Today’s Vinyl: Genesis

After a week of extreme pain and nausea (kidney stones - they’re like childbirth for men!), let’s continue the sickness and unease with an ignominious lowlight in my collection: a limited-edition, foldout-sleeve, clear vinyl seven inch of quite possibly the worst song Genesis ever recorded (if not one of the worst songs of the Eighties) – the excruciating Invisible Touch (unintentional Wikipedia hilarity: “It is a meditation on intangibility, speaking of a woman whose qualities go beyond what only meets the eye.” Um, right.). For many years before this tripe came out I was something of Genesis completist (don’t get me started on the Peter Gabriel-era bootlegs), so that might explain the purchase of this little gem, but I’d prefer to believe that this was acquired on a benzedrine and spray paint bender, or while sleepwalking, or perhaps as part of a complicated trade arrangement that involved black-market orangutan spleens and handjobs.

Whatever. It stinks, as did most of this band’s output through the latter half the Eighties, when they completed the transformation from prog rock kings to something along the lines of an edgier, less jazzy version of Phil Collins. Sappy schmaltz had been creeping into the band’s material since Gabriel left, but 1980’s Duke was a prog-pop-rock masterpiece, and even Abacab could keep a math geek listening for few rounds. It was all downhill from there, and this drum machine-fueled diaper load of insipid synth-pop was the last I would take from this band. Some quiet day I’ll melt this into an ashtray while listening to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.