Old Enough to Forget

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 cool drum sound that everyone drummed 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" and 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...

This was always a strange but wonderful record to me. The first two songs are so good, I mean not just good, they were exceptionally good songs. Even though the rest of the album would more often than not generally fall into "meh" territory, my impression of the album was always positive. This was a really good album. Michael Mann apparently really liked the band too as "Heartbeat" was used in his film "Manhunter" you know the one that featured Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter, and it was used again in an episode of Miami Vice. The song "Less Than Perfect" was used in the movie Explorers, I saw it (unlike almost everybody else as the movie tanked) but I don't remember the song being there, but it is a pretty good song. Anyway, this is going sideways, I try to get to the point. The year was 1985, and all the cool guys wore trench coats, and by the mid '80s we were right in the middle of the future - short of having flying cars and rocket pa...