Saturday 16 March 2013

Down And Out (Genesis, 1978)

I can hear you: What? With so many famous Genesis' songs why on Earth did you choose this one? And why did you choose a song from that nearly pop album? Calm please, calm... I'll explain everything. First: "...And Then There Were Three..." was not only my first Genesis album, but even the first prog rock LP I ever listened to. But I don't present here this track just because it's a sweet memory... I do think it's one of the greatest short prog songs ever. Yes, I do.
 
The sunset of an era: "...And Then There Were Three..."
 
 All is perfect here: there's a wave of energy and a bit of melancholy, a highly creative rythm section and a well found tune, an impressive wall of sound and two flawless tempo changes. The intro of the song is one of my favourite passages: a feeble keyboard chord develops into a sound blast via Mike Rutherford's bass guitar. There's also an inusual anger in the lyrics where one could identify a reference to the recent goup's changes in both line-up and musical choices. However, IMHO this is one of the last great prog sosngs of the '70s and one of the strongest opening songs in a rock album. Ever. Yes, ever.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with much of what you state. Although for me Dance on a Volcano has the distinction of being my fav shorter prog rock song. But Down and Out is up there. When I 1st got into Genesis about 20 years ago I remember reading that ATTW3 was where Genesis started to to go pop. A friend lent me a tape of it and I disagreed. Down and Out, Burning Rope, Undertow, Deep in the Motherlode, Say it's Alright Joe are anything but pop in my book. The only real pop song was Follow You Follow Me but other then that, the rest of the album was either prog or at least Art Rock.

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    1. I do think so. Of course, as I wrote in the above, I'm a bit partial when it comes to ATTWT, but the songs you mentioned aren't simply pop songs. Thank you for your comment Wilton. If you want to present yourself "Dance on A Volcano" please feel free to do so and send me your review at domdal@excite.it but if you can't... I'll do it myself one of these days.

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