Quote:
Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier
To take it a step further, most prog bands seemed to always have a light hearted track on some of their albums anyway, which often could`ve been seen as a filler, when in fact it was just a humorous interlude. A good example of this is "Jeremy Bender" from ELP Tarkus album. Not sure where this humorous trend started, but it was certainly around before the prog explosion of the early 70`s, I seem to remember a number of 60`s bands like Cream having humorous interludes as well "Mother`s Lament" from Disreali Gears another example. As for Yes having a sense of humour............well one look at Steve Howe`s face could easily dispel that idea.
The surrealism of the Gabriel era Genesis is something very special, something the band could never quite replace once he upped and walked out. I would go as to say, the only other British artist that rivalled Gabriel in terms of pure talent in the 70`s was Bowie.
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That's why I'm glad that Genesis never tried to replace him. The element he brought to the band was gone when he left but Genesis were smart enough to not try and imitate it. As much as I love the Gabriel stuff I do find the Phil stuff to be very underrated, the two Hacket albums are great and in fact Trick of the Tail is in my top 5 Genesis albums. The band did lose something special when Hackett left also, but Duke/Abacab/Genesis is a very strong trilogy of pop albums that prog fans unfairly discredit just because it's "not prog" and because "Gabriel and Hackett are gone". Pretty stupid reason to write off something that's even not attempting to relive the glory days.
I definitely disagree with people who think Gabriel WAS the band, Genesis were always an esemble group meaning every member counts and even when they lost Gabriel and Hackett and adopted a more pop structure that stayed true until their sound got REALLY watered down in the mid 80s and overly Phil oriented.