with the right pressing, the recording can hardly be faulted.

'Supper's Ready,' is the flawed masterpiece - it has so much going for it and going on at the same time that it loses momentum in the middle part (sorry Peter!), but it delivers in spades on either end. The first part was actually based on an experience of spirit possession that overtook Peter's wife Jill, with Peter and their friend (and former Genesis producer) John Anthony at her side, in a room of her parents at Buckingham Palace in Kensington. He wrote the lyric and sang it as a battle between good and evil borne of that episode: "I was singing my heart out there when I used to sing the 'New Jerusalem' ... I was singing for my life." It still has a hold on him; Gabriel said last year that he considered doing 'Supper's Ready' on his most recent tour!

Of course the other element going into Foxtrot and carrying the band's live gigs forward was Gabriel's executive decision to start wearing masks and costumes on stage, unleashed on the unsuspecting audience (and band) at a gig in Dublin in September 1972. Mike, Tony, and Phil were not convinced it was a good idea until Genesis started getting front page stories in the New Musical Express and other publications. The visual magnetism that emanated from the stage reached back into the songs, over to the album covers, and out to the audiences. "Sometimes the mask would help create moods so strong the audience became very uneasy," Gabriel recalled. Forum member Phil Hepple, who witnessed the historic Watford 'Genesis Convention' gig of June 28, 1972, posted here that "The aura given off by Peter and Genesis was unlike anything that I had experienced before. It was haunting and mystical and I could tell that the audience was actually a little afraid of Peter. "

Where this would all lead is we now know (and will discuss below), but for me it simply highlights the storm that overtook my musical life in 1975 when I held a friend's copy of the Genesis Collection Volume Two boxset in my hands as Foxtrot blasted from his speakers - and never let go!

~Armando Gallo, Genesis - I Know What I Like (1980) & Peter Gabriel (1986)
Spencer Bright, Peter Gabriel - An Authorized Biography (1988)
Genesis - Chapter & Verse, edited by Philip Dodd (2007)~

5/5

 

This is exactly what I think.
NC's compositions are great, but too "raw". On Foxtrot, with the more well-cared production, they even seem to be playing better. Hackett sounds more "mature" in Supper's Ready than in Musical Box.
For me, Foxtrot is their best one.

 

Foxtrot is an odd one for me, it was the first Gabriel album I heard (the only other G album i'd heard was Invisible Touch and a few singles), I got it out from the library on cassette and knew it was going to be something special. I wasn't prepared for what I was about to hear, this was music from another world, it was so odd sounding but I loved it, there was discordancy and melody together, weird keyboard sounds that my 16 year old brain had to come to terms with (i'd spent the previous couple of years listening to hard rock and metal) and basically it really changed my perspective on music.
A few years down the line and I probably listen to Foxtrot least out of all the Gabriel albums (loving Trespass and SEBTP more), I was never keen on 'Get em out by Friday' or 'Timetable' and it was only when I saw 'The Musical Box' in concert that the full impact of 'Watcher..' really hit me. My two favourites are the aformentioned 'Can Utility and the Coastliners' - which is highly underrated in that it's never really mentioned in the same breadth with their other 'epics' but for me this song encapsulates the whole early Genesis sound in one (relatively short!) song. The 12 strings, the time changes, the keyboard solos (love Banks' mammoth hammond stabbing), Gabriels wordplay, I think in many ways if someone said "What were early Genesis like?", you could just play them this song and it would sum it all up!
'Suppers Ready' of course is great, I agree with what Ere says in that them momentum sometimes gets lost, but the rest of it is sublime. It's mind boggling that this band who at this time were in their early 20s and making this extraordinary music were also later on responsible for some of the most pedestrian AOR of the century - We Can't Dance!

 

It used to be that FOXTROT was my favorite Genesis album. I don't know if I just played it too much or if that single-note melody in "Watcher of the Skies" has finally annoyed me, but I don't enjoy listening to this one nearly as much as I used to. Still a good album, "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" is probably my favorite now, its highlight being an instrumental two-chord guitar passage with some great mellotron on top.

 

This is also my favourite Genesis album! I guess it was the first Genesis album I have heard. All tracks are strong, no fillers! Supper's Ready is a masterpiece!
Love it!

 

more on this later but one thing that came up yesterday was that my son (who is 18 months old) loves to pull this CD out because he thinks the cover is so funny.

 

A-frickin'-men!!!! Lotta love for this tune among all these posts.

"Time Table" doesn't get much mention, perhaps because it seems the weakest of the bunch. But I've always liked it for the tack piano in the interludes. Once again returning to the Victorian concept (whoever introduced this in this thread is probably wishing he hadn't by now!), this one seems to be the closest cousin musically to Nursery Cryme, but now the Victorian atmosphere has a much harder edge throughout the rest of Foxtrot.

With Genesis' fondness for wordplay, do you think that the album title might've been inspired by what used to be printed on the labels of old 78's? For instance, you'd have songs that were labeled "fox trot," "waltz," etc. Perhaps this was Genesis' way of playing on that label. Just a thought.

 

Yeah....I'm shocked. I thought I was the only one that thought that tune was the best.

 

Yes, yes, yes!!! That's the most played Genesis song on my iPod. It's a great mini-epic.

 

Much of what I like about Foxtrot's been said before. But I'll add that "Get 'em Out By Friday" has always been one of my favorite tracks on there. This track has some amazing chords by Tony Banks, and the lyrics (I can't remember whose) are fantastic:

"It is my sad duty to inform you of a four-foot restriction on humanoid height". Followed soon after by "It's said now that people will be shorter in height / They can fit twice as many in the same building site." Always gets me.

Very much like my experience. Foxtrot and Abacab were the first two Genesis CD's I ever owned, and I was 17. I was mostly a Phil Collins fan, but that year was the first time I heard the "Old Medley" on the live '93 disc. So I expected a lot more adventurous music, but Foxtrot was still miles from what I imagined. Yet, so interesting it deserved repeated listening. Even years later I'm finding things that I like - I suppose due to a growing musical maturity.

But that's the beauty of most Genesis music - especially the older stuff. Even after a hundred listens you can hear instruments, voices, effects, or blending of those elements that you've never noticed before.

 

I like the whole album, but most often play just Watcher and then skip to Supper's Ready. Maybe I don't have the patience to wait for it, it's so damn good!

 

Interesting that so many of us singled out 'Can-Utility and the Coastliners' as a favorite. For years this song, along with 'Firth of Fifth,' has not worn thin. Never skip, often skip to it. Man the unremastered Atlantic WEA CD sounds great turned up loud!*

I'm getting into the original version of 'Watcher' during the immersion accompanying this thread. By the time the keyboard into is winding up and Phil is jamming, this track rocks. I really tend to prefer and listen to the single mix which omits the whole intro and has a different intro. Also love the live 15 April 1975 version from Wembley Pool, on the KBFH broadcasts, which was played besides the complete Lamb. Phil is on fire on that performance and the whole groove is phenomenal. Tony told Armando Gallo, in reference to 'Live,' that he just didn't like listening to live tracks, to him they were the same as the album versions. Listen to any period performance of 'Watcher' and prove him wrong!

*I just won an auction for the 1991 collector's edition boxset with the V/C DADC Austria, because 'Good Sound Matters'

 

Oh...and how can I forget "Horizons"! Now there's a piece of music that's grown on me tremendously. An acoustic style that Steve Hackett perfected by the time he wrote the intro to Blood On The Rooftops on W&W, IMO.

The Genesis "Songbook" DVD has a bonus feature of Steve playing the entire song live. Wonderful to watch.

 

question about the bass on 'Can Utility'...

When the bass erupts at 1:08, just after But the cause was lost/now cold winds blow, is that bass pedal or bass guitar?

And later on they just admitted they couldn't dance

 

"Can't you feel our souls ignite..."

Yes, we certainly could. What more can be said about this album? One of the epic masterpieces of the Golden Age of prog.

 

/\ edits

 

This is where the Classic Genesis sound really comes into focus. I get the sense that Phil Collins and Steve Hackett were still trying to integrate their playing styles into the Genesis framework. By Foxtrot, the band is running on all cylinders.

 

I think I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "Supper's Ready" is Genesis' greatest song. What else can match it's epic proportions? Maybe the Lamb album taken as a whole but that doesn't count. The opening and the closing are the strongest of course (Lovers' Leap and The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man, then ahead to Apocalypse In 9/8 and As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs) but the middle is no slouch either, in fact it is very good and I think captures a lot of Genesis's quirky nature, like the Willow Farm section. I think it is so odd and bizarre, I love it, especially the "feel your body melt" section.

Of course Watcher and Get'em Out by Friday are the standouts on Side 1 for me

 

The Duke Suite is every bit "Supper's Ready"'s equal in my book, maybe better.

 

So, what the frilly heck IS Gruggy Woof anyway?

 

From an undated Virgin chat, around the time the Archives 1 set was released (1998), transcribed on Steve Hackett's site:

 

I'm a bit late to this thread as I've just found it. I'm a big Genesis fan for years now. But it's been years since I played the first two albums- like others mentioned here, they didn't do much for me. Gotta have them, though! When I spin Trespass, I play it all the way through. But on Nursery Crymes, SEbtP, and Foxtrot, I tend to skip over some tunes. I love Watcher of the Skies, especially the intro, and I love Hack's live version of it on his Tokyo Tapes DVD. I love Time Fable. It's got that magical Genesis melodic feel. I can do without Get 'em out by Friday. Love Can-Utility and the Coastliners. Horizon is another great Hack tune. Super's Ready...that's a real accomplishment, but strangely, I have to be in the mood for that one. Course, I'm always in the mood for 9/8.

 

Ha! Here I just said I need to be in the mood for Super's Ready, yet now, I should have gone to sleep at least an hour ago, but found myself listening instead to...guess what! Maybe it don't take much after all!

 

I agree that "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" is a great, underrated song. I admit I was wary of what it might be like before I heard it, as the title does resemble the name of an avant-garde doowop act or something.