100 Great Songs to Publish a Book to, #68: Genesis, Ballad of Big

1978’s …And Then There Were Three… is not widely regarded as the best Genesis album, but it was my first; the point at which I discovered the band.  I remember clearly at the time how fans complained that it was “the worst thing Genesis has ever done.”  To me, it was one of the best things I’d heard up to then, and I kept muttering to myself: “If this is the worst thing they’ve ever done, then how good is their other stuff?!”  Ballad of Big tells a typical Old-West-type story set to very un-Old-West music, of a cowboy who is goaded into taking on a bet to drive a herd over a plain.  Things do not end well for Big Jim.

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