Dukacab

In putting together a "mixtape" for a guys trip to Vegas I came across some old favorites and some of them stuck. I was amused by the stuff we thought was cool when we were young and I felt nostalgic listening to "The Cure", "The Jam", "Echo & The Bunnymen", "The Smiths". How we thought one band was "gay" when another one that sounded similar was cool struck me funny but we were kids after all. Kids don't know crap.

One thing that really stuck with me was my CD's of Genesis's "Duke" & "Abacab".

When the tune "Keep it Dark", the story of a man trapped by his fear who dreams of the world outside but is too scared to open the shades, came on the stereo one of my friends said "what is this?". I guess we didn't all listen to the same stuff back then.

As my Genesis CD's are now converted to MP3 and thrown together in a single folder the two became a mixtape of their own sorted by cut number and song title instead of by album. Call it "Abacuke" or "Dukacab". Whatever it is it takes two thematic masterpieces and creates a melange of messages that question issues of socioeconomic differences through a battle of good vs. evil intermixed with an examination of the insecurity we all possess inside.

Phil Collins, yes kids he had a career before going solo, belts out a series of emotionally wrenching hymns about those whose value is in their possessions and who ignore the damage caused to nature that surrounds us. The end result making him "feel like an alien, a stranger in an alien place". Followed by the lonely man who "is just waiting for someone to show" and deliver him from the purgatory that is his life.

Is life a battle of good versus evil or is it merely finding the balance in all of us the makes living OK?