3/5 of Genesis, a portion of Fleetwood Mac, Big Country & Kid Creole

May 9, 2019 9:41 PM

The 1984 movie Against All Odds [trailer, 1m33s] featured a stand-out, Grammy-winning (for best score) soundtrack album with a Grammy-winning song and a lot of other great material. Side A [the song side, 24m51s]: Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) [Phil Collins] [MTV video, movie summary video (Ed. note: dear god Jeff Bridges was gorgeous!)], Violet And Blue [Stevie Nicks], Walk Through The Fire [Peter Gabriel], Balcony [Big Country], Making A Big Mistake [Mike Rutherford], My Male Curiosity [Kid Creole & The Coconuts] [video]

Side B [the score side, 20m02s (includes all the tracks)]: The Search (Main Title Theme), El Solitario, Rock & Roll Jaguar [not available], For Love Alone, The Race, Murder Of A Friend [not available][Larry Carlton (Steely Dan and many others)]

posted by hippybear (47 comments total)

I have some mixed feelings about Phil Collins, but that sad power-ballad is a timeless example of the genre.
posted by ovvl at 9:56 PM on May 9, 2019 [1 favorite]

I unironically love "Against All Odds", and it's the subject (in part) of a funny-poignant TAL segment about a woman who calls on Phil Collins for help in writing her own break-up song.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:10 PM on May 9, 2019 [6 favorites]

Ugh I ❤️ that song so. Didn't realise there was a film of the same name.

Thanks for this post.
posted by The Legit Republic of Blanketsburg at 10:22 PM on May 9, 2019

I know it's easy to pile on Phil Collins for some of his 80s output, but the man is one of the best drummers in rock history, and after he took over vocal duties for Genesis after Peter Gabriel was done, he somehow both filled those shoes and made them his own. At 3:20, witness a truly delightful tambourine performance.

And although it pains me to admit it, especially in light of Collins' work with Genesis, ovvl has it exactly right.
"Against All Odds" is power ballad perfection.
posted by vverse23 at 10:32 PM on May 9, 2019 [5 favorites]

I love early Collins Genesis, but if you're willing to go where he takes that band, every single album under his tenure is great. You just got to be on that pop trip with him.
posted by billjings at 10:55 PM on May 9, 2019 [9 favorites]

I love early Collins Genesis, but if you're willing to go where he takes that band, every single album under his tenure is great.

Every single Genesis album is a pure work of genius don't even get me started but not Calling All Stations which I want to like but I haven't been able to in however many years but damn, Genesis from start to finish was brilliant. I haven't done a true Mega Post in a very long while, but doing the entire arc of Genesis is tempting.
posted by hippybear at 11:12 PM on May 9, 2019 [16 favorites]

he somehow both filled those shoes and made them his own

Note that the other drummer in that video, pre-Chester Thompson, is Bill Bruford, resting between King Crimsons.

(Comment designed to annoy any Bruford or UK fans in the audience.)

I went to see True Stories the other day, and realised when I got there that it was part of a loosely 80s music-themed series of films, and that there are people who now fetishise the everyday life (celluloid films, cassette tapes, Phil Collins) of my teens and early twenties. I mentioned it to someone I still know from school, and we agreed that although it's inevitable that doesn't stop it feeling fucking weird.

(As the film came up, the projectionist fought to get it into focus and a storm of scratches and gate-hairs filled the screen, someone behind me unironically let out a "Wow!" I'm all for the essential limitations and distortions of the medium becoming an aesthetic all its own, and yet...)
posted by Grangousier at 12:58 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]

I had a copy of “Against All Odds” on 45, in the original sleeve and I couldn’t get 50 cents for it on eBay. Where were all of you then?
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

(Take A Look At Me Now) is a definitely an improvement from the original subtitle (How Do You Like Me So Far).
posted by fairmettle at 3:08 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

he somehow both filled those shoes

Well, he hired Chester Thompson to play drums live, I think
posted by thelonius at 3:13 AM on May 10, 2019

I love Phil Collins in all of his power ballad gooeyness. COME AT ME.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 3:21 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Chester Thompson

ah I see I was late with the hot buttery truth
posted by thelonius at 3:27 AM on May 10, 2019

Okay, sure, Phil Collins was pretty good there for a while, but he didn't even have the best song on the soundtrack. That belonged to Kid Creole and the Coconuts with My Male Curiosity, which might not be better than Lifeboat Party but it's right there with it.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:04 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Bill Bruford was also a dummer for Genesis live gigs before Chester Thompson. Bruford is on a couple tracks from Seconds Out (a *superb* live album).
posted by parki at 4:29 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

Excellent post, all the feels for this movie playing seemingly non-stop on HBO back in the day, and let's not sleep on its car chase scene.
posted by Caxton1476 at 5:04 AM on May 10, 2019

Unironic Against All Odds love +1. And there’s a bunch of other Phil Collins/Genesis stuff I like.

But I draw the line at Sussudio, OK?
posted by greermahoney at 6:00 AM on May 10, 2019

Phil Collins slagging on Michael Bolton is the best.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:32 AM on May 10, 2019

Gawd. I pretty much learned how to play piano with "Against All Odds" and Paul Simon's "Bridge over Troubled Water". And drove my family nuts playing them over. and over. and over. and over.
posted by notsnot at 6:44 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Against All Odds, the movie, is a loose remake of Out of the Past, an incredibly twisty and complicated noir classic with Robert Mitchum (the Jeff Bridges role), Kirk Douglas (the James Woods role) and Jane Greer as the femme fatale. It's a great movie in its own right, but lacks the soundtrack chops of this one.
posted by Naberius at 7:15 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

I love early Collins Genesis, but if you're willing to go where he takes that band, every single album under his tenure is great. You just got to be on that pop trip with him.

I was a Metallica/RATT/Dokken/Slayer listening 14 year old when my grandmother got me the "Invisible Touch" album for Christmas along with a walkman.

That album featured "Land of Confusion" and "Invisible Touch" both songs you could call Pop-ish.

But two tracks, bracketed between the pop stuff were absolutely mind-blowing to a kid who thought Genesis was a pop band for the olds and non-real posers - "Domino" and "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight".

My grandmother had no idea. But, that album sent me to the Electric Fetus and down a rabbit hole of prog rock - King Crimson, ELO, ELP, even Jethro Tull. My life changed because of that album.

You can slag on Collins post 86 work, and I am (mostly) right there with you. I don't know what happened to him - but it's nowhere near as good as pretty much everything he did before that. Honestly, though, his work through the 70s and early 80s was pure genius and I will face god and walk backwards into hell while saying that.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:19 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]

Chester Thompson

So, not the Chester Thompson who played Hammond organ for Tower of Power and Santana, then...
posted by slkinsey at 7:24 AM on May 10, 2019

So, not the Chester Thompson who played Hammond organ for Tower of Power and Santana, then...

Drummer for the Frank Zappa band with George Duke and Ruth Thompson, and then for Weather Report. Left WR after they hired Jaco - they didn't get along, musically, and, I suppose, maybe personally too. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea, after all.

Terry Bozzio tells the story of waiting to audition for Zappa. There were a lot of drummers ahead of him, and some of them were really very good. Half-joking, he said to the guy next to him, well, I hear Weather Report is looking for a drummer. And that guy told him no, that's where Chester Thompson went.

Then Bozzio's turn arrived; after he played, the remaining guys in line gave up and went home.
posted by thelonius at 7:47 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

that sad power-ballad is a timeless example of the genre.

I mean, it's no "Take My Breath Away." ;-)

I think what I love most about "Against All Odds," is Collins' vocal delivery. Never before or after would he sound more like a tortured leading man in a Douglas Sirk movie. The way his voice nearly cracks at "And you coming back to me is against the odds / It's the chance I've got to take" sounds like the epitome of the man in the middle of the Reagan years, still grasping at the hope that maybe it really was Morning In America.

My favorite cut off this record is Gabriel's "Walk Through The Fire," whose eerie synths—I'm guessing they're one of the Fairlights Gabriel started to use on 3—and conga beats sound like a bridge between Peter Gabriel 3 and So.

Also notable here is Michel Colombier's credit for the main theme and B-side cuts. Besides producing shitloads of scores for TV and movies at that time, Colombier also composed 1967's Messe Pour Le Temps Présent with Pierre Henry, a composition from which one of the movements, "Psyché Rock," was later turned into the Futurama theme.

Alex Karras (Paper Lion & "Mongo only pawn in game of life") as Hank Sully is my favorite bit from the movie, tho, it's definitely some peak Jeff Bridges, too.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:01 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

and made them his own . At 3:20, witness a truly delightful tambourine performance.
You are not kidding, that is great!
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:11 AM on May 10, 2019

My band covers two Phil Collins songs with no shame at all. If people wouldn't weep into their beers, I'd totally bust out some Against All Odds. (At karaoke I used to duet with the host on "Separate Lives" from White Nights. Now there's a tearjerker for you... with awesome harmonies.)
posted by wellred at 8:25 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

At 3:20, witness a truly delightful tambourine performance.

I mean, yeah, it's fine and all, but he's no Ray Cooper.
posted by the sobsister at 8:31 AM on May 10, 2019

White Nights

Also, along with Running Scared, one of the mid-80s productions distinguished as much by its soundtrack as by the actual movie.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:32 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]

If you get the chance, and you are this kind of nerd, Phil's autobiography is terrific. He comes off as a smart, self-effacing, sweet guy who is both sad and thankful. There are a bunch of great stories in there.

My favorite was how he somehow got hired to record congas for George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" - Phil was a struggling 20-year-old musician (and not especially a conga player!) and a huge Beatle nut so this was a big deal. Ringo was playing drums, this huge session at EMI studios (Abbey Road) with tons of people. Played all day, take after take, eventually got his 15 pounds and went home with bloody hands.

A few months later the record comes out. Phil picks up his copy - he's not in the liner notes! Listens to the recording and it is a different version of the song than the one he played on! Oh well.

Years later he is not just Phil the conga player - he's now PHIL COLLINS and as such he crosses path with and becomes friendly with George Harrison. At some point Phil brings up the session and wonders what happened, and of course, George is like, "Phil, it was 20 years ago - it was a big deal for you but just one day in a very complicated 1969 for me, I don't remember anything about it, sorry."

A few times over the years this topic of conversation comes up and George is increasingly baffled.

Finally, Phil gets a letter from George, with a tape. He'd been remastering All Things Must Pass and went back the original sessions, and found Phil's conga track and has included it with a prominent album credit on the new version! Phil's totally psyched. But! He puts on the tape and is horrified - the congas are there but they are just terrible! Clunky and graceless and amateurish. Phil is so embarrassed - he scrambles to contact George to ask him please, please not to release this version!

Turns out that George had actually not found Phil's congas. He had had another percussionist, Ray Cooper, come into the studio to record a conga part, as bad as he could make it, specifically to make this tape to mess with Phil.

You know you've made it when a Beatle spends that much time and effort to prank you.
posted by dirtdirt at 8:57 AM on May 10, 2019 [25 favorites]

Let me just second the recommendation of Out Of The Past. Directed by Jacques Torneur of Cat People fame, it's Robert Mitchum's best performance (with the possible exception of Night Of The Hunter), and features Kirk Douglas (in only his second role) as the heavy. Jane Greer as Kathy is the absolute greatest film fatale of all time. Against All Odds is a OK erotic thriller, but Out Of The Past is a stone cold masterpiece, and quite possibly the best film from the noir era.
posted by vibrotronica at 9:01 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Jeff Bridges now is a window into the future of all the blond leading-man Marvel cast.

He could totally have been Thor or Iron Man or Starlord.

I could equally see Chris Evans remaking the Big Labowski in a decade or two.
posted by bonehead at 9:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you get the chance, and you are this kind of nerd, Phil's autobiography is terrific. He comes off as a smart, self-effacing, sweet guy who is both sad and thankful. There are a bunch of great stories in there.

Grumpybearbride and I have two copies of it but haven't read it, because we went to an event at the 92nd St. Y to see Phil talk about it and, well, he came off as sad and bitter. Like, he is still angry about a bad Genesis live concert review that a college paper wrote. At the time he was so mad that he called the dude up to yell at him. It was just an overall distressing and depressing experience and totally killed my desire to have a beer with him.

We love his music but it turns out that, quite often, the less you know about people, the better.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:17 AM on May 10, 2019

It's been a while since I've seen this movie but I do remember Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward looking like a couple of sweaty/oily sex-gods in a Mayan ruin at some point. I'll join the chorus of folks recommending Out of the Past, a really great film noir on every level.

"Against All Odds" is one of my favorite Phil Collins songs. I love how, in this and "In The Air Tonight", he manages to make the drums into a compelling and expressive solo instrument, without getting in the way of the song. I don't think anybody else does that the way he could.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:20 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Pretty sure I learned that Phil Collins tune on the piano, my teacher's last gasp efforts to keep a teenager interested in music. Richard Marx (yeah, that one) was also in my repertoire. I am a Phil Collins fan, but not of his power ballads. #nonemore80s
posted by SoundInhabitant at 10:55 AM on May 10, 2019

"Against All Odds" is one of my favorite Phil Collins songs.

Me, previously, on my favorite Phil Collins songs.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:57 AM on May 10, 2019

Also, along with Running Scared, one of the mid-80s productions distinguished as much by its soundtrack as by the actual movie

I just watched this movie for the first time recently and was surprised how much of the imagery was still so very familiar to me entirely due to the Michael McDonald "Sweet Freedom" music video, which I must have watched dozens of times back in 1986.

(The movie itself is pretty meh—an obvious attempt to ride the wave created by Beverly Hills Cop from two years prior, but with too little comedy and action scenes that were just kind of dreary. The only time the film pops is when Hines and Crystal go on vacation in Miami and start to go native. I was hoping the rest of the film would be about these two ex-cops running a beach-side bar and eventually the Chicago criminals would show up in town and our heroes would have to save the day. But no—they just end up going back to Chicago.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:14 AM on May 10, 2019

Jeff Bridges now is a window into the future of all the blond leading-man Marvel cast.
Maybe Jeff and Phil could flip the script and have Jeff sing some songs for a Phil Collins movie.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:45 AM on May 10, 2019

an obvious attempt to ride the wave created by Beverly Hills Cop from two years prior ...

(Entirely tangential to the topic of this post, but whatevs, there's a 1992 Matlock episode called "The Abduction," which takes Matlock to LA in search of a kidnapped friend and his interactions with the LAPD and his whole fish-out-of-water/maverick-detective-in-a-strange-land shtick is a straight up ripoff of Beverly Hills Cop, even to the climax of Matlock leading the LAPD to the bad guy's gated mansion where's there's a shoot-out on the grounds followed by an indoors showdown between Matlock and the bad guy just before the cops rush in and arrest everyone. Against all odds, the whole thing is OMG hilarious.)

I saw Running Scared in the theater and the Miami scenes are the only ones I even vaguely remember.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:28 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

I'm a little shocked that, with the discussion of Collins Genesis (and particularly WRT Collins taking over vocal duties from Peter Gabriel), no one has mentioned "Mama." I've sometimes described it as Collins' major attempt at making a Peter Gabriel song, which is not quite the same thing as saying that Gabriel would have ever performed it (AFAIK, he hasn't). I saw it live and it was even more striking.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:38 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

P.S. a previous comment I made about "Mama."
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:42 PM on May 10, 2019

the last (yeah, only) time I saw Genesis live one guy in the audience took the opportunity during a brief pause in Phil's drum solo to yell, very loudly, "DO IT PHIL"

anyway,

I haven't done a true Mega Post in a very long while, but doing the entire arc of Genesis is tempting.

DO IT HIPPYBEAR
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]

Weirdly, the perfect Genesis album for me - I mean, if I think "I'd quite like to listen to a Genesis album", it's the one I'd reach for - is Trick of the Tail. I suspect opinions vary somewhat.
posted by Grangousier at 5:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Also I find myself in the early hours of the morning watching the Genesis 1973 live video on YouTube , and remembering that I've felt for a long time that a Willow Farm extracted surgically from Supper's Ready is one of the great lost glam-rock-era singles. I mean, I've felt that since I first heard it, probably on Tommy Vance's show in about 1978.
posted by Grangousier at 6:35 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

A Trick Of The Tail is Genesis doing another Peter album only after Peter left. It's a pretty genius piece of work, it perfectly captures the quirkiness and progness of, say, Nursery Cryme or Foxtrot, with Phil singing nearly in Peter's style all across it. It's wonderful and great fun.

I'm overly fond of Duke, really. But that was the beginning of Phil musically whining about his failed relationships in public, a vein he mined musically and lyrically basically until he retired. I think Genesis is probably their best late-period album, but I find much to love about all their releases, even the very first one which usually isn't included when people think about Genesis.

Interestingly, Against All Odds is one of the few failed-relationship songs that Phil had success with that he didn't write.
posted by hippybear at 6:38 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

The thing about Trick of the Tail is that before that point, the mystique of the vocalist ensured that everything got attributed to Gabriel anyway. TotT is the totality of the not inconsiderable other talents in the band, and is, to me, strangely purer. Dance on a Volcano just seems like purer Genesis than anything they'd managed before.

That is to say, about an hour ago, in my cups, when Gabriel got to the line "Selling England by the pound", I suddenly felt very emotional. But that's Brexit, I suppose.
posted by Grangousier at 6:46 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]

Grangousier: In an ideal world I'd have you over to listen to the entire catalog in 5.1 surround and we'd get deep into our cups and cry and laugh to Genesis for hours. In an ideal world.
posted by hippybear at 6:19 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

nterestingly, Against All Odds is one of the few failed-relationship songs that Phil had success with that he didn't write.

Pretty sure he wrote it. Are you thinking of “Separate Lives”?
posted by dirtdirt at 4:00 PM on May 11, 2019

Oh shit, you're right! He did write Against All Odds. Thanks for the correction.
posted by hippybear at 4:38 PM on May 11, 2019