Tuesday, November 30, 2004

What About Phil Collins?

I don't know if Phil Collins is Advanced or not. If you think early Genesis was the greatest thing ever, then you probably would have to say it is. As for me, I haven't listened to the early stuff much. One thing I can say, though, is that I have always loved "Take Me Home" and "Easy Lover." I like "Abacab" and "Paperlate" and some others from the Genesis days. I often find myself singing "No Reply at All" and "That's All," and I wouldn't change the channel if "Illegal Alien" were to come on. There are plenty of songs by him that I really don't like, especially "In the Air Tonight," but I would stack his best solo stuff against Sting's any day. He's also a pretty good drummer.

Were it not for the Advanced Theory, I would probably be embarrassed to admit all this.

One other thing: One of my favorite running jokes from "Late Night With David Letterman" was from back in the eighties when Phil Collins had a million hits. Letterman would always say something like, "Paul, you know who I'd really like to hear on the radio? Phil Collins. If only they'd play one of his songs every once in a while." Then Paul would play along, of course. I always thought that was funny.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Along the "what about?" lines...what about the Sex Pistols? Did they not jump advancement at first to become advanced irritants in the 70s punk scene, only to revert to simple advancement in the 90s with their reunion tour(s)? Just thinking aloud...

Advanced Genius Theory said...

I would say they were simply Overt when they started, though Glen Matlock seemed to be more Advanced than the others (which got him booted out, I guess). Their reunion was definitely Advanced, with Glen Matlock being the most Advanced again for going along with it after being booted out the first time. To be an Advanced Irritant, pretty much no one can like what you're doing, and that wasn't the case with the Sex Pistols.

Anonymous said...

I don't know. The whole thing was engineered and was, after all, later called "The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle." Punk was meant to be the end of Rock 'n' Roll (very overt), and the Sex Pistols were meant to be the end of punk (advanced). And they truly pissed off "true" punk fans...still do...by making, what else?, punk music. And I think John Lydon is very advanced. Making a record with Steve Vai is, to my mind, proof of this.

Advanced Genius Theory said...

Very good points, especially about Steve Vai. But I think that using rock and roll to destroy rock and roll (or punk to destroy punk) is just a bit self-concious to be Advanced. I think the Sex Pistols believed in what they were doing a bit more than the image that Malcolm McLaren wanted to project. I could be wrong, though I could be right.