Indie Prick Digest Emo's Home by the Sea by Sebastian Stirling       Everyone seems to have their own theory on the origins of emo music. Some people say Sunny Day Real Estate started it. Some people say Rites of Spring started it. Some people say all music is emotional, so what's the purpose of classifying it.       I understand these claims to a certain degree. Sure, the music that most current emo bands plays sounds a great deal like that of Sunny Day Real Estate and some of the early DC bands. But that's not where the emotion came from. The emotion came from a land of confusion, a land that we all were inhabitants of at one point or another during our musical lives.       Yes, my friends, I'm talking about a land where Phil, Mike, and Tony ruled. The land of Genesis. "What?!?!" you say. "Genesis wasn't emotional." Oh, but you're wrong.       Sure, their output with Peter Gabriel in the band was largely progressive rock, but once Genesis was slimmed down to three members, with the album And Then There Were Three, the emotional movement started. I know it may have appeared that with Phil having greater control over the writing it turned into bland radio pop, but that was just the veil for something that the people weren't ready to handle: their emotions.       With the last track on And Then There Were Three, Phil asked the listeners "I will follow you, will you follow me?" This was Phil saying that he was ready to show the listeners just how much he could reflect their emotional spectrum, but that he needed them to be willing to come along and support this new musical movement.       On the follow-up, Duke, Phil was "alone again tonight," exemplifying how even though Genesis' music was the culmination of human emotion, no other bands were willing to put their souls up on stage for the world to see. On Abacab, Phil journeyed deeper into the crevices of human existence and found that "there's no reply at all" for all of the questions he had asked his heart. He contemplated "keeping it dark," but the emotional movement wasn't something that he could simply give up.       After a live album, Genesis returned with Genesis, which had Phil a little more tenuous about the emotional movement. He was still embracing it, even though his better judgment might tell him otherwise (shown in this line from "That's All" - "I could leave, but I won't go, though my heart might tell me so"). The album's centerpiece was the intense "Home by the Sea." Images of sorrow, pictures of delight - things that go to make up a life." In this line, Phil summed up the dichotomy of joy and sadness that the emotional movement was all about.       Surprisingly, Genesis hadn't reached their peak until their piece de resistance came out in the form of 1986's Invisible Touch. The four songs of the first side are simply musical bliss in its purest, most emotional form. "Invisible Touch" is the document of Phil finally finding someone who can fully appreciate his dream of emotional music. "Tonight Tonight Tonight" was a truly haunting song depicting Phil's struggles against his emotionless oppressors. Nothing could top "Land of Confusion," however, as its urgency and upfront emotion made it the anthem for this movement. "In Too Deep" would set the stage for emotional ballads to come; stating how there was only so much Phil could take.       There was also a second side, but no one could manage to stop listening to the first long enough to hear it.       Alas, after Invisible Touch, Genesis took a great deal of time off before coming back with We Can't Dance, an album rejecting both the house music craze that was in vogue at the time, but also the emotional registry that could no longer thrive in the musical culture. It was a sad day for emotional music, but soon a new movement would spring forth out of the underground independent rock scene. In a way, saying they couldn't dance was a sign that they wouldn't be able to partake in this.       You know this movement as "emo." But now, you also know who helped set the stage for it.       Mad props to Chris White for giving me the idea for this column.