The Autism Diaries?! (Part 73)

A new occasional series here at “Sounds Good“

We listened to “Calling All Stations” the other day. Well, I listened. My wife was subjected to it. A couple of songs in she asked what it was (“What’s this shit music?”) And I said it was Genesis. And she said it didn’t sound like Genesis. And I said that yeah, well, you see this is the final studio album by the band, and Phil Collins had left and instead of just calling it a day they chose to replace him which is bonkers right, and anyway, they made no real effort to get a tonal match vocally, nor a timbral match drum-wise, and the very weird thing in all of this is the two musicians that stayed on and had actually been in Genesis before Phil Collins started to sound less like they were in Genesis than ever before — and that’s where I got into the bit about how when you remove one element of a group or team the whole structure can fold or change and not in a good way. And though this was not a favourite album at all it was one I liked to check in on now and then, sometimes in the hope it got better somehow even though that’s not really possible, but mostly as a reminder that you shouldn’t fuck with formulas as much as you think you should, and the sad story of rich old white guys never feeling satisfied, and how they shoulda just called it a day, and the complete lack of an audience told them that after the folly of wasted time on this project. “Does it get good at all?” My wife asked from the other room. I’m pretty sure she was asking about the album, not my riveting dissection. So I replied full gusto, “No! And that’s maybe the best thing about it, right? Right??”