Genesis “Calling All Stations”
Writing on the last Genesis album, the one from 1997 that you’ve never heard of, is like free-climbing the north face of K-2. I actually don’t know if K-2 has a north face, but I imagine it has to. As I write this opening paragraph and begin my brave ascent, I’ve never actually listened to the full running time of “Calling All Stations.” So it’s possible it doesn’t even exist past the first half of the first song that I could never finish. I took a peak at that first track a few years ago, like how you look up at a mountain from the safety of a car window and go “geez, imagine climbing that”. I just knew that listening to this whole album would be an act full of pain and suffering, like climbing a high peak without oxygen or ropes just to show you can.
I put my laptop down and press play on “Calling All Stations.” Yeesh — this is a doozie.
Genesis has my full respect to try to carry on. The band’s story was all about carrying on. First they lost co-founder Anthony Phillips, the “Pete Best” of Prog Rock. Then shape-shifting prog-king Peter Gabriel. Then guitar savant Steve Hackett. And then, finally, Pop icon Phil Collins. To their credit, up until this album, they grew in popularity with every line-up change. But, now there are only two: Tony Banks on keyboard and Mike Rutherford on guitar. What do you do after a life in music? Why wouldn’t you try to keep going? Sometimes you need tangible proof it won’t work. So, adrift in their past prime, in the year that brought us Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping”, we also got Ray Wilson Genesis!
From the first note I don’t like it. “Calling all Stations” opens with a fat crunchy Mike Rutherford guitar riff, it sounds like a comb-over, overcompensating and insufficient. Tony Banks synth pads follow: all mood no tune. The song has a “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” Michelob commercial vibe. And then Scottish Phil Collins replacement Ray Wilson opens his mouth. I’m trying to think of what band was in vogue that prompted the selection of this smooth, low-toned goth crooner formerly of a band called “Stiltskin”. I guess Soundgarden? He’s kind of an adult contemporary Chris Cornell. He gives himself fully to the melodrama of Banks’ tale of existential isolation. I imagine this is, in hindsight, embarrassing, but upon research I see he is still performing this and other Genesis tracks in his setlist. What if a great embarrassment was your crowning moment? Hats off to him for making a career out of it. Show-biz is hard folks!
For the uninitiated, the first iteration of Genesis holds a major place in the canon of Progresive Rock, alongside Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, Emerson Lake and Palmer et al. Facebook fan groups still have daily dustups over the merits of Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins led Genesis. The vitriol leveled against Phil is shocking, and the massive pretension and impenetrability of Gabriel’s lyrics are an elephant in the room you dare not speak of. Even gloom-God Gabriel himself moved away from writing lyrics like this chestnut from 1974’s “Colony of the Slippermen”:
Rael is a little disillusioned,
When the Slipperman reveals that the entire colony have one-by-one been through
The same glorious romantic tragedy with the same three Lamia,
Who regenerate themselves every time,
And that now Rael shares their physical appearance and shadowy fate.
I know what you’re thinking: that doesn’t rhyme. But fans of Gabriel-led Genesis insist Phil led their band away from chasing the Lamia of enlightenment toward a shadowy fate at the MTV music awards. “Calling All Stations” is proof there were multiple conspirators. The anti-Collins fan might think remaining members Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, now liberated from Phil’s sensibilities, would race back to songs about mythological England with indulgent soloing. But they instead fool everyone and chase this non-existent market of grunge-flavored adult contemporary. Do you really think Phil had them playing “Invisible Touch” at gunpoint? “Calling All Stations” is a pitch to find a place in the late 90’s mainstream, not a return to Progressive Rock. And it is a true snooze.
The most adventurous material comes from Banks. He was the one known for wanting to “stretch out” in the music. It is odd how much stretching out involves a sea of endless synth pads, and plink-plonk keyboard solos. Toward the end of the album he seems to be taking small naps between chord progressions. You would never do this on a piano, because the notes wouldn’t sustain long enough and it would be revealed you aren’t really doing anything. Has the synthesizer's reverb been a great shield for him? It’s interesting that he’s lumped in with all this overly complicated prog music, since much of what he does is this three-blind-mice level pad work. This may be unfair to Banks in a historical sense, because the lean and angular keyboard parts of something like Genesis’ Art-Rock 1981 triumph “Abacab” are exactly what they need to be to push forward the song. Banks is not a show-pony like Yes’ Rick Wakeman and that is to his credit. The problem here is not one of simplicity, but of shapelessness.
As the album unfolds, it will momentarily perk up with something rhythmically adventurous which I assume is Banks or something more emotionally open which I assume is Rutherford, but always resolves into something bland, which is middle age, and why this album could be a poster child for the past prime problem. It’s sort of like a car that can’t quite get ignition. Some noises, signs of life, but then you’re still stuck on the side of the highway. “Congo” starts with African rhythms before resolving into a sing-song chorus for a depressed outward-bound expedition. “Alien Afternoon” has a jaunt and mood to it, but mismatches that with a “Day in the Life” derivative “woke up-ate-some-breakfast” lyric and lifeless vocal. If you listen to Stiltskin — which is unlikely so I’ll tell you — you’ll find that Ray’s voice works better with Grunge’s drum, bass and guitar. He seems truly adrift in this song and the whole album, like a flannel shirt in Morocco.
Listening to Banks’ composition “The Dividing Line” gave me time to reflect on what Banks brought to Genesis. He creates soundscapes for melodramatic male-centered stories of do or die choices, set in a dystopian time that may be far in the past or far in the future or even right now — am I in 1637, 2037? Or wait — is this about Margaret Thatcher? He was not good at creating a human connection to the listener. You would think if Genesis were drowning like they are on this album, they would try to mix it up more. Then you hear the outlier “Small Talk”, a funk-riffed atrocity that makes all other tracks on the album rise in esteem. Maybe that Michelob commercial mood stuff wasn’t so bad?
“Shipwrecked” is the first of three heartbreak songs I assume are from the less droid-like Mike Rutherford. This is the best of them, an anemic song with a passable chorus. “Not About Us” aka “what if we castrated Pearl Jam”, was co-written by Wilson. And he’s clearly not helping this operation creatively. “If That’s What You Need” prompted me to google “Mike Rutherford, divorce” to seek the cause of this dreck. He’s been married since the 70s, so maybe that’s the issue? But it was Track 8 — “Uncertain Weather” — that took the fight out of me. Being exposed to this much bland robs you of the ability to conjure synonyms for bland. Mondo-bland?
The last two tracks add Ray Wilson to the songwriting credits, showing either a growing spirit of collaboration or that Genesis 4.0 does not have enough ideas for a full album. Why they felt the need to rush this I have no idea, but I suspect more time would have produced no better results. At my emotional bottom, the last track comes on: “One Man’s Fool”, so indistinct it’s barely there. In a way I was right – this album does not exist. It is the “…” after the words “Calling All Stations” that appear on the album cover. The breath after death…
But like chicken without a head, the body still twitches, a muscle memory of the living creature it once was. Like previous past prime abomination, James Taylor’s “Never Die Young”, “Calling All Stations” is a numbing experience. If you immerse yourself long enough in lifeless waters, you lose perspective. You start patting yourself on the back for parsing the slight difference between tracks. You develop a kind of lunatic pride in your expertise. It’s as if you can now describe the nuance in style between two torturers at a POW camp. “Oh that’s totally Helmut’s work, he loves the thumb screws!” But you’ve of course forgotten to ask why you are at this work camp in the first place. You look down and your fingertips and genitals are frostbitten. An icy wind blows a tune about impossible choices and the man who has to make them. Can you still go home? Calling all Stations….calling all stations….calling all stations!