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Whaddya reckon? Workshy fop or masking some significant health issue we haven't yet managed to guess. I mean, Phil Collins a recovering pisshead, didn't really see that one coming. Ignore the above, seen the cancer headlines. Maybe they'll prescribe, you know, meat!

Hope he enjoys it. Just to clarify, I do like Steve's acoustic/classical albums. They are beautiful. It is his later rock stuff I am not so keen on. That actually brings me to one final point: I think Genesis often shot themselves in the foot and that is one of the things that will harm their legacy. Their early strengths did lie in the fact that they were a very good acoustic band and Phil, in his early days, was a virtuoso drummer. So what do they do? Instead of playing to that strength, they became a synth-and-drum machine band. As I said earlier, I do like Abacab and some of the material on Invisible Touch and I agree with Phil that the drum machine helped them compose music with more space, but in terms of performing the songs, they weren't really playing to many of their core strengths. Tony can play the grand piano beautifully (some examples are the start of Firth of Fifth and the afore-linked Island in the Darkness) yet on the later Genesis albums this is never heard. Instead, we have his synth and keyboard sounds, some of which are very dated now. A few years ago, the band did another documentary called "the Genesis Songbook" and in the DVD special features, they do acoustic versions of No Son of Mine, Afterglow and Follow You, Follow Me and they sound amazing and fresh. I think they started to realise that themselves as they also did an acoustic set in the middle of the Ray Wilson concerts. Had they ever done an MTV Unplugged-style album, I think it could have been a classic. On the off-chance they ever do another studio album, I hope that is the direction they take. Okay, better change the subject back to the likelihood of Phil Collins drinking himself to death soon, before the neighbours lose patience with us....

Because they can't think of everything. The main recourse is for marshalls to wave large yellow flags (double waved). However in the wet and the gloom the drivers can't see these so well. Often large flashing yellow marker signs show up danger areas. The drivers are not allowed to attempt to overtake each other and reduce their speed to mitigate risk to themselves and any course workers. However most keep their foot down to a larger degree and reduce their speed to only show the bare minimum throttle back of about half a second for such an incident as Sutil had. The large JCB type tractor plucks the crashed car from the gravel trap and the yellows are removed. The curcuit is very wet by now and others have increasing trouble getting safely round the corner being attended. Accidents happen when procedure is not risk averse. The FIA figure they can wing it but the consiquences of this are not nice to see.

One of my colleagues is going to see Steve Hackett in a couple of weeks. Looking at the pictures of the group from the recent documentry I thought he had not aged as well as Peter, Tony & Mike.

What do you interpret that line from Heathaze as meaning? Is the fisherman Jesus, or am I overthinking it? Is he just saying go through some bread to the ducks because it is pointless to try anything else? Yes, Trick of the Tail is, probably, objectively their best album as it contains the artiness of the Gabriel years with a slightly lighter, poppier touch and an injection of jazz fusion to make it that bit less ponderous. I understand what you sayabout him coming out from the drums but I read somewhere he said having the drum machine helped them make the music with more space/less cluttered arrangements from Abacab onwards. I think it does help, for although Duke is probably the more accomplished album I prefer the lack of clutter on Abacab and Invisible Touch. You are way overthinking that. I always take it to be about the futility of arguing with seriously deluded people. I do think Steve Hackett added some beautiful melodies which come to the fore on TotT and W&W but after he left there was a harder edge to the music. I had heard that comment by Collins but always took it as his opinion not musical truth.

Lenz dead at 88 http://www.dw.de/ger...d-88/a-17980434 Oh dear. That book review must have embarassed me a lot as I've just mentioned it again in the authors thread.

75 today !!!!

I like Still but not Bankstatement. A Curious Feeling and Strictly, Inc. are probably his two best solo albums, though, IMHO. I used to be a big fan of Tony's as he was the person most responsible for som great Genesis songs from Firth of Fifth and most of the music on Wind and Wuthering through to some of the more interesting 1980s material like Me and Sarah Jane, Evidence of Autumn, Domino and The Brazilian. I have gone off him a lot though due to the cheesiness of some of his synth sounds and the morbidity of a lot of his lyrics (says I, a DeathLister!) especiallywhat he was composing on And Then There Were Three but even some of his more modern doom-'n'-gloom-fests too. I think that Tony's biggest problem is that a lot of what you refer to as doom n gloom fests effectively come across as a little whingy. He was born into privilege and has been successful from quite an early age. So what comes across is middle class angst rather than an expression of the futility of existence. I still think he is a very clever writer and some of the early Genesis mythological tracks owe him an awful lot. yes, maybe that is another way of looking at it. I don't think he's that great a lyricist, anyway. Occassionally, he will come out with a good line like "If races always ran to form, they never would be run" in A Curious Feeling but those moments are fairly far inbetween. Come to think of it, after Peter and Steve left, the band didn't really have any good lyricists at all. Phil was able to write those "confessional love letter" songs to his ex-wives that apparently touched many people but when he tried to move beyond that into social criticism or other subjects he just didn't have the skill (I don't blame him too much since he had a limited education through acting school and apparently didn't read for all the years he was on the road) but Mike and Tony went to one of England's top elite schools and they still come out with banal drivel... Sigh... Yes Tony was probably striving to be existenitalist but just came across as a morbid old whinger. I think the problem might be the relationship between the music and the lyrics. Tony can often try to fit two many words into the line which really jars with Phil Collins' 'drummer' singing where the rythym is everything. However songs like Madman Moon, Burning Rope and Fountain of Salmacis (which is lifted almost word for word from Ovid) there are some amazing results. "Beware the fisherman whose casting out his line into a dried up river bed,don't you try to tell him cos he won't believe you so , throw some bread to the ducks instead, its easier that way. Heathaze A Trick of the Tail is probably in my top 10 Albums. My problem with the later albums is when Phil Collins came out from the drums for the jamming sessions that lost a lot of the rythym.

Old McDonald had a plane...

I think he will be ok . The helmet looks to be in good condition far better than what i expected and it looks like he went right under the tow truck. I wonder if they had to get a tow truck to remove the tow truck?The irony in that. I think he will recover maybe take a year or two out of formula 1 and come back . http://autosprint.co.../2014/10/01.jpg I've never been as convinced as I was this morning that someone off the TV had just snuffed it. Everyone sounded scared shitless. Since they say he's breathing on his own now this is obviously some kind of minor miracle or the people at the circuit were being major drama queens. Although I guess maybe I should have realised, if precious Sutil had seen something that bad he wouldn't have been talking to the cameras or reporters at all, would have been off somewhere crying on Lewis' shoulder taking it like a man because there are no gays in Bernie's manly pro-Russian pro-Qatar series. Man, the_engineer I haven't followed an F1 race that closely, or given a fuck about the sport like that in years. I was hopeful that rain+Suzuka might make a half-decent race. I was totally glued there by my modern F1- watching standards, I must have only had the mute button on for half the race! And I didn't change the channel once! And it's all come flooding back to me today, I totally forgot that AUTOSPRINT is the number 1 Italian meathead publication of choice for ghoulish pictures of fucked drivers that no-one else will print! Don't worry though I hadn't forgotten how much the experience of Eddie Jordan talking makes me want to dive headfirst into the nearest piranha tank.. No fucking way!

I particularly enjoyed this complaint from the delightful Mrs M: "Every time he postpones the case, like this, it brings us more pain and distress, Every time we come here we have to make arrangements for our children to be looked after, we have to book flights, we have to book hotels, we have to take time off work to come here." http://news.sky.com/story/1283299/mccanns-angry-over-cynical-libel-trial-delay