Selling England by the Pound

"Will you tell me where my country lies"
Says the unifaun to his true love's eyes
"It lies with me" says the Queen of Maybe
for her merchandise he traded in his prize

They don't write them like that any more!

It is, as any self-respecting fan of prog-rock should know, the opening lines of 'Dancing with the Moonlit Knight' from Genesis' classic 1973 album 'Selling England by the Pound'. After seeing The Musical Box a couple of months ago, I've finally got round to getting the album on CD (My old vinyl copy is gathering dust at my parents' place back in Slough). I'd forgotten just how good it was.

The cloth-eared music journalists who inanely claim that 'Punk was created to save us from music like this' just don't know what they're talking about. Forget the banal stadium-rock that Genesis churned out for the people who don't really like music much in the 1980s, it was during the Peter Gabriel years in the early 1970s the they produced some of the most creative and sublime music ever to emerge from the British rock scene.

With roots that owed far more to English classical and folk music than American blues, and complex songs with running times running to ten minutes or more, it's never going appeal to the sorts of people that prefer three-minute songs you can dance to. But it has other pleasures; just listen to Steve Hackett's emotive and quite un-blues like guitar solo on 'Firth of Fifth', and Peter Gabriel's distinctive (if surreal) lyrics and melodies throughout the entire album, and Tony Banks dramatic keyboard workout of 'Cinema Show'. The only low spot is Phil Collins' maudlin ballad 'More Fool Me', a grim foretaste of the dire drivel he would inflict upon the world in the 1980s and beyond. With a running time of 53 minutes it's a very long album for 1973, when 35-40 minute albums were the norm.

New on Kalyr.com

A page on my current N-gauge project, Wominsee. Currently just a trackplan and some notes; I will add some photos as construction progresses.