When I seriously got into the British prog-rock band Genesis,
\nlike any other group I found myself pulled towards, I decided I had
\nto own every single record they had ever put out. But for the
\nlongest time, one disc seemed to be just beyond my grasp — their
\ndebut effort,
\nFrom Genesis To Revelation<\/i>.<\/p>\n
When I finally acquired it some years later, I listened to it,
\nand quickly decided that the search hadn’t been fruitful. Many
\nyears later, I still feel that way about this record, no matter how
\nmany times I listen to it.<\/p>\n
(Before we go into the critical drubbing, one note: I’m working
\noff of the 1969 release on London Records; I am aware that a CD
\nversion exists with more tracks than are on this record. So if you
\nwonder why I don’t mention a specific track, it might be that my
\nvinyl copy doesn’t have that track.)<\/p>\n
The group — Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, Anthony
\nPhillips and John Silver — seemed to be plowing new ground in
\n1969. I’d be hard-pressed to call some of the songs on this record
\nas progressive, but then again, they’re neither folk nor rock.
\nConfused yet?<\/p>\n
Now, I recognize that the age of band members should have no
\nbearing on how good or bad an album is. But it really seems like
\nsuch a tremendous musical undertaking is a lot to ask of musicians
\nwho were barely out of their teens. Gabriel’s vocals don’t have the
\nbite that would make his later contributions sound much more
\nurgent. Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like the band knows when to use
\nPhillips’ guitar or Silver’s drums, making this sound like poorly
\nlaid-out hippie elevator music.<\/p>\n
I do believe that Genesis was trying hard to make a good album
\nwith
\nFrom Genesis To Revelation<\/i>; the evidence is there in the
\nsong “One Day,” one of the few bright moments of this album. But on
\ntracks like “Where The Sour Turns To Sweet,” “The Serpent” and “In
\nThe Beginning,” it all just seems to be a tangled mess that doesn’t
\nknow which musical direction it wants to follow.<\/p>\n
Oh, I can imagine that the diehard Genesis fans will be up in
\narms over comments like that — hey, if you dig the album, that’s
\nfine. But if you’re someone who is curious about what lies beyond
\nthe radio-friendly single, you might want to steer away from
\nFrom Genesis To Revelation<\/i> until you’re really comfortable
\nwith early Genesis. Either way, this is definitely not the album to
\nstart exploring the group on, and it’s one that needs to be
\npurchased only by the true fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5883],"rating":[11203],"class_list":["post-36251","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-genesis","rating-rating-d-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36251"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36251"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}