Lost And Found

You won't find me painting on this album often, possibly never again. Genesis' "Selling England By The Pound" is perhaps the most important record in my musical history. Here's why.

Back in school, I used to go to independent used record stores in Santa Monica quite frequently. I'd spend hours. I got lost flipping through the bins looking for new music to throw on the stores' players. I didn't mind the sweaty headphones.

Record Surplus on Pico was one of the best because it was huge and well laid out. They had to create a limit to the number of records you could take to the players probably because of me. I'd take stacks of 20 or so that I'd never heard of before and skip through a few tracks. Hours, man. Hours.

I loved Peter Gabriel's solo work in the '80s. "Big Time" and "Sledgehammer" had such great videos on MTV, ahh those were the days. So I always looked in the G's. Genesis was right after Peter and one time a copy of "Selling England By The Pound" was in Peter's section. I got confused because he was on it. See, I didn't even know he'd been in that band before.

The album was nothing short of a revelation (sorry for the biblical pun) and I told my friend Michael about it. He and I got into "classic rock" music at the same time and branched off in the same direction towards Pink Floyd and prog rock. He flipped over the album and took his adventure incredibly deep into the bowels of prog rock, finding groups like Can, The Nice, and King Crimson. I found Tangerine Dream which eventually led me into electronica. Michael also took off towards psychedelia, getting lost finding greats like Jefferson Airplane. Their "After Bathing At Baxter's" is another album vital to my musical aesthetic. I only hope Michael can find his way again.

So besides The Beatles' "Revolver", this album is pretty much it. And I still love listening to it. In my music, of Genesis' albums with Gabriel, I have it, "Foxtrot" and "Live" on CD as well as vinyl. I just entered a bunch of my vinyl to my online collection at Rate Your Music, which was why it occurred to me to paint this piece. I'd kept this beat up copy separate since I was in high school because it was the next album I was going to paint on back then. It's gotten lost and found along with me.

I'm glad I got around to it today now that I'm lucky enough to get lost in creating to honor that which I got lost in devouring.

Peace.