PHIL COLLINS POP NO MATCH FOR GENESIS ROCK

Progressive rock was always a very acquired taste if you ask me, a bit too hairy to be pop and a bit too tame to be classed as hard rock, with the exception of Canadian headbangers

Rush, who have successfully crafted a sound that incorporates many influences, including heavy metal and alternative, for nearly four decades. 

During the mid to late 90`s I was going through a prog rock/metal stage, after having always been an avid fan of radio friendly AOR music and all the over produced pop which everyone had been bombarded with since the very beginning of the 80`s. 

I was in experimental mode, even more so than I am nowadays I would have to say, stuff like Marillion and 80`s Genesis was taking my fancy at the time, as well as Yes and the more radio friendly Rush fare, like their 1980 slick rocker `Spirit of Radio`.

Believe it or not I was also listening to Metallica and other thrash metal back then as well, I must have been sick and tired of listening to REO Speedwagon as a kid, what more can I say. 

Not knocking Speedwagon, except to say Kevin Cronin should have taken a leaf out of Foreigner`s book a bit more often and rocked out a bit instead of writing one

power ballad after another. 

The 80`s had great music but the truth is the big rock bands of that era, including progressive ones, took the whole ballad thing way too far. 

The record companies made them go soft simply because love ballads sold a lot more records than experimental mumbo jumbo.

Genesis is one band which sold out as it were to the temptation of commercial success and went relatively pop by smoothing out all the rough edges of 70`s prog to turn radio friendly in the 80`s. 

Phil Collins had steered the vocal ship for Genesis ever since Peter Gabriel quit the band in the mid 70`s to pursue a solo career and by the time the album `We Cant Dance` was released in `91, you wouldn`t have known this was the same band from twenty years beforehand when Gabriel was dressed up like a Munster and Mike Rutherford had a beard as big as Santa Claus. 

I never really want on this album, it was too pop for Genesis, which went against the grain of many Genesis fans who even considered the marginally more progressive 1986 masterpiece `Invisible Touch` to be too much of an artistic cop out. 

The only truely `progressive` song on We Cant Dance is a very atmospheric and spine tingling one called `Dreaming While

You Sleep`, which is about a person who commits a hit and run and lives to regret it their whole life through. 

The ultimate story of bitter regret as a result of a split second decision which haunted a person till their dying day. 

A great song, most definitely, but forget about the rest. After We Cant Dance was released, and maybe after Genesis done

a world tour (who knows), Phil Collins quit the band, this time for good, to concentrate on his solo career and a movie career which never got out of reverse gear. 

Six years later, the band returned with a new lead singer, Ray Wilson, and two new "ad hoc drummers" to replace Phil Collins,

at least in the studio. 

Their names are Nir Zidkyahu, who I suspect came from Africa at some point, and Nick D`Virgilio, and apparently he was from somewhere in the world. 😄

The new Genesis released an album called `Calling All Stations`, which to me is far from a masterpiece but far from a dud as well. 

I have never really worked out what I think

of this Collins-less Genesis opus, but I still reckon it is the best thing Genesis recorded since Trick of the Tail in `76, even though half the album is rather forced and unconvincing. 

The opening track, which is the title track, is best for its gritty metallic guitar riff, courtesy of Mike Rutherford, probably a bit worse thanks to Wilson`s excessively workmanlike and narrative like vocal delivery. 

Wilson sounds the most convincing and more in his own element on the keyboard led power ballad `There Must Be Some Other Way` and the more placid ballad `Shipwrecked`. 

`Alien Afternoon` is probably the most progressive tune on CAS, Tony Banks puts in a dazzling performance on keyboards that completely makes up for Wilson`s lack of panache in the vocal stakes. 

`The Dividing Line` is a brilliant song no

matter how weak Ray Wilson`s singing is, the whole song is propelled by the manic africana drum attack of Nir Zidkyahu, and the drum solo which takes you into the home

stretch is the drum solo to end all drum solos. 

`Congo` is the most straight ahead rocker on the album, like a song you could have expected to hear on a Genesis album featuring Phil Collins. 

Ray Wilson put a bit more gutso into singing this tune, just like `There Must Be Some Other Way`. 

All in all, Calling All Stations is a good album, not too bad at all for progressive rock, but you can certainly tell that Genesis missed having Phil Collins around, even if he was by then nothing more than a pop crooner. 

Why didn`t they get Peter Gabriel back to sing on this album? It would have been even more of a ballbuster had he come back after a 23 year absence. 

Calling All Stations however remains one of the more genuine progressive rock albums from Genesis since the heady days of the 1970`s.

YouTube - Genesis - Calling All Stations