August 30, 2003

  • Earlier this morning I woke up from a dream about Tony Banks, ex-keyboard player for Genesis. Remember Genesis?

    I was at a coffeehouse, and they had a rack of records for sale, and among them was the ultra-rare first pressing of Tony's 'The Fugitive,' with a free poster and comic book inside.

    Note that there's a real Tony Banks record called 'The Fugitive.' Follow the link to listen to some samples if you want to. It came out just after Phil Collins' 'Hello, I Must Be Going.' It was a critical and financial failure. So in actuality, no Tony Banks record could be nearly as cool as this one was. The only reason the first pressing is rare is that they didn't make many, at the time or subsequently.

    I know all this because in the early and mid 80s, I was obsessed with Genesis. The third album I ever bought was Genesis' 'Duke,' which I still enjoy to this day. (1 was Chuck Mangione's 'Feels So Good,' 2 was The Police's, 'Ghost In The Machine.' I feel like I progressed well in that evolution). I eventually went about obsessively collecting every Genesis album, and every solo album put out by every member of Genesis. With Phil Collins, that was easy, until he started exclusively writing sappy ballads. 'Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart Away' was the beginning of the end. Mike Rutherford fared pretty well, with a couple decent solo records, and then Mike + The Mechanics. Peter Gabriel... Well. No comment necessary.
    Tony Banks, however...

    Back in the dream, I was elated at the find! I gently squeezed it to see if there were more than just the LP inside, and indeed there was. It had the comic book and poster!

    I pulled the dust jacket out and examined the LP. I dug around in the sleeve. Pulled out the poster and opened it up. I was making a little mess of Tony Banks stuff in that corner of the coffeehouse.

    Finally, I got to the comic book. Oh, joy! I pulled it out and it was a tiny thing, about the size of a Jack Chick comic. I thought, "Geez, I'm really fetishizing this," and just then people around me started saying to each other, "He's really fetishizing this..."

    My joy dashed on rocks, I put the stuff back in the sleeve and put the sleeve back in the rack. I knew that the album wasn't worth what they were asking for it, from a musical standpoint. I had heard it.

    So, more stuff happened in the dream and I eventually woke up. I put on the 'Abacab' CD and made coffee. I thought, 'I wonder how much Tony Banks has made it onto gnutella?'

    None. Nada. All search results lead to Eminem and 50 Cent, of all people.

    Is gnutella a threshhold between the past and the present in popular culture, the same way the transition from LP to CD was? I don't have an Edison cylinder player, so it's hard for me to judge material recorded on them...