Genesis – Calling All Stations
“Can anybody tell me, tell me exactly where I am”
Following the release of We Can’t Dance the band embarked on a 55 date tour from May through July 1992 in North America and Europe and another 16 UK dates in October and November. This featured arenas and huge stadiums and focused almost exclusively on material from the last three albums, the exception being Turn It On Again and the Old Medley that featured for the most part, Dance On A Volcano, The Lamb, The Musical Box, Firth Of Fifth and I Know What I Like (with some other songs sprinkled in). I’m pretty sure by this point in their career that during the Old Medley 50 Thousand people went to the bathroom and the remaining 100 watched with critical rapture wondering if that was all they’d get from the 70s…which to their collective disappointment would be the case. If your thing is 80s Genesis then I’m sure these shows were wonderful. I didn’t go. In late 92 and early 93 the band released two live albums titled The Way We Walk, Volume One: The Shorts and Volume Two: The Longs. I guess it was a different way to sell a live album, one being comprised of 11 hit singles from the Genesis, IT and WCD albums and the other comprised of 6 longer songs also from the same albums with the exception of the Old Medley, which is impeccably placed as track one, right where you want a medley to be…Look in all fairness I never bought these albums but gave them a listen for the purpose of this post. The songs are mostly standard reproductions of the studio versions with some not so entertaining ad-libbing by Collins – the beginning and end of Throwing It All Away are abhorrent. I’m not sure anything is improved upon from their original versions…in some cases it would be hard to make them worse. I guess in the arc of Genesis live albums they stayed the course and covered material that had been released since the previous live album, for the most part. A DVD of the November 8th show at Earls Court in London (England not Ontario), was also released.
After the tour the band went their separate ways, again focusing on other ventures. In March of 1996 the man who had played drums and sang with Genesis in almost every incarnation of the band for 25 years announced he was officially leaving the band, just as we were getting to know him. SPLITTER! Hats off to Phil Collins regardless of what you think of some of the band’s albums, he was one of the greatest drummers ever to grace a stage, he was a phenomenal vocalist, he was funny and self loathing and incredibly entertaining…and he led the band as their singer for 20 years…13 more than Peter Gabriel. Shortly after Banks and Rutherford discussed carrying on without Collins, with Tony being the one who has admitted he felt maybe it was time to just let it go. Rutherford, however, convinced him that they should at least give it a shot and try writing some new material. So, the duo reconvened at The Farm and began working on material for what would become their 15th and to date, final studio album. Feeling positive about what they were writing they decided to audition a new singer, and first new band member since Collins and Hackett joined in 1970/1971. The two candidates they narrowed it down to were David Longdon who would go on to front Big Big Train, and Ray Wilson of the band Stiltskin who had recently disbanded and at the time was working on a solo album. With the majority of the songs already having been written and recorded, Ray Wilson joined the band in November of 1996. Along with session drummer Nir Zidkyahu and Nick D’Virgillio of Spock’s Beard they finished recording the album through June of ’97 when they announced that Ray was the new singer of Genesis. I’ll tell you what 1997 was not known for…1) Progressive Rock and 2) Radio Friendly pop music. It was the era of Grunge and Brit Pop and Genesis was neither so probably not exactly an easy time to try to convince the world you are still relevant having been a band that has been known for 1) Progressive Rock and 2) Radio Friendly pop music.
Calling All Stations was released on September 1 1997 supported by the single Congo, followed by Shipwrecked and Not About Us. The album peaked at number 2 in the UK but only reached 54 in the US, their lowest charting since Selling England By The Pound. All right, full disclosure. Despite being a lifelong Genesis fan, it feels odd ending off 18 separate detailed reviews of albums I’ve known for the majority of my life, with one I’ve really not given much attention to, but I’m going to do my best to do an assessment of the music.
I also can’t help it with this album, just due to the very nature of it, but I am always thinking to myself who would this song be a better fit for given the opportunity, Phil or Peter? So, despite it being a ridiculous exercise I’m adding my comments in as well.
So out of the gate is Calling All Stations, the title track and immediately the first thing you notice is that Mike is probably more prevalent in the first 30 seconds than he has been in the past 10 years. I mean he is clearly playing electric guitar with some fucking balls. Then Ray comes in and if you don’t know the album well it is a bit of a jolt to the system cause clearly this isn’t Phil Collins or Peter Gabriel, but the dude can sing with a smoother lower range than fan’s are probably used to hearing. Also, the drums are clearly the real thing. Actually, there is very little evidence of the heavily synthesized instrumentation that began on the Mama album other than the keyboards which sound nice and warm. Unlike We Can’t Dance everyone is present and clearly come off as interested and invested in this music. They sound like they are trying to make interesting music again. Mike even has a gorgeous guitar solo for the first time in…I don’t even know how long…I can barely recall the last song he played a proper guitar solo on. Anyway, the song builds in intensity gradually and organically with Ray’s voice escalating through the end of the song. It is a pretty great and the only real flaw is that it feels short at 5:45 in length and it fades out which I’m not always a fan of because it sounds like they didn’t know how to end the song. This one I’d give to Gabriel if they were to ret-con the album like Yes did with Fly From Here…effectively erasing Benoit David from their history, the fuckers.
Congo was the first single from the album and though a hit in Europe only hit #29 in the UK and failed to chart in the US. It starts a little dubiously – like maybe we are in Illegal Alien territory with a mix of African drums and New Orleans accompaniment. It kind of reminds me of something you’d hear on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney, but it quickly kicks into gear as a more standard rock song while retaining the established rhythm. The chorus is not bad, maybe a bit pedestrian but it works well dynamically with the verses. Again, it is sung very well by Wilson. There is an acoustic sounding bridge that changes things up nicely before resolving back to the chorus to conclude. A very impressive and confident song. At this point I start wondering how this album could be so maligned. Maybe no one listened to it and just decided they didn’t like it anyway. Like Liverpool by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. This one I’d also give to Peter to sing.
Next up is Shipwrecked which was the second single from the album and is a gorgeous tune. It makes me immediately forgive Tony and Mike for anything I didn’t like on Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance. It isn’t a complicated song, but it is perhaps one of the real lost gems of the Genesis catalog. There is absolutely no reason this song shouldn’t have been a huge hit single, but it didn’t even reach top 50 in the UK. If you don’t know this song do yourself a favour and with open ears and an open mind give it a listen. Both Tony and Mike are in fine form and perfectly complement the sentiment of the song which I’m guessing Mike was the primary writer of. It sounds like something he would come up with. Only thing against it is that the keyboard motif is a bit repetitive. I could imagine either one of Phil or Peter tackling this one.
Well, this is certainly much better than anticipated. What’s next? Alien Afternoon and it is almost 8 minutes long…clearly Genesis are still taking a wild stab at things that are longer form offerings. The beginning kind of makes me think of something from the 60s but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It has some unexpected chord progressions which almost sound off but at least sound interesting. Everything is not too bad in a Cajun/reggaeish kind of way. Like many longer Genesis songs, it shifts about halfway through to something a bit more dreamlike. It almost reminds me of if you took the joining section between the two Home By The Seas and expanded it out into its own piece and just let it build and build over several minutes in intensity…and again GUITARs. The song is a bit repetitive at first, but it does build nicely. It doesn’t quite hit the peak it could overall, but it comes pretty damn close. I keep saying this, but Jesus Ray sounds awesome.
Then comes an acoustic guitar intro of Not About Us. The last time I can recall hearing a proper acoustic guitar track was when I reviewed Open Door from the Duke sessions. I love acoustic guitars in songs and this one is pretty damn sweet. It is achingly sincere in delivery and mood. The music is just restrained enough to let Ray’s voice shine but with deft application of synth pads and acoustic guitars. It REALLY reminds me of something like Trains by Porcupine Tree which I mean with a high degree of respect. It almost sounds like neither Tony nor Mike wrote this one. I could hear Gabriel singing this one. This was the third and final single from the album and it also went…well almost nowhere chart wise. Too bad…it’s a great song. That’s five songs in a row that get solid marks for me and something I don’t think I could say for a Genesis album since maybe Duke or Abacab.
If That’s What You Need is next and it immediately sounds like it could have been considered for a Mike and the Mechanics album and also one that would have been written with Phil in mind. It is a tender sounding love song…I’m not sure where I land on this one, but I know I like it more than things like Hold On My Heart. I mean it isn’t perfect, but it is a respectable effort, albeit a bit swamped by keyboard synth choir sounds. But in the end, I feel it doesn’t jump the shark into overt over sentimentality, again probably due to Ray’s vocals. I do think on songs like this if Phil was singing it would have been a massive hit single without doubt. By the same token what makes it suffer is what makes it succeed. I think the song in the end is better off for not having him on it…not that that was an option…just saying…It also suffers coming right after Not About Us as it is quite similar in feel. No one talks about song placement anymore in the age of random shuffle.
Next up is The Dividing Line which in hindsight should have been the album title. WOW what a phenomenal song this one is. It starts out with an awesome two-minute instrumental beginning and reminds me a bit of The Brazilian. The drumming is the most interesting and impassioned and in your face since…probably Duke and there is a 80s new wave fuzztone keyboard sound that is almost out of place but at the same time it is kind of weirdly cool sounding. It is a powerhouse of a song that lasts almost 8 minutes in length. Tony and Mike sound totally committed to coming up with something powerful and in your face. The ending of the song is amazing with the drum solo sounding like they decided to add a Drum Duet into a song but with a single drummer. For two guys who are not drummers it is pretty amazing that they came up with this song, though I believe I recall Nir Zidkyahu mentioning in the 1983-1998 Box Set interviews (https://youtu.be/UII5giF8dbc) that he was given free reign on this song to do whatever he wanted, which clearly he did, and the song is that much better for it. I also think without it, the song would probably have been pretty plain. However, in the end it is probably the best song on the album and I HIGHLY urge any Genesis fan who has never listened to this album…even if you have no intention to at any point listen to this album…do yourself a favour and give this one song a listen. It is awesome.
Uncertain Weather is up next and it sounds like something written specifically with Collins’ voice in mind. I’m not particularly big on it as it suffers from an immense amount of blandness. Why does Tony keep writing keyboard lines that sound like In The Air Tonight…he must REALLY be trying to make a point. Or maybe I hear In The Air tonight in everything I hear.
Anyway, It feels like they put aside a song from And Then There Were Three just to torture me. The melody reminds me of a mix between Another Day In Paradise and No Way Out by Peter Gabriel but not in a particularly good way. It is just bland enough to almost go unnoticed.
Hopefully that was just a slight blip and things will improve with Small Talk…Holy shit what the fuck is this? Hold on I have to check if my copy of this album has a production probably and maybe accidentally inserted a mashup of a Styx and Backstreet Boys song. NOPE it is actually a real song by Genesis and might just be the worst song they ever wrote in my opinion. There is so much wrong with this song I almost don’t even want to talk about it but if I had to I’d say the keyboard sound is terrible, the lyrics are terrible, the chorus is terrible, and the song is terrible. And the bridge…jesus it is so fucking terrible with the talking and the keyboard sound….my God how did this song possibly get considered for an album is beyond me. Out of decency I wouldn’t assign this one to either Gabriel or Collins. It might be best left as an instrumental…maybe it would even be best left without words OR music. It should have been aborted during writing…maybe they were on Molly and it sounded fucking great…who knows… I do know one thing, however…this is not the fucking droid I’m looking for…ever. This one is worse than The Phantom Menace and Superman III combined.
Hopefully what follows isn’t quite the abomination that Small Talk is and as it turns out it isn’t, thank Darwin. In fact There Must Be Some Other Way is another album highlight. It kind of reminds me of Simple Minds around the time of Street Fighting Years or Real Life. It is a moody piece and just under 8 minutes long, but it is engaging throughout. They keyboard in the instrumental section remind me a lot of Keep It Dark and Lurker from Abacab. Tony does a really nice job of adding something interesting which feels like a long time since he has done on a long song instrumental plus the drums are awesome as well. Probably my favourite song on the album after The Dividing Line. Also, Ray…man what a voice. He ain’t Phil or Peter but he is just as good at what he brings to these songs, especially considering he had no hand in writing any of them. Come to think of it…he is kind of the real life personification of what might have happened to Genesis had they went with a new singer on A Trick Of The Tail, instead of going with Phil.
Last up is One Man’s Fool and at 8:50 is the longest song on the record. It isn’t too bad and like many long songs split in two halves. The first half is a moody piece that attempts to get into the mind of a terrorist bomber, four years prior to 9/11. The second half picks up a bit and ends up feeling a bit anthemic by intention. It may overextend itself a bit but not too badly. The drums again are awesome on this song. As I’ve mentioned on previous posts Genesis nearly always manage to end their albums with great songs…even going all the way back to A Place To Call My Own on From Genesis To Revelation is a respectful finale. This isn’t the best song on the album, but it does a pretty solid job of ending a surprisingly good album on a high note. Phil could have sung this one. The b-side Anything Now would have made a nice ending to the album in my opinion. Especially with the lines “Whether you love it, or whether you hate it, nothing will ever be quite the same again”.
As noted, Calling All Stations had three singles from which an astounding additional 40 minutes of unreleased music was hidden across 8 songs. Essentially enough material for a full album if records were still 40 minutes in length. Papa He Said and Banjo Man were on the Congo Single. 7/8 and Phret are instrumentals from Shipwrecked. Anything Now, Sign Your Life Away and Run Out Of Time appear on the Not About Us single while one final song Nowhere Else To Turn appeared on a promo CD but hasn’t ever had a proper release. There are some pretty amazing songs to be found here and worth checking out if you like the album but haven’t heard them. Many of them would have made excellent additions to the album (all of them can replace Small Talk) and Ray sounds excellent on all. Collectively they add a nice additional view into the material written by Tony and Mike for this album and only adds to the overall positive impression of what they were coming up with. You can hear all eight songs here – https://youtu.be/cygiAq6lyWI.
I’d like to say two things to start. First, as I’ve noted throughout, Ray Wilson is a phenomenal singer. Second this is a pretty fucking great album overall if you can separate yourself from the fact that it is neither Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins singing. That is a hard thing to do and I do find myself constantly thinking if this was a Phil Collins sung album people would be singing its praises as some kind of return to some degree of former glory. By the same token it doesn’t really sound like anything that came before it and is not without its flaws and mis-steps in song selection. It is a one-off album that was written by two of the most prolific writers in the band. It isn’t as if they suddenly had brand new people coming up with material. They actually did a pretty awesome job on it considering they were struggling with writing as a duo and often as noted in interviews one would have to hold down an idea while the other would experiment until they ran out of ideas. As a trio there was always a third to pick up or expand on ideas. The duo format seems to have led to a less successful execution of the material than could have been. I think it is important not to overlook the loss of Phil but not just as a singer but as a loss of a drummer and most importantly the loss of someone who was always integral at coming up with ideas for arrangements which I think a lot of people don’t recognize just how important a role that is. Without him I think Banks and Rutherford who are both great writers, lost the person who was best at making good songs even more interesting. Collins isn’t credited nearly enough for that. BUT I do think the music and songs in general on this album are much better and much more interesting, for the most part, than the preceding two albums and I might go as far as to say it could be their strongest album since Abacab. I do think it could use more backing vocals however, harmonies, double tracks etc. It is something that I love about Genesis but is in short supply on this record and could very much use.
Following the album’s release and riding the crest of some seriously scathing reviews, the new band embarked on a 47 date European tour starting in Budapest Hungary Jan 28 1998 and ending on May 31 in Nuremburg Germany. This would be the first tour since A Trick Of The Tail and Wind And Wuthering not to include long term live bandmates, Darryl Stuermer and Chester Thompson respectively. In their place were guitarist Anthony Drennan and Zidkyahu who had played drums on the record. Many of the songs had to be tuned to lower keys in order to accommodate Ray’s lower vocal range. The setlist for the show was a bit more varied than the previous several tours. This one comprised of 5-7 songs from Calling All Stations and quite a few from Genesis, Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance, but it also cast a bit of a wider net, possibly with the intention of trying to lure as many fans back as possible. Songs like The Lamb, The Carpet Crawlers, Firth of Fifth (instrumental section) were included along with an acoustic portion which included parts of Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, Follow You Follow Me, and the beginning of Supper’s Ready. Distinctly lacking, other that the Follow You Follow Me piece, was anything between A Trick Of The Tail and Abacab apart from Turn It On Again. It is an interesting setlist even with the more recent songs, including the longer songs such as Home By The Sea, Domino, The Dividing Line. It is still big on hits but it overall it seems far less like a latter-day greatest hits show than perhaps the preceding two tours seemed to come across as. A great video from the Jan 31 1998 show in Katowice Poland can be found here – https://youtu.be/IkXL7qHbXGM. It is a really nice document of an almost ignored time and tour and one I wish had made it to North America.
A 27 date North America tour was booked to begin in November of 1997 in larger arenas and then revised to a 22 date tour in smaller venues before being cancelled due to poor ticket sales. That would be the unceremonious ending to Genesis 4.0 who had decided following the tour to disband at the urging of Rutherford, who was the one who pushed for the band to continue following Collins’ departure. A formal announcement of them disbanding wouldn’t come until 2000. Before that announcement, however, Genesis began working on what would become their first box set titled Archive 1967-1975. Collins, Banks, Rutherford, Hackett and Gabriel, for the first time since 1974 ended up recording a new version of The Carpet Crawlers which had originally appeared on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. The song wouldn’t be released, however, until their first band sanctioned greatest hits album, Turn It On Again: The Hits was released in October 1990. What could have been a terrible decision, ended up becoming a sublime re-recording, more mellow in style, different in pacing but equally as beautiful as the original. Both Collins and Gabriel traded off lyrics and sounded as great together as they had 25 years earlier. I don’t recall the source, but I do recall reading that the song was not recorded with all present and was pieced together with individuals adding their parts separately (at least Hackett and Gabriel). Regardless it is a gorgeous rendition and a beautiful, albeit bittersweet swan song to their recording career. The one thing missing from it was the final verse beginning “The porcelain mannequin with shattered skin fears attack” which was originally intended for Ray Wilson to sing but was dropped after he left the band. It is a shame as it would have been a perfect encapsulation of the history of the band in one song and instead unwittingly and unfairly ended up resulting in him seeming like a footnote.
So that’s it….the end of Genesis right?…not so fast. In the subsequent years the band ended up releasing multiple box sets and greatest hits packages and then people started to hear rumblings that maybe they would be reuniting. Would it be the trio? Would Hackett be involved? Would Gabriel be involved? Would they split vocals? Would they do The Lamb? As it turned out it ended up being the trio plus Chester and Darryl back on drums and guitars. The tour consisted of 23 shows in Europe from June 4 2007 in Belgium through July 14 in Rome which was a free show for an audience of approximately half a million people. The North American leg of the tour was another 26 shows starting on a very rainy September 7 2007 in Toronto and ending six weeks later on October 13 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The live album Live Over Europe and the When In Rome DVD would both be released to celebrate the tour which despite most songs having to be adjusted down to accommodate Collins dropped range (due to age), consisted of a nice mix of songs from across their catalog, though not surprisingly mostly Collins era material. The setlist for all the shows remained unchanged throughout the tour. Amazingly for the first time, despite being drawn from different shows, the live album was the complete setlist in order which was played on the tour with no omissions.
Once completed fans wanted to know…would they go back into the studio and record new music? Would more dates be added? It only took 13 years to get an answer when The Last Domino? Tour was announced. It was originally set to have started in November of 2020 but delayed until September 2021 due to COVID. Hopefully the tour will move forward and hopefully more dates, including North America, will be added but we’ll just have to wait and see…If it’s gonna get better, its gonna take time…
Recommended Listening – Calling All Stations, Shipwrecked, Not About Us, The Dividing Line, There Must Be Some Other Way, One Man’s Fool
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