Bless me Phil, for I have sinned.

February 14, 2012 9:39 PM

Last year, the day was commemorated by a parade through the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn. This year, the affair will be more intimate, as you will get to unburden "your own loves, heartbreaks, obsessions and degradations" in a confessional booth on Freeman Street. Yes, tomorrow is the sixth(!) anniversary of Phil Collins Day in Brooklyn.
posted by stannate (57 comments total)

I thought I felt something coming in the air tonight. thank you everybody good night! tip your moderators
posted by en forme de poire at 9:45 PM on February 14 [3 favorites]

Freakin' hipsters and their elaborate irony.
posted by LarryC at 9:47 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

I wonder how many attendees will confess to sharing Phil's obsession with The Alamo?
posted by stannate at 9:51 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

It's good to get a heads up on what cults will be controlling where in the wasteland.
posted by The Whelk at 10:08 PM on February 14 [7 favorites]

After how angry I got last year it is surprising that this year I can only just shake my head and sigh. I suppose over the last year I have either grown as a person or given up. I don't know which is worse.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:23 PM on February 14

Nope, watched the video again and it all came back. Free Hipster Occupied Brooklyn!
posted by Ad hominem at 10:26 PM on February 14 [2 favorites]

Relevant
posted by hellojed at 10:32 PM on February 14

I have never been to New York and I know nothing about this parade.

However.

I know a lot about getting shit from my friends for liking Phil Collins. My first cassette was the single for Ricky Don't Lose That Number; later, Take Me Home was the soundtrack to my childhood (that and Deadbeat Club by the B-52s). I love Phil Collins, the bad as well as the good, and ALL OF MY FRIENDS think he is totally lame.

Hell yes, I would join this parade.
posted by special agent conrad uno at 10:44 PM on February 14 [3 favorites]

Easy Lover is one of the greatest fucking songs of all time. And if you disagree I do not like you.
posted by symbioid at 11:07 PM on February 14 [11 favorites]

In the 80s, when 40 year old balding men could make a hit record.
posted by symbioid at 11:11 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

Aka the best time
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:12 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

Oh man, I'd no idea that Phil Collins had a day.

The only thing I associate with Phil Collins, besides the movie American Psycho, is my 6th grade general music class. This is like 1990-91, and as 6th graders, in a brand new middle school housing 6-8th grades, we were required to be schooled in "General Music" for one quarter, 9 weeks. The other quarters were designated for classes in "Industrial Technology", Home Economics and Art. When you hit 7th and 8th grades you had no music, just another quarter of one of the other three. But in 6th, in 6th you had to take general music. Maybe interesting but not to most 6th graders, we sang "Swanee" and "Camptown Races", other traditional hymns of yore and played recorders and chimes and the like. Real fun stuff.

So we are getting ready for this Christmas concert winter parents night thing and the teacher hands out the lyrics to a new song that we're going to perform at the Christmas thing. That we're going to sing. Here we are, finishing up with our chopsticks on little 12 or 15 inch keyboards and she's all, "I think you're going to like this", and starts passing out the new song. The groaning starts on one side of the room and slowly meanders across the room toward me. Then I see the song. It's "Another Day in Paradise". Oh. Think. Twice. We all start singing this godawful thing, mind you, at that age as special agent conrad uno pointed out, Phil Collins is decidely uncool (hell, at any age really). And we wrap it up, in all of its horror. And the teacher's ready for more. We start singing "Another Day in Paradise". Again. This time in a round. She might as well have tied us to the chairs and started playing 70s dad rock. She finds this song totally rad, man. There was no way out. We did this for the next two months, three days a week.

For this and many other reasons, Phil Collins should have no day. He should be forced to listen to all of his compositions sang, in a round, by groups of musically uncoordinated middle schoolers.
posted by IvoShandor at 11:13 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

But - man, looking at the article with the hipster interview, Fuck hipsters. Phil Collins is a great thing, hipsters need to be terminated w/vengeance.

And I think you mean "Billy Don't Lose My Number"?
posted by symbioid at 11:13 PM on February 14 [2 favorites]

Sort of amazing right? It is like Bob Hoskins Rock Star.

I aint really mad at these kids I just wish they thought of Phil Collins as anything other than a joke.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:14 PM on February 14 [1 favorite]

There is no elaborate irony involved when we're talking about the Brand X phil collins of course..
posted by MikeHoegeman at 11:15 PM on February 14 [2 favorites]

IvoShandor, just think about it.

Another Day in Paradise makes me think of my friend Chris. I remember doing a Christmas Special at my church, and he and I climbed up onto the giant platform decorated like a tree, standing next to each other. I think we were somewhere in 7th and 8th grade. I remember him telling me he loved that song and so did I. We talked about what it meant and I saw a lot of empathy in that kid that normally I didn't see, I think. I've got plenty of other Chris stories but that's my Chris/Phil Collins story.

Years later, after High School, he died in a car crash. One of a string of fateful deaths in our little county. This memory's for you, Chris.
posted by symbioid at 11:20 PM on February 14 [2 favorites]

"Easy Lover is one of the greatest fucking songs of all time. And if you disagree I do not like you."

It is perhaps my fault, but whenever I hear Easy Lover I tend to think of Benihana. I was trying to describe to someone that a place felt very dated, "Benihana 80's". It was then that I felt inspired to break out into a song to the tune of Easy Lover:

Beni-Hana
We'll cook your food just right, y'know it
*clap once/crack egg on iron plate* *spin around* (this is essential)

Long after the conversation was over, I kept singing a longer and longer Benihana song. For a moment, I wanted to be that Benihana chef; performing with grace to the tune of Easy Lover, deftly combining various ingredients on the iron plate that is my canvas, turning the teppanyaki table into a magical display of movement, fragrances, and flashes of fire.

The desire to be a Benihana chef lasted only a few hours, but the memory...
...it has followed me to this very day. (o_o)
posted by lemuring at 11:49 PM on February 14 [2 favorites]

Benihana Lover (SLTubeDubber)
posted by lemuring at 11:59 PM on February 14

@symbioid Don't you sneakers even bother to do your research these days? Collins was born in 1951.

I could take the time to write a passionate defence of Collins, but I know it would fall on deaf ears. You complain about hipsters when in fact most of you are just saying "I hated Phil Collins before it was cool to do so"... If your can't appreciate the drumming (before he did his back in), the singing (before the modules) or the song writing (before Disney) them just move on - I don't care anymore.
posted by benzo8 at 12:00 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]

GREENPOINT 4 LYFE
posted by hermitosis at 12:01 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

Benzo8 the link didn't work on my phone but if these parade folks think Phil Collins is funny then fuck them. If they actually love him and are just being funny about it then we're cool. Because Phil Fucking Collins.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:07 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]

Benihana is the shit! If you don't like Benihana you are clearly not a worthwhile person and deserve to be mocked roundly!

Fuck Phil Collins, so he had some good songs. Today is Benihana day.

Benihana Day > Phil Collins day. Suck it green point.
posted by Ad hominem at 12:10 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

I love this place.
posted by lemuring at 12:15 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

I eagerly await news of Jefferson Starship Day.
posted by Palindromedary at 12:26 AM on February 15

Count me as a member of the rapidly growing population of enlightened souls who acknowledge the pathetic irony of this embarrassing swatch of ironic "anti-hero" worship degrading wonderful neighborhoods in my fine city. Greenpoint has a hundred things going for it and not ONE of them is fucking Phil Collins Day. Whatever happened last year had to have been an accident if it happened in Greenpoint. Please hipsters, go the fuck home. Ugh, posers, you don't even belong in Greenpoint! The party is ten minutes south, on Bedford.
posted by ReeMonster at 12:44 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

The party is ten minutes south, on Bedford.
posted by ReeMonster at 8:44 AM on February 15

Yeah, dude. In, like, 2002, maybe. Unless condos and yuppies with strollers are ironically hip now.

Phil Collins was a great drummer and the guitar solo in Easy Lover is killer. There. I've said it.
posted by Decani at 1:05 AM on February 15

Here's a Genesis song from after Peter Gabriel's departure, but still what Patrick Bateman would call too artsy: Dance on a Volcano. Phil Collins in 7/8 time.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 1:30 AM on February 15

From the softer pop rock era, the video for Land of Confusion, with a Phil Collins puppet. I remember being creeped out by this as a kid.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 1:46 AM on February 15

Oh man, I'd no idea that Phil Collins had a day.

Phil Collins has absolutely had his day. That's probably OK by him. It used to be just fine to be a Phil Collins fans, but pop stardom isn't built to last forever.
posted by pracowity at 2:02 AM on February 15

The best thing about Phil Collins was the period in the early 00s when rappers started raiding Collins' back-catalog while paying him much props in the lyrics. Collins appears to have given permission in every case on the condition that he appears in the videos, leading to atrocities like this: Home (warning, may invoke smirking)
posted by AndrewStephens at 2:22 AM on February 15

I was just talking to someone unironically the other day about how 'No Jacket Required' was such a great album. And about how many laps we had to run around the gym with Sussudio playing in the background.

The problem with irony is that no one really cares- it's not funny or interesting. Sincerity for the win!

Yes, I like Billy Joel too..not as a person but as an 'artist'. And that is why I'm never going to be cool enough to be a hipster.
posted by bquarters at 3:15 AM on February 15

Let's All Say The Words Hipster And Irony Until We Feel Sufficient Cred Has Been Established
posted by Greg Nog at 3:18 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

I swear, you could take Johnny Cash, James Dean and The Fonz and mash them all together and Brooklynites would still find a way to make the result into something painfully uncool.
posted by JaredSeth at 3:29 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

This is why I love Philly. We are too mean, broke, and tired for this shit.
(yes I know we have our hipsters too, but they are less smug, and therefore can stay)
posted by angrycat at 3:35 AM on February 15 [3 favorites]

No Jacket Required is a perfect universal pop record -- not unlike Whitney Houston's first album, which came out pretty much the same time. With today's skinny-tail targeting of music (and much else) , nobody even tries to make records like that.

Chubby balding guys in their mid-30s are still doing fine, although more as indie darlings than as pop superstars. But, hey, if Genesis personnel could evolve from Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to No Jacket Required, who knows what Death Cab or You Will Know Us By the Trail might do!
posted by MattD at 3:40 AM on February 15

This is why I love Philly.

Philly. Like Phil. Phillish.
posted by pracowity at 3:47 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

Yeah can't we just call Franklin Street part of Williamsburg already?

Real Greenpoint parades go up Manhattan Avenue
posted by gubo at 4:33 AM on February 15

Real Greenpoint Parades go up Russell, son.
posted by CharlesV42 at 4:36 AM on February 15 [4 favorites]

(also shocked at the number of apparent GPoint MeFites. Perhaps a Mark Bar Meetup is in order?)
posted by CharlesV42 at 4:36 AM on February 15

My first cassette was the single for Ricky Don't Lose That Number;

It's "Billy Don't Lose That Number." The song "Ricky Don't Lose That Number" was by Steely Dan.

Another unapologetic Phil appreciator here. Although not so much a fan of what I think a lot of people find fault with - the late 80's phase; I was more getting into Face Value and the stuff from right after Peter Gabriel left Genesis back on to Duke. You can chalk it up to "the 80's got him," I think.

But man, back in high school when I still knew how to play the piano, I had the sheet music to a lot of their stuff and I'd use to put Duke on the stereo and play the SHIT out of "Turn It On Again" along with them. I'd also play it in the morning getting ready for school when I needed an adrenalin rush before I could drink coffee.

And then there's stuff like this. Hate on the music if you will, guy was a badass drummer. (I nearly changed that to IS a badass drummer, but from what I understand his health problems are such that he can't hold a stick any more. Woe.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:56 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

Su-su-suddio. Oh-oh.
posted by rikschell at 4:57 AM on February 15

1. Phil Collins is great.
2. Every time I hear "In the Air Tonight," I want to turn it up so loud it turns my insides to jelly.
posted by uncleozzy at 4:58 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

Phil had his moments. Queens needs a well armed Border Patrol.
posted by jonmc at 5:11 AM on February 15

Count me in for having a soft spot for Phil, esp. "No Jacket..." and "Face Value". "Long Long Way to Go" is a heavy damn song for a ten-year-old to listen to (repeatedly, on the Frankenstein walkman I'd pieced together from three or four other walkmans, while vacuuming my barf - I swear, mom, don't make me sit in the way back!- out of the family station wagon)[god I was a weird little kid].
posted by notsnot at 5:28 AM on February 15

Incidentally: I think I read somewhere that Phil Collins has of course heard of that passage from American Psycho, and thinks it's pretty funny.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:22 AM on February 15

I'm sure I read recently that his hands are messed up and he can't drum anymore without, I don't know, taping the sticks to his hands or something like that.
posted by pracowity at 6:41 AM on February 15

I like Phil Collins, and I like people who hold illegal lighthearted parades, and I especially like it when said parades are in honor of, say, Phil Collins. And I don't care if there is an aspect of irony in these people's motivations.

It is impossible for our monkeybrains to keep track of the 15 dimensional chessgame that an ironic enjoyment of something requires, so it doesn't bother. It just defaults to ACTUAL NO-RESERVATIONS FUN. There they are, having fun. They are fucking marching down the street, united under the banner of Phil Collins, playing music, boozing, and and if, IF, at some point in the chain of motivations that lead to this parade there was somebody who was only PRETENDING to like Phil Collins (but were they pretending? Or really were they just pretending to STOP pretending that they didn't like Phil Collins, because hot damn: the man was a hit machine, and he authored and performed some seriously hooky shit, and if you never air-drummed the fill in... oh wait, see, this is the 15 dimensional chess game) well, shit they are still having more than I will be having tonight.
posted by dirtdirt at 6:56 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

My 80s music druthers tended more toward the Cure and such, but one day in high school I got hold of a little video documentary of the recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas", and my life was kind of changed during the scene where Phil Collins cruises into the studio in a sweater vest over a short-sleeved shirt, sits down at a massive drum kit, and just KILLS IT. Ever since then, and despite some of his more cloyingly awful singles, he's been my homeboy. Anyone who can pull off a sweater vest while tearing it up so fiercely on a kit as big as a house is okay by me.
posted by padraigin at 7:03 AM on February 15 [2 favorites]

Face Value is such a great album. And I do mean ALBUM. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and many of the songs lead directly into one another or are related to each other so there is a unity when it is listened to in order.

Between Duke and Face Value, Collins managed to provide a pretty complete document of the emotional turmoil of a man whose wife had just left him. (Although, personally, my favorite tracks from this era are the b-sides and 3 X 3 tracks which were included on the original US vinyl version of Three Sides Live: Paperlate, You Might Recall, Me And Virgil, Evidence Of Autumn, and Open Door.)

I'm not a huge fan of late Disney-fied Collins. Both Sides, Dance Into The Light (which does have some great tracks, actually), and Testify... none of them really grabbed me the way his first three did.

I still keep hoping for a full Genesis reunion of Lamb Lies Down on tour... But at this point, I'm not holding my breath.
posted by hippybear at 7:23 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

I'm sure I read recently that his hands are messed up and he can't drum anymore without, I don't know, taping the sticks to his hands or something like that.

*nods* Something about a couple of the vertebrae in his neck or upper back -- on at least one of his hands, he can no longer close the hand to grip things. (Probably from something you can see in drum duet I linked - he had a habit of scrunching his head back and hunching his shoulders a lot when he played, and I always thought that made chirporactors everywhere have howling fits.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:47 AM on February 15

Should everyone in the Phil Collins parade wear a "Nonce Sense" t-shirt or would that be too heavy handed?

"Land of Confusion" is my favorite Collins song, followed closely by that one where he's Mad Max, and a ninja, and a cowboy. And whenever I hear "In the Air Tonight" I long to wear a pastel t-shirt with a white linen jacket and go without shaving. So Phil Collins: mostly superior to Sting as a pop artist and vastly superior, the both of them, to Bret Easton Ellis, I salute you.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:11 AM on February 15

I'm actually in San Antonio this week and stopped by the Alamo yesterday. While in the gift shop I saw a poster for a exhibit of 'The Battle of The Alamo', narrated by Phil Collins. I thought it was pretty random.
posted by daHIFI at 9:21 AM on February 15

This episode of This American Life really increased my respect for Phil Collins.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 9:53 AM on February 15 [1 favorite]

2. Every time I hear "In the Air Tonight," I want to turn it up so loud it turns my insides to jelly.

This. Though given how often that song also makes we want to drive really slowly at night, it might actually be a Miami Vice thing for me.

Also: fuck irony.
posted by Amanojaku at 11:31 AM on February 15

I used to live on Freeman Street.

I guess that means that I lived there before it was cool.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 12:33 PM on February 15

Queens needs a well armed Border Patrol.
posted by jonmc at 1:11 PM on February 15

I think you could get Brooklyn to help fund that. :-)
posted by Decani at 12:15 PM on February 16

Uzi Lover
posted by Grangousier at 12:34 PM on February 16