Objectives #5: Put It On Again: Why I Love My Genesis Pin from Seventh Grade
I’ve been listening to Genesis since childhood, and their music never gets old for me
Ever love a band so much you wear one of their pins on your jacket? I haven’t done it in four decades, but I did so proudly back in the early 1980s in my childhood hometown. That was how several of my friends and I tried to show how “cool” we were in seventh and eighth grades in middle school—or what then was called junior high.
Most of us had multiple pins we would rotate wearing, or on special days we’d wear them all at once. Rock bands like Rush, Styx, and Yes tended to dominate, but for me, the greatest has always been Genesis. We would show off our pins at the school bus stop, at our lockers, or while loitering in the halls. It was like belonging to a club with each button a badge of honor.
Sadly, only one of my pins has survived from those days, but that scarcity has increased its sentimental value. The pin features the cover of the Genesis album titled Duke that came out in 1980. In addition to the album’s hit single “Misunderstanding,” another hit was “Turn It On Again,” a song about television addiction. Oddly, when I hear the song today, it seems applicable to our cultural addiction to social media. Though a reboot in today’s 24/7 media-saturated environment might need a title like “Turn It Off for Once.”
Even though Duke came out during an important time in my life, it’s not my favorite Genesis album. That’s because my love for the band began much earlier, during their progressive rock years in the 1970s before they moved to a more pop rock sound in the ’80s and ’90s. As the youngest of six children, my early childhood included nonstop music from the ’70s, and my three older brothers were the ones who bequeathed their love of progressive rock—and specifically Genesis—to me.
Genesis albums in the early 1970s had mysterious titles like Trespass, Nursery Cryme, and Foxtrot, and they often featured lengthy songs with cryptic lyrics. No doubt at the time I didn’t fully understand “concept” albums like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, but I grew to love the soaring vocals, hypnotic rhythms, and layered jams. Those symphonic sounds of vinyl on record players wafted through my childhood home for as far back as I can remember. You might say that for me, in the beginning was already Genesis.
One of my favorite songs from the early 70s was called “The Musical Box.” Fittingly, The Musical Box is also the name of a current Genesis tribute band whose concerts I have recently attended with several of those seventh grade, long-term friends of mine. Granted, the audience members for those concerts often comprise a sea of gray hair peppered with islands of baldness, but that doesn’t deter us from letting the old songs shepherd us back to our youth for a while.
Speaking of tribute, not only did my friends and I wear rock band pins to show our love back in middle school, but we would also memorize (through tracing) how to write the iconic letters for each band that appeared on their album covers. Then we would write those letters on each other’s notebooks, homework, or other belongings with great frequency. In one of my art classes, I even made a homemade Genesis pin in a beautiful script. If only I had that pin today!
Unfortunately, it didn’t survive my many moves since that time. Oh well, at least its visage appears in my mind every time I glance at my remaining Duke pin.
As years continue to pass, the Duke pin also reminds me of a key aspect of aging: If you’re lucky, a long, healthy life can contain several acts. The first act of Genesis as a band began in 1967 with Peter Gabriel as the lead singer, and their version of progressive rock achieved much acclaim through 1975. At that point, Gabriel decided to leave the band to pursue solo projects, and some questioned whether Genesis could continue. But band member Phil Collins quickly emerged as the new lead singer, and from 1976 through the mid-1990s the band’s more pop rock sound was incredibly successful (even if purists like me still prefer their earlier albums). May we all be as successful as the acts of Genesis.
On a related note, I suspect I’ll cherish my Genesis button—and continue listening to their gems—right up to The End. The reason? The music evoked by the pin is drenched in nostalgia. “Turn It On Again” is a 1980 song about addiction to television, but for me it will forever remain a song about friends and siblings addicted to the highs of “hanging out” with each other. Whenever I glance at the pin, it turns on the memories again.
Vincent O’Keefe is a writer and former stay-at-home father with a Ph.D. in American literature. His writing has appeared at The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Parents, Business Insider, and City Dads, among other venues. Visit him at VincentOKeefe.com or Bluesky @vincentokeefe.bsky.social or X @VincentAOKeefe.
Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.
Recommended reading on possessions:
“Clutter Is Wrecking Your Relationship” by Ashley Fike, Vice
“Persuading Halimah to… give it up” by
, about deciding what to do with a beloved bicycle“Letting Go of Sentimental Objects Is Hard. Here’s How to Start.” by Christina Caron, The New York Times
“I’m decluttering in midlife so my kids won’t have to when I’m dead” by Angela Epstein, The Telegraph
“In praise of lost items, lost time, and found friends” by
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Genesis has been unfairly lumped into the prog rock set, perhaps because of the cryptic titles and lengthy suites, and I'm not sure "Duke" and my personal favorite, "A Trick of the Tail," contradict that notion. But both seem to stake out territory of their own, making a case for Genesis as one of the great hybrid bands of the 70s & 80s.