Genesis OP10 (or 20....)

Have you even heard their 70s output?

Post-Steve Hackett Genesis isn't Genesis.

(I haven't heard A Trick Of The Tail yet btw, hopefully a song or two there will be good enough to take a spot on the list)

What's with all the Genesis bashing here anyways? Not that it's hard for me to believe that lots of people dislike them, but I'm surprised that Geir is the only one to really be positive so far.
I can't stand their 80s and 90s material, for the most part, but the band still ends up ranking as one of my favorite groups of all time.

1) Stagnation Moon my long lost friend is smiling from above, smiling at my tears
2) Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers/In That Quiet Earth
3) Dance on a Volcano
4) Mad Man Moon But for the multitude that stand in the rain, heaven is where the sun shines
5) Blood on the Rooftops ...Venice in the Spring...
6) Dodo/Lurker Fish he got a hook in his throat, fish he got problems
7) Twilight Alehouse Just a drink to take my sorrow, just a drink and you can blast tomorrow, just a drink to make me feel like a man again
8) Let Us Now Make Love
9) Eleventh Earl of Mar
10) Riding the Scree (opening part)

Most of the Genesis bashers here know their 80s material only

1) "Which Way the Wind Blows" - Anthony Phillips (The Geese and the Ghost)
2) "Hands of the High Priestess I" - Steve Hackett (Voyage of the Acolyte)
3) "Sun in the Night" - Brand X (Morroccan Roll)
4) "San Jacinto" - Peter Gabriel (Security)
5) "Sisters of Remindum" - Anthony Phillips (Sides)
6) "Jacuzzi" - Steve Hackett (Defector)
7) "God If I Saw Her Now" - Anthony Phillips (The Geese and the Ghost)
8) "Moonshine" - Mike Rutherford (Smallcreep's Day)
9) "Humdrum" - Peter Gabriel (Peter Gabriel)
10) "For a While" - Tony Banks (A Curious Feeling)

I will stand up for "Domino" and "Land Of Confusion" any day of the week.

Peter Gabriel would deserve an OP10 of his own

Supper's Ready (of course)
Dancing With The Moonlit Knight
The Return of Giant Hogweed
The Battle of Epping Forest
The Cinema Show
Fly on a Windshield
The Lamia
Firth of Fifth
Watcher of the Skies
Hairless Heart

honourable mention: Duke's Travels/Duke's End

I love Yes too, but while Yes' suites tended to have both 2 and 3 minutes of jazz- or avante garde-influenced instrument wanking, Genesis managed to escape that completely.

That's total bullshit, people on ilm know their shit: I loved Genesis when I was 14 years old. I had the gatefold import edition of Nursery Cryme, ditto Foxtrot. And so on. Then I grew out of that stuff.

1) Stagnation
The opening is magnificent--Gabriel never overplays; humble, sad, maybe on a hill, the sun setting. The music is beautiful all throughout the song, but especially here at the beginning. The wandering jangle of the twelve-strings, the organ which gently moves the song into darker terrain. When Gabriel reemerges--from this part of the song onwards ("Wait, there still is time...") it just pours with emotion.

2) Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers.../...In That Quiet Earth
Pure power, both when its soft and especially when it's loud. The moody guitars and almost Morricone keyboard line of 'Unquiet', exploding into the fiery second part that is probably their finest instrumental. I used 'seraphic' in a review of this song once; perfect descriptor.

3) Dance on a Volcano
Regal, undeniable main melody; shreddin' ending. Very creative 7/8 rhythm in the verses: most 7 rhythms invariably end up with the trite BA-da-BA-da-BA-da-da BA-da-BA-da-BA-da-da form (c.f. Rush), but this one is da-da-da-da-da-dBOOMa (I think it's an accentuation on the 6.5th beat of each measure). I thought my record was skipping first time I played it, great effect.

4) Mad Man Moon
Maybe this one should have been higher. I think this is one of their most human songs, one that has the potential to penetrate deeply in the listener. The despair of unfulfilled dreams and failed love. The desert as the reality; the shakiness and relativity of perspective in life. It's a Gethsemane song, like man crying out to God and to everyone else, and hearing nothing. The solemnity of the final chords is devastating.

5) Blood on the Rooftops
Another great one, fantastic classical guitar intro. Genesis did quiet melancholy so well. What other color could one think of when listening to this song but grey? It matches the album cover so well. Comfortable detachment and dissociation through television images ("The Arabs and the Jews boy, too much for me. They get me confused boy, puts me off to sleep...", "Hypnotized, by Batman, Tarzan, still surprised...")

6) Dodo/Lurker Fish
Dodo: The funkiest thing Genesis ever came up with. I think it's better than Bowie's "Fame", and I love Bowie's "Fame". Somebody really needs to sample the base of this one, if it hasn't been done already. Lurker: Enigmatic lyrics continue, shifting to Oedipal riddle that actually kind of reminds me of I Think We're All Bozos: "Why does the porridge bird lay her egg in the air?" etc. I've heard the answer to the riddle is "a submarine". Also love the very brief chord change (like a musical dramatic pause) when Phil sings "...and a heart of stone." before reverting to the repeated riff.

7) Twilight Alehouse
Love the title. I always picture a large shack in the middle of a wide-open field at dark.

8) Let Us Now Make Love
Undermentioned; another bittersweet, bucolic song for Summer from their early days. Sound is poor, and Gabriel's lyrics are in totally over-the-top adolescent guy mode ("Please, my emerald goddess wash away the wound") (!!!!), but I love 'em anyway. Belts out the chorus with full conviction, too.

9) Eleventh Earl of Mar
Like "Dance on a Volcano", energetic album opener with powerhouse playing. Though arguably more well-rounded, with the inclusion of the acoustic, Hackett-led detour in the middle.

10) Riding the Scree (opening part)
Arguably Banks' finest moment, just fantastic. I've always thought of this like watching a professional figure skater at their peak; execution tightly controlled, one moments gliding around smoothly, the next doing 3 triple lutz' in a row. Or maybe a roller coaster, lifting one moment--then diving, tunneling, encircling.

Supper's Ready" is 23 minutes of wonderful melodic parts that change all the time, and not as much as 1 minute is wasted on one instrumentalist wanking his instrument (read: improvising). It is all fully composed throughout, one wonderful part after another all the time. I love Yes too, but while Yes' suites tended to have both 2 and 3 minutes of jazz- or avante garde-influenced instrument wanking, Genesis managed to escape that completely.

Yes favored unaccompanied solos over group-play relative to Genesis.
However, you seem to be implying also that Yes were improvisers, and this largely ain't the case. Take the amorphous, jarring, inaccessible bit like Steve Howe's guitar solo in "Sound Chaser"--this is a wholly composed segment (i.e., he would play it live the same way as on the studio recording), even though it sounds like it's an improvisation.

i do like "i know what i like in your wardrobe" and the "lamb lies down on broadway" single, though. AND THAT'S IT!!

Completely agree here. All in all, I find it kind of a retread of things they had done before. Fabulous chorus musically; lyrically, the song is rather laughable, as is Banks' solo. Towards the end, you can hear Collins sing something faintly--sounds like "lies" to me. I always loved that little bit.

I think they're first album has some really great stuff on it, actually. My favorites are "In Limbo", "One Day", and (of course) "In the Wilderness". I also like "A Winter's Tale", even though yes it is rather cheesy.

I'm waiting for some artist to come along and re-record the songs on that album in its entirety, and get it right. Or they could release the album WITHOUT the orchestra in the mix, which would generally be a vast improvement.

oops.

They mightn't ever have written or arranged a better song than "Stagnation", y'know. The pastoral vibe and the thick overdubs of 12-strings and the beautiful semi-ambient floating keyboard solo hang together in organic perfection. I always wish they'd done at least one whole album like that, they could afford to lose some of their more baroque fannydangle further down the line.

you can put together a full album of that stuff from trespass and nursery if you like though. also, check out anthony phillips solo records (the early ones) for tons of stuff like that, it's nice, if a bit samey after a while.

Oddly, the one providing the most "Trespass"-like material post-"Trespass" was probably the guitar player who was not yet in the band on "Trespass". A lot of Steve Hackett's songwriting contributions (and also a lot of his solo material) carry with it the same pastoral qualities that the music on the debut.

And if that isn't pastoral enough to you, you might as well just go for Fairport Convention's entire 1969 output instead. They were a major influence on "Trespass".

(Not the debut, "Trespass")

This one, for instance, was as late as 1976, but wouldn't have felt out of place on the "Trespass" album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01CnBGWvBpE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgiqFhFws58

And this one. Actually written by those two members who were not yet members of Genesis on "Trespass".

the production's quite different on Nursery Cryme and Trick of the Tail tho, but yeah the songs have some affinity to the Trespass era. The vocal harmonies on "Harlequin" are disorienting and a little queasy - I think of this as their "evil dusty attics" era rather than the full-on rural vibe of "Stagnation".

Need to check out Phillips' solo stuff.

Some of their B sides are their best songs! "Do the Neurotic" is awesome. And yet its the Bside to "in too deep" which is shithouse.

Genesis didn't do non-album b-sides back when they were at their best (pre-1980)

Regardless, "Do the Neurotic" is a bloody good song. so there.

I actually haven't heard it, but Genesis by 1986 were a rather boring AOR pop band, not the fantastic symphonic band they used to be in the 70s. Plus Genesis best songs were way too long for a single anyway. Their best moments are all 8 minutes plus in length.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZH17szuqIM

Give it a listen. I hate 80s genesis. This is totally not what you'd expect from that period. Well, I dont think.

OK its not proggy pastoral, but it is pretty nice (and instrumental).

OK I agree it's different but still has that very annoying mid 80s sound with big drums and those horrible digital synths/FM synths. But surely, it's not typical. Probably more for the kind of fans that consider "Los Endos" among their best work though (that track to me is just a pointless instrumental reprise that I consider to be the worst track on "A Trick Of The Tail")