From Genesis to the Last Domino

I’ve always been a Genesis fan, though I knew their middle to end years more than their beginning. While I think 1977’s And Then There Were Three was perhaps the first album by the band I was aware of (thanks to my brother, but I also have to thank a long-time friend named Mike who fed me more of this band), but I don’t think I fully got into them until either 1980’s Duke or the 1983 self-titled album that included Mama and Illegal Alien (though the 1977 LIVE album Seconds Out could be in there as well). Still, my brother collected the Genesis albums featuring Peter Gabriel, most notably 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and 1973’s Selling England by the Pound. But it was those Phil Collins led years that included And Then There Were Three, Duke, Abacad, Genesis and Seconds Out that cemented my love for the band. I would eventually go back and get the vinyls of 1970’s Trespass, 1971’s Nursery Cryme, and 1972’s Foxtrot. I would also get the early Phil Collins led albums 1976’s A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering.

Before I go on, I like to talk about the bands output. For nearly a decade, Genesis released nine albums (and two were released 1976). In our current day and age when some bands go five, six, eight or nearly a decade between releases, the idea of putting out nine huge albums in that period of time is staggering. Of course, the economics were different then, and their music was not seen as mainstream, radio pop friendly, but that’s still a lot of lyrical and musical output. 

And beyond some issues that popped up during the recording of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 1974 (him writing the lyrics to the entire album, his band mates left to score the music; his wife’s pregnancy issue, and a brief time spent away working on what would be a shelved script with director William Friedkin) and the tour promotion in 1975 for that title, their time together seemed drama free. It seems well known that from the time of their formation until Gabriel’s departure, there never seemed to be any indication that he or the other members of Genesis had personal conflicts with each other -beyond the issues that arose during the period of 1974/1975 tour. What conflict did arise seemed borne from the media –who continued to make it appear Gabriel was the leading creative force in the group. To prove the point, it was initially suggested that Genesis was over when he announced his departure. 

In a lengthy public letter, Gabriel explained his reasons –that he felt constricted by long tours and a grueling recording schedule, and then his wife having such a difficult pregnancy. He was opting to quit the band and tend to family matters and his sick daughter, rather than start on a new record and tour. Tony Banks later stated, "Pete was also getting too big for the group. He was being portrayed as if he was 'the man' and it really wasn't like that. It was a very difficult thing to accommodate. So it was actually a bit of a relief.”

There is a definite evolution of the band from their progressive, album orientated roots to more popish style (though progressive songs and instrumentals continued, though to a lesser degree, in later releases) that Banks, Collins, and Rutherford added from 1977’s And Then There Were Three to 1986’s Invisible Touch (which became the band’s first number one album in the UK; #3 in the US, the highest any of their albums ever reached). There are many long-time fans of Genesis who still believe the band ended with Peter Gabriel’s departure. While it’s true he brought a certain theatrical aspect to his stage performance and filled his lyrics with social commentary, double entendres, and sly humor, Genesis always produced their work in an open, very collaborative style. And despite no full reunions are ever seemly going to happen with them (including with former members Anthony Phillips, Chris Stewart, and Steve Hackett), they don’t have a negative word to say about anyone. All have worked together in some capacity over the decades, but it’s also clear that musically, most went in different directions. 

And while Phil Collins solo work started to bleed into Genesis work (which was confusing at times, especially after the huge success of No Jacket Required and several songs for films), both Anthony Banks and Mike Rutherford found success in their own solo work, as did Steve Hackett, who continues to record and tour (and playing songs he helped create during his Genesis days). 

I will agree that their 1991 effort We Can’t Dance is not their best, but it was always going to be hard to replicate the huge success of Invisible Touch. It was still successful, hitting #1 on the UK charts and peaking at #4 on the US charts, but it was also clear that Phil Collins wanted to move on. Much like Peter Gabriel, and even to a point, Steve Hackett, Collins wanted to branch out even beyond his success as a solo artist and member of this band for twenty plus years. One of those branches included winning an Oscar and Golden Globe for his work on the 1999 Disney film Tarzan.

His departure after the We Can’t Dance tour left Genesis in limbo. Both Banks and Rutherford felt there was still some life in the band and started working on album that would be named Calling All Stations. They brought in Scottish singer Ray Wilson of Stillskin as Collins replacement. The album was released in 1997 to underwhelming reviews and poor sales. Its failure led to the bands hiatus. 

The bands break went on until 2006 when Collins, Banks, and Rutherford began a Best of tour called Turn It On Again. After that, in 2007 Collins ended his association with Genesis and then he fully retired from performing in 2011 due family commitments and medical issues which prevented him from now playing the drums. In 2014 the band participated in a BBC documentary about Genesis, but Steve Hackett made it known he was displeased with it, calling it a "biased account of Genesis history" that never covered his solo career or talked about Wilson’s time with the band. So while Hackett may not have personal issues with his former band mates, per se, he has been vocal about what made him depart the band. There is little doubt he helped shape the band with his brilliant guitar work during its early years, but by 1974 and the whole Lamb Lies Down on Broadway production and tour (where everyone was having personal issues outside the band), Gabriel’s departure and the Genesis’ shifting away from lengthy guitar solos and progressive rock, he had grown increasingly constricted by his lack of freedom and level of input. He had been writing more material on his own and thus found it increasingly difficult to contribute more of his ideas within a group context (which he also claims was rebuffed). He wished to embark on a solo career and "take the risk in order to find out just how good I was on my own.”

In 2015 Collins said he was willing to come out of retirement, and speculation of a reunion again began to circulate. While both Banks and Rutherford were open to the idea, there was a no way former member like Gabriel or Hackett would be willing to do it (Gabriel would not sing Collins penned songs and Hackett would not have editorial control). Then in January of 2020 the band announced The Last Domino? Tour. This tour is planned for seventeen dates across the UK and Ireland between November and December 2020. Tour guitarist Daryl Stuermer and drummer Chester Thompson will return and Collins's son Nic will also play drums due to his father's ill health. When asked about the possibility of the group heading into the studio and writing new material, Collins said the chances were slim, but finished by saying "Never say never.”

Whether this tour goes on now, considering the COVID-19 pandemic event, is anyone’s guess at this date, if only all three remaining members are in their late 60’s and early 70s, and Collins is having health issues. 

Books: If It Bleeds: New Fiction By Stephen King (2020)

 If It Bleeds is a collection of four stories by Stephen King

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is a tale of mortality and friendship starting out in 2004 (and plays out like an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents). We meet nine-year-old Craig, who runs errands for Mr Harrigan, a retired tycoon. In return for this, Harrigan gives Craig money and occasional scratch off lottery card. As everything’s eventual in the world of Stephen King, a few years later, one of those lottery ticket pays off to the tune of $3,000. While socking the money away, Craig wants to thank old Harrigan and uses some of the money to buy the tycoon an iPhone.  While not trusting them at first, eventually Mr. Harrigan finds uses for the device. But when the man dies, and Craig is heartbroken, he slips the phone into the pocket of the dead man at his open coffin funeral. Months later, Criag decides to call Harrigan’s number.

The Life of Chuck is another grim reaper tale and King admits in his afterword he has no idea where the story came from, though its genesis what in billboard sign congratulating someone named Chuck who gave 39 years to something. King wrote two stories featuring this Chuck and then wrote a third, all them with the theme of how terrifying life would be if you knew how and when you, or the person closest to you, were going to die. The fact that it’s told backwards –like some variation on Christopher Nolan’s Memento, adds to the fun.

The third, and longest story is, If It Bleeds. It features the return of Holly Gibney – who King admits has become one of his most favorite characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in Finder Keepers, End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. Speaking of The Outsider, in my review of that book, I noted that King did not go into any detail about what this monster was, where it comes from, why it exists, but either he didn't feel the need to or we're bound to run into this monster in a novel yet to be written. Here it’s been a few years since the events of that book, and Finder Keepers have been running smoothly with Holly at the helm. When a bomb goes off in a school, killing scores of kids and teachers, while watching the coverage, private detective Holly Gibney can’t help thinking that the journalist appears to be feeding rather too eagerly for her liking on the unfolding horror around him. She decides to investigate. Her instincts pay off and she eventually comes to the conclusion that this on scene reporter is just like the creature she encountered before. It's not be the same one –but it clearly seems to be variation on the one readers saw in The Outsider, with its shape-shifting abilities being different, but they both seem to enjoy killing people and feeding off the sorrow. I was also struck by the idea that the creatures in The Outsider, the one here in If It Bleeds and the one in The Storm of the Century could be all somehow related. Wishful thinking, I guess.  It’s a terrific sequel/continuation of The Outsider’s themes and I do enjoy Holly a lot (and its here we get more background on how and why Holly is the way she is).

Rat comes from the department of Careful-What-You-Wish-For and is filled with some a bunch of meta-referential things King likes to pepper through his novels and short stories. It’s a bit of hallucinate tale at that, as we meet troubled writer Drew Larson who is struggling to write a novel. Something happened three years ago when he last tried to write a novel, and his wife Lucy is sacred that it could happen again, especially when Drew wants to isolate himself in the family cabin. There is a destiny-altering encounter with rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. 

While I continue to enjoy King's novels more than his short-fiction and novellas, I'm never generally disappointed in these collections.The same goes for Joe Hill, as I see his last collection of stories, Full Throttle, still sitting on my shelf.

Books: Don't Ask By Donald E. Westlake (1993)

“Dortmunder has a job offer. He's been hired by third parties to pull off heists in the past, but never to lay his hands on anything this peculiar. Frankly, it's a bone. Not just any bone. A femur. Well, not just any femur, either. A femur which, 800 years ago, was part of a 16-year-old girl who, having been killed and eaten by her own family, was made a saint by the Church. The femur, her only relic, is all that's left. Now two small eastern European countries - Tsergovia and Votskojek - are fighting like dogs over...well, the bone. There's only room for one of them in the United Nations General Assembly, and the choice is in the hands of a powerful Catholic prelate. The country that tosses him the bone is sure to be in like Flynn. Dortmunder's first reaction to the Tsergovian ambassador's offer is to ask for more front money. His second is to round up his gang - light-fingered Kelp, master driver Murch, and man-mountain Tiny Bulcher - and case the Votskojekian mission, a former tramp steamer parked in the East River. The current repository of the bone, it will be the target of a heist carried out by land and sea, with the team displaying the finesse and split-second timing for which they're famous. It should only be that easy. Before the gang can say "Saint Ferghana's knee," they've got a major fiasco on their hands, one that will reach from the snow-capped mountains of Votskojek to a billionaire's art-crammed estate in New Hampshire. But it will show, once and for all, that when it comes to getting revenge, Dortmunder can cut to the bone."

For the most part, Donald E. Westlake’s eighth Dortmunder tale, Don't Ask, works. Its premise is somewhat the same as The Hot Rock, with some sacred object being disputed between two countries, and where Dortmunder (and his trusty gang) are hired by one country to steal it from the other. This time the two countries are Slavic, and the object (which again is in New York) is a saint's relic, a holy bone. Once again, the object must be stolen several times, lost each time for reasons reminiscent of those seen in The Hot Rock. Even though it is somewhat of a retread, Westlake is able to bring some freshness to the characters and change up the formulaic nature of the series. He also finally gives John Dortmunder some due as strategist, with our thief coming up with a clever and thoroughly brilliant revenge on the people who kidnapped him –becoming, in the end, less of a sad sack. It also seems –along with Good Behavior and Drowned Hopes- that Westlake began to pad the stories, making them longer than the earlier tales. Whether this was his choice or his publishers (higher page counts translate into higher profit), Don’t Ask feels like it went on longer than it should. What I liked about the earlier books was they were lean and thus felt more exciting, more outrageous and absurd because everything had to come together so swiftly.

It’s still a witty book, with some great prose and stupid people who think they’re smarter than everyone else.That, of course, makes John Dortmunder's job much easier.

Book: The Philosopher's Flight by Tom Miller (2018)

"Eighteen-year-old Robert Weekes is a practitioner of empirical philosophy—an arcane, female-dominated branch of science used to summon the wind, shape clouds of smoke, heal the injured, and even fly. Though he dreams of fighting in the Great War as the first male in the elite US Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service—a team of flying medics—Robert is resigned to mixing batches of philosophical chemicals and keeping the books for the family business in rural Montana, where his mother, a former soldier and vigilante, aids the locals. When a deadly accident puts his philosophical abilities to the test, Robert rises to the occasion and wins a scholarship to study at Radcliffe College, an all-women’s school. At Radcliffe, Robert hones his skills and strives to win the respect of his classmates, a host of formidable, unruly women" 

Tom Miller’s genre-bending The Philosopher’s Flight is well written, but falls short for me in a few ways. Many writers of fantasy and science fiction, in hopes of finding a broader audience, have taken real-life historical settings and added some sort fantastical element to them. This gives the reader a chance to read this genre, but because it’s set in the real world, or alternative history version of it, non-fantasy readers can enjoy them because they can identify with the setting. Harry Turtledove has made a career out doing this.

In this world, witches or wizards are philosophers and all the best ones are female. In spite of their amazing prowess in military campaigns, philosophers are feared. Trenchers, a sort of evangelical set comprised largely of men who fear and despise these powerful women, continually oppose and threaten the philosophers in ways both physical and legal. The harrowing opening passages evoke lynchings and the witch trials, while throughout the book we see Trenchers attack these women for everything from their use of birth control to their refusal to bow to the patriarchy.

Set during World War I, the story follows a rare male philosopher, Robert Weekes, as he is taken on as a contingency student at Radcliffe College, one of only a few token men training with women. Most of the men are merely theoretical philosophers, but Robert, or Boober, as his Montana family lovingly calls him, is an empirical philosopher, raised to fly. Encouraged and cajoled into his skills by his mother and older sisters, he is a truly unusual man and not just because he's an expert sigilist.

Some obvious social commentary runs through this first book in a series, giving us the experience of role reversal, with a sole male prodigy among women who encounters derision, discrimination, and abuse that was usually heaped on women entering largely male educational settings during this era.

I will say the book is not that complex, which made the book somewhat easy to read. Still, nothing seems to happen in all of it’s 400 pages. It’s like Harry Potter without the threat of Voldemort. The book is so focused on world building, so focused on teaching Robert to fly, that the threat from the Trenchers is never truly explored –they become lost in Miller’s attempt to point out how bad women have had for years.

For fans of steampunk (yeah, that’s here as well), they might find the devices used to make the Philosophers fly cool, but book is way too long, and way too anti-climatic to be worth continuing on to book two.

 

Books: Doctor Who: At Childhood's End by Sophie Aldred (2020)

"Once, a girl called Ace traveled the universe with the Doctor – until, in the wake of a terrible tragedy they parted company. Now, decades on, she is known as Dorothy McShane, the reclusive millionaire philanthropist who heads the global organization A Charitable Earth. But Dorothy is being haunted by terrible nightmares in which she’s abducted to an alien world. Nightmares that begin just as scores of young runaways are vanishing from the dark alleyways of London. Could the disappearances be linked to sightings of sinister creatures – part man, part rat – lurking in the city shadows? Why has an alien satellite entered a secret orbit around the Moon? And how has Dorothy become a target for the victors in an interstellar war? Investigating the satellite with Ryan, Graham and Yaz, the Doctor is thrown together with Ace once more. Together they must unravel a malevolent plot that will cost of thousands of lives. But can the Doctor atone for her past incarnation’s behavior – and how much must Ace sacrifice to win victory not only for herself, but for the Earth?"

The fate of companions that leave the TARDIS after many adventures is always open for fans to interpret. The classic series generally left the fate of those characters up in the air, mostly never mentioning what happened to them (beyond the ones that have died, obviously) after they stopped traveling with the Doctor. Still, some companions left impressions and fans over the years have written stories and novels that dealt with the aftermath of their departures. During the franchises “wilderness” years –between the 1989 end of the TOS and 2005 reboot- many original novels were released that revisited some of them. And while Sarah Jane Smith became one the most well-known characters to get a life after she left the Doctor, one of most popular later ones of the 1980s was left behind.

The character of Ace has been cited as the first "modern" companion for the Doctor, one a lot of working-class viewers could actually identify with for the first time. Ace suffered traumatic events in her childhood, including a bad relationship with her mother Audrey. Adding on to that, she witnessed a racially motivated firebombing of her friend Manisha's flat when she was 13. Needing to lash out, she burned down a local abandoned Victorian house named Gabriel Chase after sensing the presence of evil and was put on probation. Consequently, Ace covered up her own fears and insecurities with a streetwise, tough exterior. So Ace was written to be more realistic, more three-dimensional and to grow as a person throughout her run on the show and Sophie Aldred’s performance help elevate the character even more. It was also clear that Russell T Davies based a lot of Rose’s personality on Ace, which is probably why the modern series succeeded so well.

Now thirty-years later, the fate of Ace is finally resolved (or one version of it, as these novels are not considered “canon”) as actress Sophie Aldred (in collaboration with Steve Cole & Mike Tucker) gives us At Childhood’s End. Before the series was canceled at the end of 1989 after twenty-six seasons, work had already begun on season twenty-seven. One of the stories planned was going to be Ace’s swan song, a serial called Ice Time, which would’ve resolved Ace’s arc and the Doctor’s manipulation of her. For the Marc Platt script would’ve seen the Doctor enrolled her in the Academy on Gallifrey to become a Time Lord. In this novel, Ace’s departure from the Doctor was much darker.

The book is okay, starts off great and gives a lot of fan-wanking nods to Doctor Who past, but I found the whole rivalry between Yaz and Ace a missed opportunity. I find it fairly out of character of both Ace and Yaz having issues with each other –it falls into the silly trope of because Ace is a woman, Yaz has to be jealous and thus compete for the Doctor’s attention (I didn’t like it School Reunion as well). One of the other reasons Ace (and Sophie Aldred) worked so well was her chemistry with the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy). While script editor Andrew Cartmel, along with writers Marc Platt and Ban Aaronvitch, tried to make the Doctor more alien towards the end of his TV run, the two still had this workable chemistry -but the interaction with Ace and 13^th Doctor is lacking here. There is too much awkwardness (some fans have been critical of Jodie Whittaker’s less than warm feelings) and unlike other companion reunions, Ace and the Doctor barely seem to know each other –so that’s disappointing.

But for long time Doctor Who fans, especially the ones who adored Ace, At Childhood’s End is fine, quick read.