Invisible Touch

January 30, 2021

Tonight we made an ice cream run and since I was driving I popped in my Invisible Touch CD.  My favorites on there are not necessarily the ones that became big hits for Genesis but the whole album continues to feel like it is really well done and something I enjoy listening to.  I would say it holds up well in spite of (or maybe because of?) its electronic drums and synths.  I was explaining to Elias that in the 80’s most pop music used synthesizers and electronic drum beats.  His favorite is the last track on the CD “The Brazilian” which is an instrumental.

Back in 1987 I was a senior in high school and one of my best friends was turning 18.  For his birthday his Dad bought him and a few of us friends tickets to the Invisible Touch Tour in the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis.  He drove us up on a Saturday and we checked in to the Union Station Hotel just across the street from the Hoosier Dome, all expenses paid.  We be-bopped around the hotel for a bit, ate dinner, and then made our way over to the concert. 

The stage was set up on one end of what was typically the Indianapolis Colt’s football field and our seats were just behind the stage and up several rows.  When Phil Collins was singing at the front of the stage his touring drummer Chester Thompson would be beating and banging away closest to us, but at one point Phil joined him at a second set of drums.

The stadium went black and the sound of African-like percussive sounds started to echo through the place.  Crowd noises began to swell and then Phil and Chester started their blazing fast synchronized runs of The Brazilian.  The light show was spectacular as banks of multicolored flood lights moved in 3 dimensional space and rotated 360 degrees in synch to the music.  It was entertainment at its finest with bodies pulsating and our senses being overwhelmed as we looked at each other like “are you kidding me?!”   

So back to tonight, we’re driving along and the song “In too Deep” comes on.  Anya is digging the ballads a bit more than the trippy prog-rock stuff and when Phil goes into his falsetto voice she expertly inserts her own falsetto (a la the Dr. Pepper commercial guy) with “It’s the sweet one!”  It fit in so well we all burst out laughing.  When we arrived home Anya jumped out of the car exclaiming “I just love everything 80’s!  The clothes, the music, the hair styles...”

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