Genesis - 3x3 (1982)

The rise of punk in Britain in the late seventies meant that British progressive bands known for their innovative but pretentious rock music had to adapt to the changed musical landscape or fall by the wayside.  Genesis were more successful in adapting than most such bands, slowly evolving with a more streamlined, pop-oriented sound while still keeping one toe in art rock, as their early-eighties albums Duke and Abacab proved.  But Genesis's attempt at a prog-pop compromise left their sound, well, compromised; while the band - down to a trio since the departure of lead singer Peter Gabriel and, later, guitarist Steve Hackett - came up with interesting singles, their albums were not as consistent.  So a Genesis extended player - a record with more material than a single but not a full-length album - made sense.

3x3 is a British-release EP of three songs that Genesis - drummer/vocalist Phil Collins, guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford, and keyboardist Tony Banks - recorded during the Abacab sessions but left off that album.  It was not released in the United States, since, except for a brief period in the mid-eighties, EPs were never popular there.  (Its contents were included on the U.S. edition of the 1982 double concert/studio album Three Sides Live, the studio-track side being side four.)   The songs on this record provide an excellent sampler of Genesis's music at the time, with elliptical keyboard riffs, tight guitar passages, and some punchy rhythms. As a singer, Collins shows a surprisingly diverse range, going from tough to wistful with ease.  "Paperlate," the first cut, is a forceful commentary on working one's way up to the top, with a brilliant contribution from Earth, Wind & Fire's horn section - much better than their playing on the Abacab track "No Reply At All."  The group gets wistful with the autumnal ballad "You Might Recall," a tender but strong paean to a lost love.

Collins has disavowed the third tune, "Me and Virgil," an earnest effort at fusing Americana with a modern sound; it tells the tale of two brothers in the country who take care of their mother until she dies and then go off to find themselves in the city.  The song is indeed too long and loses its way musically, but the premise is still interesting, and the vignette of the dying mother is touching.  "Me and Virgil" sums up 3x3 as much as the previous two tracks; it shows Genesis as a band smaller and more musically diminished than the grand enterprise Peter Gabriel fronted, but determined to carry on and find new means of expression.  Criticized for their pomposity in the seventies and their mainstream pop sound in the eighties, Genesis has nonetheless come up with enough good work to earn a place in rock and roll history, and the songs on 3x3, while varied in quality, are more than just a bunch of tunes that deserve to go by like leaves upon the water.

(I've never reviewed an extended player before!  This is the last record review of mine for awhile, I need another break.)  

From Genesis To Revelation

Phil Collins just announced that he has retired from music. This came as a big shock to pop fans, many of whom thought he retired about fifteen years ago.

Right. Anyway, the 60-year-old Collins, who suffers from hearing problems and has nerve damage in his hands, says he doesn't think he will be missed. He simply thinks he can no longer attract attention working among more current pop acts.

Phil Collins is either a pop genius or an overrated hack, depending on who's making the argument. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between. As the drummer for Genesis, he came up with some innovative playing. He also developed a breakthrough cymbal-free drum sound when, in 1980, he helped out his old bandmate Peter Gabriel (Genesis's original lead singer) on Gabriel's third solo album. As a frontman - he took over lead vocals in Genesis after Gabriel left the group in 1975 - he was less reliable, and Genesis's move from progressive rock to straight pop in the early eighties caused Collins to become exponentially more tedious thereafter.

Collins came up with the occasionally interesting single, both as a member of Genesis and as a solo artist - Genesis's "No Reply At All" and Collins's solo tune "In the Air Tonight," both from 1981, are about the best - but he grew blander with time. The sly charm of "One More Night" and the rambunctiousness of "Sussudio," both singles from his 1985 solo album No Jacket Required, dissipated with repeated listenings, and his 1982 cover of the Supremes's "You Can't Hurry Love" was noteworthy for re-creating the classic Motown sound without putting in any of the soul or the emotion that made the original record so wonderful.

He got a little desperate later in his career to cast himself as a serious songwriter. Collins, as a human being, is an individual who's deservedly revered for his commitment to causes such as ending homelessness. (He's played so many benefit gigs, he's practically a British Harry Chapin.) Collins, as a social commentary singer, leaves a good deal to be desired. "Another Day In Paradise," from 1989, tries to make people aware of the plight of the homeless in a gentle way and pales in comparison to Neil Young's biting "Rockin' In the Free World," released at the same time, which - as one critic noted - put the listener in the shoes of a homeless man in the middle of a harsh world. (Collins enlisted Young's friend David Crosby to sing backing vocals on "Another Day In Paradise" in an effort to legitimize himself as a politically aware artist, but if the result was a friendship between Crosby and Collins that led to their 1993 duet "Hero" - one of Crosby's finest efforts outside the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - I won't complain about that.)

Collins left Genesis in 1996 to concentrate fully on his solo career. Ironically, that's when the hits stopped coming for him. He's maintained a very low profile since then - the 2007 Genesis reunion tour with guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks (but, alas, without Gabriel or guitarist Steve Hackett, who left the band in 1978) was an exception - before finally deciding to quit.

Had he done so in the mid-nineties - when it was obviously time for him to quit - Collins might have bowed out more gracefully then than now.

Thank You For the Music

I'm back, after having endured two power failures and two cable outages, and hopefully, as the storm that turned the American Northeast into a horror show full of downed trees and power lines winds down, that's it for awhile.

In the meantime, new business. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions took place at the Waldorf Astoria in New York tonight, and even though I maintain the Hall lost its credibility by inducting Madonna as soon as she was eligible while continuing to ignore worthier acts for political reasons, I have to say that the 2010 class is really . . . not awful! Here's a rundown, with commentary of the performers inducted this year:

Abba. They're the greatest pop-rock band to come out of Sweden, and some might regard that as the equivalent of being the funniest comedian in Germany. Nonetheless, the quartet came up with some well-produced, catchy tunes that have an international appeal to them: a Swedish group with song titles in various languages ("Voulez-Vous," "Mamma Mia") and references to global history ("Waterloo"), all sung in English. They were as globally successful as the Beatles, and unlike the Liverpool lads, they've never reunited even once.

Genesis. Peter Gabriel's vast artistic vision and Phil Collins's drumming justify this induction, as do the occasionally interesting hit singles during Collins's tenure as frontman (like "No Reply At All" and "Man On the Corner," both from the 1981 album Abacab). Their intricate arrangements and complex solos aren't rock and roll in the traditional sense, but as rock writers Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell wrote once, Genesis were one of the better progressive rock bands - that is, they were boring only ninety percent of the time. Now the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame needs to induct Family, the best progressive rock band (that is, they were never boring).

The Hollies. Given that Graham Nash's old band had been eligible for induction into the Hall for twenty years but had to wait until Madonna was inducted after being eligible for induction for twenty seconds, their belated induction seems to be self-parody on the Hall's part. However, never was a belated induction more deserved - with the possible exception of Bob Seger's. Wonderful, refreshing singles like "Bus Stop" and "Carrie Anne" and harmonic opuses like "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" make this induction a lead-pipe cinch.

Jimmy Cliff. One of the more fun reggae artists, Cliff's music shows the versatility of the form, and he is one of those performers favored by folks who think they hate reggae. He gets my vote.

The Stooges. Iggy Pop's old group practically invented punk rock, and they were from the gritty streets of Detroit. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was going to induct them anyway for those reasons alone, and if you don't like it, well, too bad.

Non-performers inducted this year include record impresario David Geffen, the songwriting teams of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, and songwriter Otis Blackwell, who penned many of Elvis's early hits. The songwriters being inducted are worthy enough, but David Geffen will raise eyebrows. Yes, he founded Asylum Records and gave us Jackson Browne, but as a top honcho in the music business, he always seemed to downplay the music in favor of the business. Meanwhile, Brian Epstein - who believed that the Beatles would make it when no one else in England did - remains unhonored by the Hall, a rather shameful development.

Of course, Epstein was never as sharky as Geffen or Geffen's old partner Eliot Roberts. Epstein's gentlemanliness and naïveté was unsuited for the cutthroat world of rock and roll management, and it unfortunately caught up with him. Why is Geffen being honored first? Because history is written by the winners, and he won a lot of power stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song.

The winner takes it all.