If you try to saw me in half, dude, I’m giving you rabies.
Are you ready to start your week with another nutritious earworm? It’s Monday, and that’s the morning The Nest digs deep inside to pull that lost hit prize out of that giant cereal box full of great songs we like to call the Frosted Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy has spiked your glass of orange juice with some vodka, while the Sponkies take away the Trix from that silly rabbit again. When you pour milk on this record, it will snap, crackle and pop…
Prog rock and its eighteen minute long songs that was the abstract expressionism of rock and roll was a thing in the 1970’s. It made names out of a number of bands… bands who realized by the 1980’s that they better get their shit together and start sounding good or people were gonna switch back to AM and stop listening to their doctoral theses of music. A surprising number of old prog rockers did just that and became chart sensations in the Reagan/Thatcher era, such as Yes, The Moody Blues, Kansas, and even Emerson, Lake and Palmer Powell. But no group made the prog to pop rock switch more successfully than the band they named a book of the Bible after, Genesis…
Phil Collins, when he had hair.
After parting ways with founding member Peter Gabriel, who came to successfully embrace 80’s music himself, Genesis became the trio it was best known as during the decade it was dominating MTV. But before there was “Invisible Touch” or “Land of Confusion,” there was the album that most marked the group’s departure from its old ways into the pop rock sound they’re still best remembered for today… 1981’s Abacab. The title track from that album is a pretty damned good song that is nowhere near as popular 40 years later as it should be…
Gotta love that early 80’s dorky fashion….
The song was thrown together from bits and pieces of a jam session the members threw in their new private recording studio. They labeled the certain “sections” from that session A, B, C, etc… and apparently at one point, the order they had arranged them in for the song spelled ABACAB, which became its title. It only made it to #26 in the US, burying it under much of Genesis’ more popular works of the 80’s, not to mention the large number of solo hits Phil Collins had. Fortunately for you, the DVA got out its shovel and dug out the song that was hooked on phonics before it became cool…
Who needs phonics now that everyone just types on their phones?
I can feel another lost song coming in the air ton….. no, next Monday!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
it was something brandnew that the drummer was also the “frontman” of a band… still love them, even when phil made it only in the headlines today with a divorce war…
I think Ringo should have beaten Phil Collins to that. The Beatles would have been more fun with Ringo singing all the songs…
Nice choice. Awesome. I love early Genesis before they got all sappy (Girl leaves boy. Boy cries and writes a poor me song) I’ve been fortunate to have seen them twice in concert and Phil Collins all by himself. What an experience. “Trick of the Tail” will always be my favorite.
I like a lot of their stuff in the era between the prog and sappy stuff… and I sure don’t mind Land of Confusion. If Disturbed wants to cover your song, it must be good…
Absolutely
Excellent choice and always one of my faves. So much talent there……..glad to have this earworm this morning – made me happy.
Pam
So much talent, but not a lot of fashion sense…
Man that song takes me BACK. Big hair, spandex (which I don’t have a prayer of wearing now without permanent damage to my diaphragm and breathing), platform heels.
Nix the spandex and try out the parachute pants…
Woot, woot…Genesis! I thought Phil Collins didn’t realize he was a superstar because he took the Concorde over to the UK for a concert after doing one on this side of the pond on the same day. He tried to be just a dude trying to ‘eek’ out a living in R&R. 😆 Great earworm to carry on during my afternoon walkie.
Well, he certainly didn’t look like a superstar. He could have easily been mistaken for one of the ushers at his concerts…
I found that one rather tuneless, to be honest. I did love the contrast between the keyboard player’s massive and luxurious head of hair and Phil’s… well.
I’ll take that as a win since at least you loved something about it! Throw in the guitarist’s beard, and I think they were taunting Phil’s follicle challenged head…