Picked it up on the way home.
Got a carnitas burrito bowl too.
So far so good.

I was afraid this was going to sound like Yes, which I frankly dont have the constitution for.
I am so far pleasantly sailing along, and Gabriel's vocals at times sound almost glam.

So is half of this band what ended up becoming Mike + the Mechanics or was that some other guys?
Cuz Mike + the Mechanics are fucking terrible.

Asshole, I was going to do this in the new year after the 2008 EOY stuff died down.

Pardon me for not being terribly clairvoyant.

In all fairness, I probably wasn't going to start a thread about it. Proceed.

Their album "Selling England By the Pound" ain't bad.

Chuckle. I always wondered about the redundancy of the very first line in 'Silent Running' - "Can you hear me, can you hear me running?"

I'm pretty sure that only Mike Rutherford was the only one in Genesis. The others were all, like, greasers or something...

More like 1/8th, dude.

Haha. OK my bad.
For some reason I seem to remember them being touted as "the other half of Genesis" when they first came about in like late 85.

Still pretty awful tho.

So anyway, I really enjoyed this.
For whatever reason I guess I had built Genesis up in my mind to be some sort of difficult, challenging, "eat your vegetables" kind of music.
But I found this record at least to be really melodic and tuneful and not nearly as bloated and meandering as all the hallmark Prog cliches of the 70s would suggest that it was going to be. Sure there were Mother Goose snippets and a flute (I think) here and there, but nothing that sounds at all embarrassing or Spinal Tap Mach II.

So what's my next stop after this one? This is 1971, so I suppose this is pretty early on.
What is my cutoff point for Genesis records, noting that I can totally appreciate the more pop stuff like "Misunderstanding" and "Abacab" on their own merits, but absolutely not "Invisible Touch", "In Too Deep" and all the rest of that Bud commercial wackness.

Also, do they get to be the really challenging and difficult music I thought they were going to be? Part of me kind of had my heart set on a record I'd have to "decode" at some level.

God, I hate this band so much.

I think the proggy (soggy) Peter Gabriel version is even worse than the poppy Phil Collins version.

They are on a very, very short list of classic, canonized bands that I have zero appreciation for.

Don't listen to the neysayers.

You could go back to Tresspass from 1970 but I'd suggest proceeding to Foxtrot from 1972, then Genesis Live from 1973 and Selling England By The Pound also from that year.
Then dive into The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway from 1974 and the last with Gabriel in the band.

We'll continue on after you done these assignments. Keep in mind that Genesis without Gabriel becomes spotty and downright bad as we move forward.

Not to shortchange Prof. Rob Gordon's proscribed syllabus, but I'm guessing that Senor's cutoff point will probably be Abacab.

Oh yeah, it gets wretched soon after that. But that early Genesis prog is wonderful stuff. You'll have fun investigating.

Bolded for seconding.

Fun stuff.

My Genesis appreciation is kind of meandering....it took a friend who was REALLY into the Peter Gabriel-era stuff to expose me to it, and even then, there are still long passages I kind of forget. They're one band that medleys seem to work for (for me, at least), in that you can get several melodic highlights that would otherwise take an album (or several) to uncover. To me, yes, their earlier stuff is "difficult" to at least some degree.

If you're good with Nursery Cryme, though, then chronological is definitely the way to proceed. I find their peak starts around Selling England by the Pound, through Trick of the Tail, and Duke might be their last (approaching) great album.

i'm pretty much in agreement with what people have said here:

1) "Foxtrot" is a decent to great effort, with "Supper's Ready" one of their finer moments ~ or would that be finer 20-odd minutes? there are a few other good songs on there, but "Supper's Ready" is the shizz.

2) "Selling England By The Pound" might be my favorite record of theirs. it jams ("Dancing Out With the Moonlit Knight"), it's got great airy guitars by Steve Hackett throughout, it borders on fusion (the second half of "Cinema Show" with Phil Collins doing his best impersonation of Billy Cobham), it gets wordy and witty ("The Battle of Epping Forest") and you get a long, drawn-out keyboard thing on "Firth of Fifth." really good record.

3) "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" might be their best record. while the first disc is incredible, the second lags in a few parts. talk about wordy...and talk about attempting to decode a record ~ this would be the one to try and decode. i think i got as far as it's a journey...looking for one's identity. a lot of highlights on this record, including "In The Cage" and "Back In N.Y.C.," to name but two. you'll enjoy this one.

4) it took listening to the most recent remastered version of "Trick of the Tail" for me to fully enjoy it. GREAT stuff! it was also interesting to hear in the interview (i think) that "Squonk" was a bit influenced by Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" ~ or at least the drum part of the song. one of my favorites. as well as "Dance On A Volcano" and a few others. Phil is really in his Brand X/jazz fusion days here, drumming the shit out of some of those songs ~ like "Robbery, Assault And Battery," which is an otherwise goofy song at best.

5) "Wind And Wuthering" ~ i remember listening to this on vinyl and thinking it was mediocre at best. the new remastered version sounds MUCH better. it's not everybody's cup of tea, but would be worth coming back to after you pick up the others. i love "Afterglow" ~ makes me think of my wife.

6) "And Then There Were Three" is probably the least of the records i'm going to mention. there are good parts. i used to love "Down And Out" (the opening track), but i don't know if it wears well after repeated listens. about half of the songs are good, but the other half are a little iffy.

7) "Duke" ~ i don't really understand why this one is so highly regarded ~ by fans and the band alike. i think Tony Banks stated that it was only on this record that he noticed Phil becoming a "real" singer. i like the "Duke suite" of songs (including "Behind The Lines," "Duchess," "Turn It On Again," "Duke's Travels" and "Duke's End" (and i think "Guide Vocal," which is kind of lame)), but not much of the rest of the record.

8) "Abacab" sometimes gets a bad rap. but it's good and, yes, probably the last place you should stop (unless you want to pick up "Three Sides Live" ~ the live version of the song "Abacab" is much better played live, as they have two drummers going). i like all the songs except that stupid "Whodunnit" crap. if they would have put "Paperlate" on this record, instead, it would have been a great(er?) record. but no, Ahmet Ertegun has to come in and say "put 'Whodunnit' on the record." like Ahmet Ertegun knows anything...

enjoy!

It's really a shame that they probably won't ever hit these heights again...that reunion tour showed they still had the chops to play good music (ie., songs from before 1983)

Thanks to everyone posting in my thread here.
Given me wheelbarrows of insight.

All of Gabriel Genesis is remarkable. It's much more about nuance and depth than virtuosic jackoffery. It's rich and baroque, no question, and it doesn't fit every mood (you don't eat cheesecake for every meal), but the craft and obvious care put into every ounce of their sound is a great thing to behold. Not unlike the joy I take in bands like Steely Dan.

In recent years, I've come to realize that I actually like Duke and Acacab a whole lot on their own merits