Now Playing: ‘Genesis’ by Genesis…
A guy called Richard Shaw on Twitter (@RichardS7370) creates polls asking folks to list their Top 5 Albums from a given year. It is interesting to see what people listened to, and fun to be involved in too.
The latest year is 1983 (do a search for #5albums83 if you fancy getting involved) which got me thinking about my faves from way back when. My number 1 was ‘Seven And The Ragged Tiger’ by Duran Duran as it was the first album I remember asking someone to buy me when I was a kid and I played it to death.
Number 2 was ‘Genesis’ by Genesis which was called ’Genesis 1983’ on the TDK I had a snide copy on. I’ll admit, this isn’t the definitive Genesis album and the band themselves are very Marmite but it is a really personal album to me and isn’t that the point of music?
So what is there to like about this UK Album Chart topping, Grammy-nominated album? There are the singles, especially ‘Mama’ (which sounded like it was from the future to 10-year-old me), ‘That’s All’ and ‘Taking It All To Hard’ all of which I love. The album also includes the live favourites ‘Home By The Sea’ and ‘Second Home By The Sea’ which are worth buying the record for alone.
Talking of ‘Home…’ it turns out I got the meaning of the song all wrong, for years I thought it was about the inmates in an asylum but it turns out it is apparently a story of a burglar who breaks into a house only to find it is haunted by ghosts who capture him and then force him to listen to their life stories. Both concepts are ridiculous on reflection!
I’ve got a lot of time for the non-singles on the album too, ‘Just A Job To Do’ is a hint of what was to come on the ‘Invisible Touch’ album. ‘Silver Rainbow’ harks back to their earlier work and ‘It’s Gonna Get Better’ has aged well to my ears.
If you fancy giving this a blast in your home by the sea then it is available from eBay for about a tenner. I splurged and spent a whopping £11.19 (inc. P&P) for a near-mint original copy, I’m so decadent…
Tracks To Try: ‘Mama’, ‘That’s All’, ‘Home By The Sea’, ‘Taking It All Too Hard’, ‘Just A Job To Do’.