Over the Garden Wall

The Flower from Suppers Ready

The period of music from 1968 to 1978 saw the emergence of a new type of rock music named Progressive rock or simply prog. One influential band of this period who could been seen as influencing a great many others was the band King Crimson with their med evil imagery in the likes of the album In The Court of the Crimson King. One band that was influenced by Crimson a great deal was the Progressive rock band Genesis, who formed at the public school Charter House in England in the late 1960’s. Crimsons Court album was an album cover which Genesis pinned to their dorm room door at school as a thing to aspire to. Genesis started out as two separate bands, (Anon and Garden Wall), at school that came together and released their first album From Genesis to Revelation with the help of Charter House Old Boy Jonathan King, who gave them their unusual name. The first album was not much of a hit and was usually placed in the religious section of most record shops because of the bands and album names.

Genesis’s later albums would place them firmly as one of the pioneers of the prog rock genre, a genre which sprang from the Psychedelic and Folk movements of the late 1960’s. With influences like Crimson and the Beatles Sgt Peppers album, listening to Genesis’s later albums such as Trespass became a staple for some rockers and classical fans, indeed their music has been described as symphonic and likened to that of art or classical music, with long complicated passages of Hammond organ, eccentric electric guitar, folky acoustic guitar, Peter Gabriel’s flute playing, driving bass lines and complex drum patterns and fills. As Genesis progressed in the making of music the bands ideas began taking on a concept identity with some tracks being based on mythology such as The Fountain of Salmacis which came from the Greek tale of Hermaphrodite and tracks like the epic 20 minute piece Suppers Ready from the Foxtrot album.

Suppers ready takes the listener on a journey with a couple of lovers who enter a world of mysticism and surrealness and eventually return to the real world in time for the biblical apocalypse. Suppers ready is a great example of Genesis reaching their pinnacle in song writing and was a brief glimpse into what the Peter Gabriel line up would eventually reach by the time of their final album before Gabriel’s departure.