In The Beginning There Was Nothingness. IF ONLY.
In The Beginning There Was The Word. NOT THE BIRD FROM L7 PULLING DOWN HER KECKS AGAIN.
But neither of these are strictly true. Because the first book of the Bible Of Badness is Genesis. And if you were ever to question how bad this Bible could get, Collins and the rest set a mighty low standard. One wonders if it really was the Serpent that caused the fall of man, or if Adam just wanted to get away from the prog-rock band noodling in the Garden of Eden.
Ah, but to the Genesis of Genesis we need to thank Jonathon King. I am of the opinion we should thank him in the same way we thanked him for kiddie-fiddling, let’s bang him up for a few years for unleashing Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel upon us. And whilst I am no class warrior when it comes to music hating, even I can recognise that Charterhouse graduates aren’t going to make the coolest of rock stars. Unfortunately the band also recognised this and ploughed an unending furrow of anti-cool which would make them hot, if that was not also a metaphor for good in the contradictory pop world. It was a pity that their first album From Genesis To Revelation did not consist – as the title promises – of their entire career. It was even more disappointing that they were not judged at the end of time for the horrors contained within.
And so the band continued, despite being even worse that YES, with prog outpourings such as The Knife, Peter Gabriel’s nine-minute epic ode to non-violence. I have often wanted to offer my rebuke to this song, co-incidentally called The Knife and consisting of something I bought from John Lewis being used in a stabbing fashion on all of Genesis. Wonder is that they even made it to any later albums, though the title of Nursery Cryme should have been taken as a warning (and yet another veiled Jonathon King reference).
Ah yes. Phil Collins. Well need I say too much about this Tory traitor, this unartful dodger who bald-facedly (has he any other face?) told us that he couldn’t dance or couldn’t sing. Well there is no room for you in pop music then. Much of the eighties I spent trying to kill them with the power of the mind, which unfortunately backfired when the wrote Invisible Touch about me. I have been thwarted through much of their career, for example booking them to play the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway on Fulham Broadway. During rush hour. This assassination attempt like all others have failed.
And so we get to 2006. They apparently stopped gigging in 1999: (old giffers probably aware of an inappropriate party atmosphere).
So why have they returned? They clearly say its not for the money. And one assumes it is not for the artistic kudos (HA!) No, one can only assume it is to continue to torture us with they tedious metronomic slow chugging soft rock shite-lyriced coma-inducing er-tunes. And that is much worse than being thrown out of the garden of Eden.