• AllMyVinyl #42
• Band: Genesis
• Album Title: Calling All Stations
• Release Date: 1 Sep 1997
• Date purchased: 11 Aug 2024
• Location purchased: Genesis online store
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

I’m going to start off talking about a theme.  Van Halen with Gary Cherone. Aerosmith with Jimmy Crespo, Motley Crue with John Corabi, Black Sabbath with Ian Gillan, Journey with Arnel Pineda, Deep Purple with Tommy Bolin, Queen with Paul Rodgers, you get the idea.  That brings us to Genesis and Ray Wilson.  All of these I listed are arguably things that people either don’t know about, or just dismiss as not the real version of the band.   After Phil Collins left, I think it surprised everyone when Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks decided that Genesis was going to carry on.  It’s like any band – when someone doesn’t want to do it, why should that stop YOU from carrying on?  That’s what Banks & Rutherford did.  They brought in Ray Wilson to handle vocals for Genesis.  I remember when this happened, and there was a lot of negative press for this.  People couldn’t accept Genesis anymore without Phil Collins.  I don’t think it was a slight on Ray himself, more the case that he wasn’t Collins (or Gabriel either I suppose).  This extended to the tour as well.  They had booked a big tour for the US with the kind of venues that Genesis was used to playing at this time, but it was canceled due to low ticket sales.  It was rescheduled for smaller venues and that didn’t work either – so that was canceled as well – no US tour at all.  Which is a shame, as I would have gone.  In fact, I’ve never seen Genesis live in any era.  After the tour was over, they disbanded, and the Wilson material was never performed again by Genesis.

My own history with the album is fairly straightforward.  I was not into vinyl in the mid 90’s when this came out, so I bought it on CD back then.  In researching this album, I found where I sold off my CD copy (on 2 Dec 2007).  I then had no copy of it until September of 2024, when I ordered it on vinyl from the Genesis store as part of their 2024 re-release of all their studio albums.   The actual vinyl is a double vinyl, except that “side 4” doesn’t have any actual music on it.  It’s just an etched piece of music.  It has what looks like an audio track but if you put your needle on it, it just slides across with no sound.  It has a picture of Banks/Rutheford/Wilson from elsewhere on the album art.  I’ve included a picture of “Side 4” below with the pictures.

An odd thought – I always loved the title of the album.  I felt with them taking the band into a new direction, that the album title alone is a “Hey, we’re doing something here”.  “Calling All Stations” as a title was something I really liked conceptually from the first moment I heard it.

As for the tracks…

Calling all Stations – Opens with a rather unusual Genesis guitar riff. Unfortunately, the rest of the song doesn’t retain that – it gets more into what Genesis was doing around this time. Genesis has never been about the kind of guitar riff that you’d associate with Iommi, Blackmore, or EVH. But still, it was nice it was there. I do like the song overall. Slower track – but then again Genesis of this era was like this a lot. But I liked the meandering guitar work through the track mixed with Ray’s vocals. I thought it was a nice mix.

Congo – This is catchier than the title track, and I THINK(?) was the first single. It’s never gonna be as popular as something like Lamb Lies Down, or Mama, or even Invisible Touch. But I loved this song instantly, and still do. From front to back, probably the song I don’t wish they’d do something different, but I don’t think it’s my favorite song on the album overall – an odd dichotomy. Has a great sound that I can’t really identify – synth sound that pops up in a few places in the song (0:47 first).

Shipwrecked – On some other albums I’ve written about recently I kind of slagged off the slower songs. In general this entire album is slower (not fully, but still), but this one is one of the slower songs in general. I love the vocal delivery of the chorus. Enjoy the mix between Rutheford’s guitar work and Ray’s vocals again.

Alien Afternoon – This is an odd one. It has an almost etherial sound about 1/2 of the way through the song when Ray’s vocals are pushed back in the mix, giving it a spacey sound that wasn’t there earlier in the song. I’m a sucker for a song with a good time change. This wasn’t that, but the different parts of the song appealed to me. In fact, the back half of the song is almost SO different it could have been its own song. The way the song ends isn’t like the start of it at all.

Not About Us – The third single from the album has a great vocal delivery by Ray, IMO. The music itself isn’t the most inventive, but Ray’s vocals save this one for me.

If That’s All You Need – The closest I come on this album to there being a skip song. This one doesn’t do a lot for me, but isn’t actively bad.

The Dividing Line – This starts off with a faster synth sound which I like that leads into a nice guitar sound. Harder than most on this album – but again, nothing on this album is really “hard”. It has a great beat to it, one of my favorite songs on the album. No clue what any of the lyrics are – but it’s a great tune that a lot of people don’t know about.

Uncertain Weather – This is probably THE slowest song on the album. I get the impression this song is here for the lyrics more than the music, but that’s kind of concept only the band members themselves could answer.

Small Talk – My favorite track on the album – it’s got the closest vibe to being straight up rock music. As I’ve said a few times already, nothing on this album is “hard”, but the overall vibe here is a harder track. It’s still a synth sound that drives this – as does most music on this album… But I really like this song. Even the slower part has a stronger vocal delivery than some stuff. If you don’t know this track, seek it out. I love this one.

There Must be Some Other Way – This one sounds more like a song from early Phil Collins era – like something that would have shown up on Duke or an album around that era. There’s a sound that runs through it that for some reason reminds me of the sound you get hammering a spike into the ground. A weird description, but here we are. Found myself really enjoying this song more once the vocals stopped and it was just instrumental for the latter part.

One Man’s Fool – I always thought this was a good way to close the album. It has some things that we’ve heard in the rest of the album but puts ’em together in a way that sounds like an “ending”. I know that probably sounds weird, but it’s all I can think of to say about the track, really. It ends the album well – I’m just finding it hard to find the words for it right now.  The song actually ends a bit faster than it started – a repeating chorus over and over which I liked.

Overall the album was a musical improvement on the prior album (We Can’t Dance).  I really did enjoy this album – despite it being a bit slow in a few places.  I get why they disbanded and didn’t do more, but I really wished we would have gotten a second album with Ray Wilson – I felt they would have grown together and produced another album I liked.  As it is, this remains and probably always will be the final Genesis album.  As I write this it’s now 27 years old, and that Genesis has never put out another album in all that time strikes me as odd – they’re all still alive, so they could probably do SOMETHING if they really wanted to.