Genesis ‘The Cinema Show’
Most critics agree that Genesis’ 1973 ‘Selling England by the Pound’ is progressive rock’s most brilliant accomplishment to date. And for many, within this aforementioned shining diamond, the operatic ‘The Cinema Show’ is a climatic gush of pure, unadultered genius.
Such grandiose statements beg the question: what makes it so? How can one song rise to the pinnacle above all the output of an entire decade of rock-and-roll?
Well, let me try to answer that in the simplest terms possible. I believe it’s because it fulfills the yearning of our most basic aural hunger, that of the goosebump-inducing kind. It’s that simple. The grandiose, the march, the fight, the glory-seeking highs on one end. The tender, spectral, gothic ruminations in the dark corners of our subconscious on the other.
Another key variable in staking greatness here is the scholarship that it took to get the tone and narrative right. It’s storytelling at its best, a poetic must often forgotten by stuff being released today. The song is a nod to T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, with a cameo by the mythic Tiresias that keeps playing in my mind over and over again for some reason. It’s got to be one of the best six lines of verse in the history of modern music.
“Take a little trip back with father Tiresias,
Listen to the old one speak of all he has lived through.
“I have crossed between the poles, for me there’s no mystery.
Once a man, like the sea, I raged.
Once a woman, like the earth, I gave.
But there is in fact more earth than sea.”
The overlays and instrumental arrangement are superb, the lyrical progression so beautifully fluid, no wonder it has weathered the passing of time so well. Of course you can place it squarely in the early 70s by the luscious and unbridled use of synths, but that’s a good thing. I do not jest. Am confident that it has subliminally influenced an entire new generation of music making, one that wants to tell a story first and foremost, but with musical fireworks.
Take the Decemberists for example. Aren’t they really a folk-indie-post-whatever incarnation of the ultimate prog band? The long-winding lyrical loops, the careful weaving of myths, the constant metaphorical reminders of the consequences of forgetting lessons learned are all well embeded in their music. That was prog!
As an exercise in synaesthesia, just take a look at a sampling of their album covers below and compare and contrast with Genesis’ visual output (a branding element for many a band of past and present) for the first part of the Seventies. Eery similarities don’t you think?
