Earlier this month Twitter reminded me of the 41st anniversary of Abacab by Genesis. (Wikipedia says it was released on 18 September.) While many a prog fan dismisses the album as being too poppy or perhaps tainted by New Wave, I simply adore it for this is the album that got me into Genesis and set me on a course to be progressive rock fan/nerd. I even have the copy of the album that did the deed:
It belonged to my brother who passed away several years ago. Going through his possessions I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had kept the cassette all these years, though the discovery was bittersweet.
Judging by the songs on the reverse side, I’d say the tape was made in the spring of 1982. The flip side has some songs from The J. Geils Band’s Freeze Frame, which was released in October 1981, as well as tracks from Blackout by Scorpions which came out in March 1982. However, it is certainly possible that most of the tape was assembled in the autumn of '81 with the Scorpions material added later to fill up the remaining time.
It was at this time that I began to find myself alone after school. Not wanting to do homework and eager to explore, at some point my brother’s tape collection fell victim to my plundering. I recall listening to Led Zeppelin IV, a tape which had a mix of songs by The Doors and The Rolling Stones, and several other bands. Somewhere along the way I came across his copy of Abacab and threw it on the stereo. (No MP3s and no tiny little earbuds then.) It was wholly unlike anything I’d heard before.
My mother harbored (and continues to do so) a love for Johnny Mathis and Genesis stood in stark contrast to his anodyne crooning. My father’s taste ran more towards folkier sounds with a good dose of soft rock as well – I’m talking Joan Baez, Simon and Garfunkel, Fleetwood Mac of the mid- to late-70s, etc. Again, Genesis were nothing like that. But they were also different from the bluesy inflections of the Stones, the heaviness of Led Zeppelin, and the more poppy songs by The Doors. I think it was partly due to the lack of heavy riffs on the part of Mike Rutherford but mostly because of Tony Banks’ synthesizers. They just sounded unworldly to my young ears.
Another element that set Genesis apart was the lyrics. I mean, what the hell is an “abacab” anyway? This was before the Internet so I had no way of getting the lyrics. As you can see, it was a pirated copy of the album so I didn’t even know the names of the songs. Later I found out that the album did not have the lyrics on the inner sleeve so, even if my brother hadn’t been a scofflaw, I’d still have been flummoxed. I came to believe that “Me and Sarah Jane” was about Doctor Who while “Dodo/Lurker” was sheer nonsense as far as I could tell. Even now 41 years later and knowing what Phil Collins is singing, I still can make neither heads nor tails of that song.
I played this tape over and over and over until I ruined it. While I cannot recall when this happened exactly, I do remember the sheer horror of humming along to the album only to suddenly hear that the music from the other side had bled through all mangled and muffled. Presumably the playback head on the tape deck needed to be demagnetized and cleaned. Oops.
Fast forward to 1984. A radio station in Chicago, where I grew up, announced that they were going to be broadcasting a multi-hour Genesis documentary. I remember well listening to it and still have it on tape. At the time I was only familiar with Abacab, the single “Paperlate” (an Abacab outtake), and some of the songs from the band’s eponymous album. I was floored when I heard the Peter Gabriel stuff – a completely different voice than I was used to, Mellotrons, and lyrics about giant hogweeds and lambs lying down on Broadway. I can still hear Mike Rutherford saying, "...talk about it in such glowing terms as The Lamb" just before the cymbals herald the arrival of Gabriel's opening line on that albums title song. Unfortunately the program never played any Gabriel-era track in its entirety. Just as I was really getting into the music, they’d fade out and let someone bitch about Peter Gabriel’s costumes.
The first tune to avoid being unceremoniously truncated was “Squonk”. The song crashes in and then settles into a strong, steady beat. Collins’ drums have never sounded better. I had absolutely no idea what was a squonk was or why it was melting into a pool of tears but, nonetheless, it was love at first listen. I was off to the record store as soon as I was able to find the album that contained this magical song. A Trick of the Tail has been a favorite album of mine ever since.
Years later I found out that both “Squonk” and ATotT were favorites of my brother. Going through his CD collection after his death, I found that he had only one album from the band’s remix/remaster campaign from the late 2000s and it was ATotT. He came up here to Madison many years ago as I was throwing a party in honor of our father who had died a few months earlier. I was busy at work in the kitchen preparing food while “Squonk” was playing when he came in to grab a soda or sample the vittles and he was “singing” along. I use the scare quotes because he could not sing. Neither can I for that matter. However out of tune he may have been, that’s one of those memories that I shall treasure forever.
Sorry about ruining your tape, bro.
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