Phil Collins

Here at long last is the entry around a solo artist from a well respected rock group that I never got around to typing about until today.
Phil Collins first came to my attention around 1978 when the Genesis "Then There Were Three" album came out with its hit single "Follow You, Follow Me" playing  on heavy rotation on the radio, following front man Peter Gabriel's decision to leave the band for good establishing his own solo career.It sure was a challenge to hold on to the old fan base who generally liked lengthy tunes with lots of words and a to die for stage show but they didn't just do it immediately they actually grew the fan base! 
Nobody had heard of a drummer becoming a front man and and lead singer before but hey someone had to do it!

By 1981 however Phil wanted to experiment more outside of the constraints of being in a band and so recorded what became the Face Value album which proved very popular featuring the hit singles In The Air Tonight, I Missed Again and If Leaving Me Is Easy.
Strangely enough until recently I never owned this album relying on his 1998 Hits album for these tracks but hearing a brand new specialist edition remastered from the analogue tapes was to be issued by the label Audio Fidelity I was intrigued although I had to ordered it from America as it was way too expensive over here.
I'd never heard Phil's cover of the Beatles number Tomorrow Never Knows and he handles it well.
This sounded really good showing just what improvements in the technology to convert analogue to digital for cd has moved on in the decades since cd was introduced.
Last week (18 Oct 2011)Amazon .com dispatched his 1982 Hello,I Must Be Going album that Audio Fidelity has just released which again being familiar with the singles such as the Motown cover You Can't Hurry Love,Thru These Walls and Don't Let Him Steal Your Heart away
In early 2011 Audio Fidelity issued No Jacket Required from 1985 which despite selling by the cartload I'd never owned either and as I really liked the singles from it such as Take Me Home, Sussudio, Inside Out and the blog titles One More Night a song US President Reagan liked apparently I thought I'd pony up for it.
It didn't disappoint and in some ways of the three I've heard it's the one I like the most.
It's funny how sometimes because an artist is like always on the radio you just fail to pick up their albums but that's what happened and I'm glad to have caught up with them in time.
I might picked up the AF issue of the But Seriously album of 1988 recently.