...defending his love of Phil Collins

There are very elaborate and complex reasons to explain why I fell madly in love with the music of Phil Collins in the mid to late 80s. A lot of them had to do with living in Barbados and scarcity of rock, let alone roll, and forging my own tastes. There was also the ubiquity of Collins in music at that time. Either way, there I was, a huge fan of the Human Cabbage Patch Doll from the equivalent of junior high until university. (Perhaps more of my falling off with Phil Collins had to do with the really horrible Both Sides albums as it did with me realizing what a, well, twerp he could be).

I was thinking about this the other day when talking to a friend about the music we liked when we were in school. They were defending their love of some pop group and found it odd that not only did I once love Phil Collins, but that I would even admit to it, especially considering my current musical tastes (best defined as "Not Phil Collins. In fact, quite the opposite.")

"Ah," I said, "see there is a straight line between much of what I like and my love of Phil Collins." To wit:

• Phil Collins led me to discover Genesis. Even if it only was Invisible Touch, that album still had some mildly progressive moments.
• That led to exploring Peter Gabriel, even in his solo incarnation. He was using a lot of African rhythms, which got me listening more closely to Paul Simon, which meant I was listening more to albums than singles. That's a big jump right there.
• My love of Phil Collins led a friend of mine to lend me a copy of Genesis Live, which was way above what I could enjoy at that time, but I knew I liked it. So of course he started lending me a lot of other stuff.
• The more I read about Phil Collins, the more I got interested in him drum kit and they way he set it up. That got me interested in how music was made, both in the studio and on stage.
• Getting interested in how music was made in the studio led me to listen to a lot of the later work of The Beatles.
• Yeah, this them took me to Floyd, and Yes, and a couple of years listening to Kansas. I was loving the prog rock, and still did, but I wanted something out of it that was much heavier: enter King Crimson.
• At the same time, Phil Collins was doing a lot of collaborations with Eric Clapton. So yeah, got into Clapton, and then started listening to the old stuff. Well that opened the doors to everyone CLAPTON collaborated with. (see: every English band of the late 1960s and early 1970s)
  
• So I'm liking blues, progressive rock, and Beatles, and so my music is taking on darker tones. Enter techno via Depeche Mode and New Order, which then takes us to Joy Division.

Pretty much the only two popular musical branches that I listen to on a regular basis that aren't represented there are hip-hop and punk, and I COULD argue, if I wanted, that I got into those because I had been listening to so much other stuff.

So yeah, I could feel bad about liking the male Celine Dion, but I prefer to think that without him, I'd be going to see reunion shows of bands well past their prime, instead of being the lovable music snob that I am now!