Please afford me this brief opportunity to praise Gino Vannelli before burying him. The impossibly good-looking Italian-Canadian pop rocker—I would gladly change my sexual orientation for the chance to push my nose into his Tom Jones-quality (and no doubt subtly perfumed) chest pelt—was responsible for the slinky “People Gotta Move,” which is less song than sex lube and undoubtably the best disco number to emerge from the Great White North. Why it’s even better than Gino Soccio’s “Try It Out” or Erotic Love Band’s “Love Disco Style.” And he also bequeathed us the underrated disco number “Powerful People” and the great Yacht Rock power ballad “I Just Wanna Stop.”
But something unspeakably terrible happened on Gino’s fourth outing, 1976’s The Gist of The Gemini. Disco was at its prime but did Gino give us disco? Well he does on the jazz-fusion-flavored dance track “Fly Into the Night,” which is no “People Gotta Move” but is the only listenable track on the LP. What he does have on offer on The Gist of The Gemini are a few execrable (and inexcusably heavy-handed) ballads and—this is the kicker—a whole lot of progressive rock. Yes, you heard me right, progressive rock. And this at a time when prog rockers were beginning to scatter in the wind, routed by disco and punk.
Why would Vannelli march straight into the desperate mob of prog rockers moving in the direction of pop with the almost eighteen minute, six-part “War Suite,” which is pompous and overblown even by progressive rock standards? And speaking of standards “War Suite” doesn’t have any—it’s literally the least savory example of prog bombast I’ve ever suffered through. Which is a strong statement, what with Emerson, Lake & Palmer out there. It’s true that American prog rockers like Styx and Kansas were at the height of their powers, but they played melodic prog lite, which “War Suite” most definitely isn’t. You won’t find a “Come Sail Away” or “Carry on Wayward Son” on The Gist of The Gemini. What you’ll find instead is a pop singer with dance inclinations possessed by that demonic entity named Keith Emerson.
And have I mentioned that Vannelli should be legally barred from writing lyrics? Opener “Love of My Life” is synthesizer-heavy quasi-disco and while the rhythm is right there’s no escaping the string of vapid cliches that come pouring out of Vannelli’s mouth. When he isn’t “sinking in the bayou of your love” he’s singing “You broke the wings of a weary vagabond/And I’m stranded on the island of your love/You are the fruit of my Amazon/Love of my life I’m no good on my own.” I may not think much of brother Joe Vannelli’s in-your-face synthesizer solo, but at the very least it has the therapeutic benefit of shutting Gino up.
“Ugly Man” is ear torture—a cocktail lounge horror on which Gino overemotes, pouring out heart and soul like so much dirty bathwater while tossing off mind-bogglers like “Oh no man is born a starless sky ‘neath his naked hide.” The guy isn’t an Italian-Canadian. He’s John Donne gone mad. And this to the accompaniment of brother Joe, who pounds on the piano keys with what sounds like a small sledgehammer. At about the halfway mark strings and horns make their entrance and the pomposity factor increases exponentially. Oh, and the ugly man? It’s Gino himself!
The upbeat pop rocker “A New Fix for ‘76″ is, believe or not, an anti-LSD screed, and comes at a rather late date if you ask me. Lines like “And now that psychedelia’s gone when the hell ya gonna face reality boy/We can’t be that asinine to think that nineteen sixty-nine was the way it should be” are a hoot, but the killer lines, the lines that prove that Gino is a true poetic anti-genius, go “And now whether our hair’s short or long/The issue is not really if it’s right or wrong/But as long as it’s clean.” What can you say about a flabbergasting lyric like that? Other than it should have been used in an advertisement for Vidal Sassoon shampoo?
“Omens of Love” finds Gino once again in torch ballad mode. He’s not belting it out this time, thank God, but the song is painful nonetheless. You get more bad lyrics—I don’t have the slightest idea what he means by ”I pour myself in your virgin veins,” although it sounds disagreeable—and an award for lyrical incoherence should be awarded to the lines, “The storm has passed/Deep inside of me/Crushed by the calm of my insecurity.”
“War Suite” opens with the instrumental “Prelude to the War,” on which Joe Vannelli once again pummels the keys with iron fingers before the whole thing goes Wagnerian on you, complete with tympani, martial march tempo, and the dour singing of the John McCarthy Choir. Things perk up for a moment, then the choir and attendant histrionics return. I’m betting this one would have been a smash hit in Siberia. It’s followed by the fast-paced instrumental “The Battle Cry,” on which bro Joe really whips things into odorific prog froth, Keith Emerson-style, on the synthesizer.
The equally portentous “War Cry” opens on a heavy note with Gino asking if you would go off to war before Joe Vannelli kicks the song into a synthesizer frenzy, and if it came down to listening to this or being blown to smithereens by a 500-pound bomb I’d opt for the latter. “Carnal Questions” is a synth-funk number that has Gino returning from battle “a post-war eunuch,” kind of like Kenny Rogers in “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” Sings Gino, “The question is plain/Could our love still remain/Without its carnal ecstasy?” It’s a tough question, that, but speaking solely for myself, I’d still love him—there’s just no leaving that aromatic chest pelt.
Instrumental “After the Last Battle” is a symphonic affair meant, I suppose, to be elegiac, but lucky for us the elegy only lasts two minutes. “To the War (Reflection)” has Gino asking us to look at ourselves, when he should really be looking at himself and his questionable life decisions, especially the one that led to this abomination. “War Suite”? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And you can say that again.
“Summers of My Life” is a pop number of no distinction and has little to do with Gino reflecting on his various beach experiences—rather it serves as a coda of sorts to “War Suite.” “The sea is sad the world is stray,” he sings, “The love of earth has passed away/And war after war how we fail and ignore what we defend/And soon it will end.” Unfortunately it doesn’t end soon enough—the album that is.
The Gist of The Gemini is one of the most inexplicable albums I’ve ever heard. Here we have a guy capable of writing great disco tunes who opted instead to work to his weaknesses by penning overheated ballads and a virtually unlistenable song suite about the pointlessness of war. I can’t escape the suspicion that this was Joe Vannelli’s album, one that reflects his interests and not his brother’s, and how he managed to talk poor Gino into following his vision is beyond me. Mesmerism maybe.
I would give this baby a richly deserved F if it weren’t for that “And now whether our hair’s short or long/The issue is not really whether it’s right or wrong but as long as it’s clean,” which will forever crack me up. And if he hadn’t given us “People Gotta Move,” a piece of advice he should have heeded. Dancing beats thinking hands down, especially when you’re dealing with an artist who can’t think. Someone should have taken Gino aside and slapped this album right out of his head, but no one did. And this is what we got. War is hell.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
