1983 was a weird year. While Culture Club and Duran Duran were taking over the world with their videos, Genesis managed to sneak in under the radar and launch a sneak attack that took everyone by surprise. Okay, maybe not everyone, but it took me by surprise. What I knew about the band would have fit on the head of a pin. A large pin, mind you, but other than a couple of songs I'd heard from Duke or Abacab, I had never really listened to Genesis. I knew this was the band Phil Collins was in when he wasn't making solo records. You know, the "In the Air Tonight" guy who had the killer drum sound that everyone tried to recreate on the dashboard when the song came on if you were in the car.
With respect to this album, the song that first got my attention was "That's All." It was catchy but didn't really make me want to rush out and buy the record, but I looked forward to hearing it on the radio. It was "Mama" that got me right in the feels. The evil laugh Phil does was pure awesomeness. Heck, even the weirdly cheesy and somewhat racist (oh, don't get butt hurt, it was a different time when people didn't need stinkin' badges) video was great. The song, not so much, but it has grown on me, I mean really grown on me ... there is so much going on, it's weird they used all those ideas on what seemed like a throwaway novelty (for Genesis) song.
I remember breaking down and buying the record at a convenience store of all places. For whatever reason, Mac's Convenience Stores (they're all gone now. I think they were taken over by Circle K) in '83 decided they'd sell records. I still remember the display by the chips. You could get Def Leppard's Pyromania, The Romantics' In Heat, ZZ Top's Eliminator and Genesis ... there may have been others, but if there were, they were probably Madonna or Culture Club or some other such nonsense I could not have given a shit about.
The thing about living in the suburbs versus being able to go into the city was that the mall record stores were expensive ... Mac's was selling them at the same price everywhere, and while not a screamin' deal, it was still a deal. I don't recall how many of the albums on the rack I bought ... I know I never bought In Heat, but those other ones? Probably.
This was my first Genesis record.
While it isn't a perfect album, nor is it one of my go-to '80s jams, I'd forgotten how good this is from the opening moments of "Mama" all the way through. Okay, maybe not all the way through. There are a couple of songs I'm not as enamoured with, but when it was good, it more than made up for it. One of my favourite one-two punches was "Home By The Sea," a song I always kept intact.
It was a strange time, and Phil Collins somehow caught fire and his popularity floated not only his solo career, but Genesis got even bigger with their follow-up, and even Mike Rutherford's side project, Mike + The Mechanics, was a pretty big deal. I tried to listen to Tony's solo work, but it never really worked, but I still bought it.
To the die-hard fans who had been there from the beginning, Genesis was just more proof the band had sold their souls to the corporate machine and for the sake of album sales. You just can't make everyone happy.
To me, this was a heck of an album, and taking the time to revisit this one has been a real treat.
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