A week from tomorrow is November 12. It is the 46th anniversary of the release of "Nursery Cryme," the third Genesis album.
This song from the album, the last track, is called "The Fountain of Salmacis." The first time I heard Genesis was on WNEW-FM 102.7 (NYC). It was this song, and I will always remember it was on the Jonathan Schwartz show, shortly after the album's release. I remember just being mesmerized, amazed listening all the way through. And I still get a similar reaction inside me whenever I listen to early Genesis albums.
November became Genesis month for US fans for several years, with "Foxtrot" being released in the US in November 1972, "Selling England by the Pound" in November 1973, and then "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," a double album, in November 1974.
Of course, the more relatively famous of the songs on the "Nursery Cryme" album, which became staples for many a Genesis concert for years later, is the opening song, "The Musical Box." Here is Genesis playing it in 1971 or early 1972 for a Belgian television show. And here too is a 1973 live recording, where Gabriel wears the mask that was so freaky and scary to see in real time. My regret in life was not fighting my folks more when I wanted to shave the middle of the top of my head to be like Peter Gabriel. Yeah, man!
There was a time in the early 1970s when those of us who loved progressive rock felt that there was a progression of great albums one after another. And then of course, the progression stopped. It hit the proverbial wall, as Stephen Jay Gould wrote about in his brilliant evolutionary science book, "Full House" (1996). Fortuitously, for me, in 1976, as the premier British prog bands were running out of steam and some starting to search for more commercial success, I came across J.S. Bury's "The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth" (1920). I loved that book and wish I had not sold it after a semester at Rutgers. It captures the essence of a time when historians were still seeking to prove History was a hard science, like physics. However, there was already an understanding of how much of what we want to think about culturally is itself a social construct subject to ebb and flow in ways that are as much fortuitous as intended by men (mostly men) of means and power.
See, this is what happens to me after I listen to Genesis' "Nursery Cryme." Maybe that is why I had so few dates in the 1970s when everyone else in the white suburbs seemed to be having such a grand time...:).
