2000 Great Songs #1409: The Conqueror

Genesis' 1969 debut, From Genesis To Revelation, gets a pretty bad rap, and is frequently omitted from retrospectives of the band's Peter Gabriel years--though I just read the record is about to get a long-overdue deluxe edition treatment. Its reputation isn't exactly unjustified, as it's a pretty flawed album. The songs are a little twee, short nuggets quite different from the majestic prog epics they'd start delivering on the following year's Trespass. And aside from Gabriel's vocals, the band itself sounds largely absent, the music oversaturated with orchestration, sounding more like the early Bee Gees or Moody Blues than the band they'd soon become. 

But all that said, some of those songs were quite wonderful, surprisingly tuneful and endearing. I've always been a sucker for "The Conqueror" in particular, with its rollicking piano riff--it's probably the closest the record got to an actual rock song (largely free of the strings slathered onto many of the record's cuts)--and hum-along melody, bolstered by some harmonizing and admittedly cheesy but fun stereo vocal panning. The theme of the tyrannical leader is one the band would revisit frequently, from Trespass' "The Knife" to Wind And Wuthering's "One For The Vine."

It's a shame that the band never included any of the Revelation material in their live sets once they went prog, as this track could've been pretty interesting given a more fulsome, energetic, Genesis-sounding treatment.

Cover by Norwegian band The Almost Famous:

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