Did Genesis ever do anything good?

Also, they had lots of good single in the Collins era.

And I sheepishly admit to not entirely hating "Mama," despite my arguably better judgement.

Selling England is a really good album. I haven't listened to it for years.

I'd say 1/3 to 1/2 of the Gabriel era stuff is great .. much of the rest of it is a bit yawnsome, but occasionally worthwhile.

consensus is everything past wind and wuthering is daft, most of it before that is fairly good.

for the collins era, any of the three slick records [abacab, duke, s/t] should be easily had for a dollar on vinyl if you keep an eye out, and you can make up your mind that way. i imagine if you're sufficiently immune to critical norms to enjoy the police, you've got about a 50% chance of really digging some of the album tracks on those records. for example, having not listened to the s/t [the one with 'mama'] since high school, when i put on side two a month ago after sifting through a recent estate sale pile, a huge smile came across my face during the last track, a falsetto ballad with a weird bass pattern and lyrics apparently about racial harmony.

i mean, record geeks are going to have a natural advantage at enjoying pop records with prog edge and new wave vibe made by really well-trained musicians, i think, and thus a phil collins genesis record has much more to offer than, say, the album tracks off a loverboy or journey or even latter day earth wind & fire.

as fer the stuff earlier than that ... um, peter gabriel had some interesting costumes and their theatrics were kinda cool. the music does nothing for me, sorry.

I'd submit the Collins era is best sampled through Duke.

But hell, even the crap-fest Invisible Touch has a classic or two amongst the talus ("Domino" and "The Brazilian").

I would suggest "Nursery Cryme" as the pick from the Gabriel-singing rekkids. It has a bunch of great tunes ("Seven Stones", which is my favourite genesis track, "Fountain of Salmacis", "Nursery Cryme" etc), hardly any duff tracks (only that naff thing w/phil singing, I forget the title) That weird pop song-meets english church hymn thing they used to do is really strong on it, and there's also this complete fucked-upness in the lyrics, which is kind of perversely appealing. The production is really ratty and thin, which contrasts nicely w/the church-orch pomp they were trying to do w/the tunes. The whole thing has this air about it that I really like to hear, but don't hear very often - a band just overreaching their abilities. It's fucking great.

I'd try Selling England... first if I were you, Dr.C

Just steer clear of their 80s and (particularly) 90s pop albums, who are usually crap save for the occasional album track epic.

1 - Fly on a Windshield
2 - Can-utility and the Coastliners
3 - The Musical Box
4 - Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
5 - Duke's Travels
6 - Dance on a Volcano
7 - Back in NYC
8 - Illegal Alien
9 - The Carpet Crawlers
10 - The Cinema Show

Maybe not, but every one of these makes my day any time.

I've only heard two of the Gabriel era lps. I still have never heard Lamb Lies Down. I really need to pick that one up sometime. But "Musical Box" is I think my favorite of what I've heard. Nice to see it high on JP's list!

you mean depeche mode covered a genesis song? ;-p

previous to that record it seemed a much more richly acoustic palette, in a more consistent way, although Rutherford's 'foot pedals' is an intriguing approach to bass playing too i suppose

genesis records from that time almost seem to demand repeated listening (with the rewards there more for those dedicated repeat listeners perhaps ?) -- the songs are pretty enough, but the investment of time, however many times.. that 'epic' thing, like long form classical music.. when i do have the time old genesis records transport me to a younger time in my life when i had more time to listen to a smaller collection of records. Lots of posters here have different favourites from the first phase. Is that a reflection of most peoples' tolerance for 'a little bit of genesis' and is that based on the amount of time people have to actually put into that small number of seemingly 'big' records ?

ok, the Collins incarnation recognised the holy grail as the consice pop song, maybe added some frills and nod to stage bombast and times of yore, but pulled back to 'art pop' i suppose it was called at the time, as record by record they boiled down to more standard songwriting practises (eg ABACAB as artful insight or magician-tells-all in actually pedestrian industry-standard construction of standard pop song)

they always seemed like a fearfully ambitious bunch of brainstormers, possibly slightly rattled by the success of pink floyd, roxy music and possibly even VdGG. Gabriel suppossed quest for 'cred' always seemed a somewhat cynical pose, even if i like elements of his 2nd, 3rd and 6th solo lps, and his measured adoption of a quite different minimalist approach, even if he's really a '70s late-bloomer electonic singer-songwriter
Collins is at least straight up and wide-boy-funny in that Mojo feature when claiming with typical artful-dodger brashness that despite all the manoeuvrings, it was he that untimately achieved some sort of Richard III music-coup springing from his involvement in what he'd once thought of as "a band of toffs". Ok he would have been the hungriest, and he admits that he waited for his moment and soaked up all the ideas. For this Mojo interview he admits [reflecting on the splinterings and solo albums] "[looking back, out of all of them, I guess i've won]". Well at least he's honest.

genesis intrigue me as a bunch of in-fighters. Reading Mojo didn't give you the feeling they still hung out much at all, as though water under the bridge had stymied that. I think their career-ist trajectories are interesting to reflect on and irreconsile with their early art-stance. Often more so than much of the music.

Incidentally Doc, have you (or anyone else for that matter) tried this little curio yet? It looks as if it might be interesting!

Some great stuff upthread - i'm reading with interest.

If it wasn't for their later, and better, material, nobody would have been familiar with "Sour To Turns To Sweet" at all....