Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

Welcome to a very special edition of "Sounds from the Cave." As many of you know, my friend Trevor used to be my roommate, and he left a couple boxes of old LPs in my basement when he moved out. After he found out about my new blog column, Trevor suggested that I dig through his records and feature something from his collection. So that is exactly what I am doing for this week's post. Think of it as "Sounds from the Cave: Mad City Edition."
I chose Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway because it'd been an album that I'd heard good things about but had never actually heard. It is widely considered to be one of the great albums of the 70's, but despite my many years of music listening, Lamb somehow always managed to elude me. I guess you could say that it was my white whale. I mean that literally- the album cover is white, and it's massive: four sides of epic progressive rock, with elaborate cover art to match. So why did I avoid listening to it for so long? For one thing, my earliest memories of Genesis are of the 80's Invisible Touch-era band. I hated that stuff so much that I pretty much swore off listening to them ever again. The other thing is my general disinterest in progressive rock, which is the musical style that Genesis played on Lamb. Don't get me wrong- I do like rock music that is artistic and inventive, but sometimes progressive rock just sounds too pretentious to me. There's also a vague Dungeons & Dragons vibe that I get from listening to it, which is not a good thing in my book (although I will admit that Rush were one of the first bands I ever liked).
Well, I've decided to confront my fears and dive head first into this so-called masterpiece. So what is this album all about? It is, in a word, fancy. There are fancy song structures. There are fancy time signatures. And there are fancy lyrics which create a complex narrative throughout the whole album. It is the quintessential rock opera. And after listening to it once all the way through, I can say that I enjoyed it. Quite a bit, actually. I could even imagine liking it more with repeated listens. That hasn't happened yet - this record is freaking long, people - so time will tell if this record ends up spending much time on my turntable. But one thing's for sure- this band used to be pretty damn weird, which makes it all the more puzzling that they ended up being Top 40 pop stars in the 80's. I'm still trying to figure out how a band that started out like this eventually ended up like this. Anyway, here's a selection from Lamb: