Malachi

I heard a snippet of "Carpet Crawlers" the other day and was prompted to pick up "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". I might be embarrassed to claim that I bought a Genesis album, but this one is really a Peter Gabriel album with Genesis as a backing band, so I feel better.

I'm an album oriented kinda person, and actually thought the rock opera was a pretty cool idea when done well. What's done well? Brian Wilson's "Pet Sounds", The Who's "Quadrophenia", "The Lamb", Pink Floyd's "The Wall", Ben Folds Five "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner", Randy Newman's "Faust", and maybe even Joe Jackson's "Heaven and Hell". The only stinker that comes to mind is The Who's "Tommy" but I'm sure I'm forgetting some.

The thing that really tickled my brain about "The Lamb" is that it is staggeringly complex and was intended to be. A lot seems to have been drawn from Gabriel's dreams which gives the whole thing a very surreal feeling. I won't even try to recount the commentary on the album so I'll point you at Gabriel's own explanation and an overlong "literary" annotation.

If this stuff isn't your cup of tea, that's cool; I can think of a few people here who do like music in this artsy sense. I've even linked an incredibly low-fi recording of the Rael performance (wow, Peter was young once).

Vivianne Draper

ok let me set something straight about genesis. Genesis was PETER GABRIEL'S BAND from its inception in 1968ish until he left, right after the tour to promote the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Even so, the next LP the band produced, "A Trick of the Tail" was a decent effort. Then Steve Hackett left and that was really the end of anything worthwhile Genesis produced. After that it became Phil Collins band and they don't really write songs -- they go into a studio and freeform jam and record the whole thing, pick out the good snippets and build on those and slap out lyrics. There's no conception or forethought to their music any longer and hasn't been for some time.

Its too bad too cause Phil Collins is actually a decent musician -- they all are really.

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Crighton Johin

And if you've never heard Brand X and want to hear how good a drummer Phil Collins is (was?) check them out. Kind of a fusion band with some killer musicians, including John Goodsall on guitar and Percy......Percy something. Grrrr.....let me look it up. :-P

Percy Jones!....on bass. Just wicked, wicked stuff. Phil Collins was a damn good musician....then....he sang.

Not a video or live performance, but Disco Suicide from the Moroccan Roll album. ;-)

io Kukulcan

I love the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
All that 70s Genesis stuff is amazing.
But yeah, Peter Gabriel just goes off on that album.

Carter-Madhu

This is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Weird tidbit: it was the first album I ever bought on CD.

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Lewis Luminos

That album holds very fond memories for me. It was all because of one particular track (colony of slippermen) that I ended up for the first time, with the person I would later marry.

Bet there aren't many people who can claim that.

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Malachi

8:14 for your first time? Not bad.

Were you counting out time during?

Vivianne Draper

Mal I also highly recommend the lp that preceeded Lamb Lies Down -- Selling England By the Pound. Weirdness factor -1 from Lamb but the music is just as complex and gorgeous.

Badwolf Bracken

Selling England by the Pound was the bands finest hour - Lamb was (is) hopelessly bloated and overdone but still a whole lot better than anything they did afterward.

Tess Whitcroft

What you called "Rock Opera" might better fit as "concept" albums. My favorites include...

The Alan Parsons Project "Tales of Mystery and Imagination"

Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds"

Todd Rundgren "A Cappella"

Tess

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