From the oven to the table: share your Genesis story!

Quote from Gabble Ratchet

my only source of comfort was the five-knuckle-shuffle as I crooned to Ripples in my back- bedroom and fantasied about those sixth form goddesses that, true to the song, sailed away and never came back or if they did, it was only to look scornfully down their noses at me which just made me rush back to my bedroom again in seek of...erm...more of the same.

Mate.... a little too much information at the start, there!

I understand Ripples to be about an old woman remembering her youthful years. Just how long had these girls of your been in the sixth form?!

I'm joking of course. Despite the writer's intentions, a song can be interpreted by the listener however they wish. By the way, re the C90 tapes - with Genesis and any other band who did very long albums, I used C60s.

I think, I have told this story before, but I didn`t know Genesis at all (except for Carpet Crawlers and Follow You Follow Me) until a friend of mine played to me the third side of the Three Sides Live album, which literally blew me away. It was on January 31st 1983. I can still recall the day, because he borrowed me the album and I recorded it on cassette. I used to write the recording date onto the sleeve. For the next two years, I discovered all of their albums and listened to almost nothing else. As I didn`t have much money at that time, I could only buy a new album every one or two months. So it took some time to complete my collection. I have played all these albums to death during that time.

I have been listening to music for all my life, but no other band ever had such an impact on me. And it it is still there 35 years later.

A story I have shared before…

As an impressionable 13 or 14 year old, my musical tastes tended to mirror those of my friends and I was content listening to the likes of Rush, Supertramp, Led Zeppelin, ELO, Black Sabbath, Nazareth, The Stones and a few other bands that most people would consider classic rock.

I still like all of that music.

And then it seemed as if overnight I had missed a memo, and all my friends were praising the likes of Motorhead, Judas Priest and ACDC – and everything else we’d been listening to up until then was suddenly deemed inferior.

I didn't share their newfound enthusiasm for headbanging music nor their dismissive view of the music we'd been listening to.

This spurred me on a journey to find my own music, things that I discovered on my own. I started listening to late night music programs where they would talk about bands and play new releases in their entirety.

And I started discovering bands that I felt truly reflected my own individual interests and taste – stuff like Genesis, Yes, Strawbs, Traffic and Santana.

The first time I recall hearing Genesis on the radio was 1978.

They played a couple of songs off the new album (“Deep In The Motherlode” and “Follow You Follow Me”).

I specifically recall saying to myself, “Now, that is a singer I can listen to.”

It might have been a day or two later, I went out and bought ATTW3; fell in love with that album (I still do) and started working my way backwards.

I told this story on the old forum. It's a bit weird. The first Genesis song I ever heard was Follow You Follow Me. I was passionate about it & still am. But for whatever reason it didn't inspire me to buy any albums. So I started with becoming a fan of Phil & then Peter. I remember when Abacab came out. I was intrigued by the story of the title but again I didn't buy it. Invisible Touch came out. I loved the videos. I can't even remember when I bought the album, but I must have, unless my husband brought it with him from England when he moved here in 1993 (he saw them in 1977; it was the first concert he went to). Anyway then came No Son Of Mine. WOW. I bought the CD single & the CD. To this day We Can't Dance remains my favourite Genesis album. Then of course they split up, or so I thought. I continued to follow the careers of Phil & Peter (we saw Peter in 1994). Somehow or other we had all the post- Gabriel albums & I listened to them & liked them but they weren't a big deal. Then finally when Sum Of The Parts came out I thought 'I need to watch this' & sat there with a big stupid grin on my face the whole time. It was the first time I had ever heard any Gabriel era Genesis. I am aware that many fans are unhappy with that documentary but it was the catalyst for me. I went & bought the rest of the albums & more solo albums, etc. For whatever reason they suddenly became very important. I can't explain it better than that. My knowledge remains limited compared to many people on this board & I am still reluctant to give too many opinions on songs which I am still getting to know. We saw Steve last year. I'm getting there.

Quote from FeelItComing

I told this story on the old forum. It's a bit weird. The first Genesis song I ever heard was Follow You Follow Me. I was passionate about it & still am. But for whatever reason it didn't inspire me to buy any albums. So I started with becoming a fan of Phil & then Peter. I remember when Abacab came out. I was intrigued by the story of the title but again I didn't buy it. Invisible Touch came out. I loved the videos. I can't even remember when I bought the album, but I must have, unless my husband brought it with him from England when he moved here in 1993 (he saw them in 1977; it was the first concert he went to). Anyway then came No Son Of Mine. WOW. I bought the CD single & the CD. To this day We Can't Dance remains my favourite Genesis album. Then of course they split up, or so I thought. I continued to follow the careers of Phil & Peter (we saw Peter in 1994). Somehow or other we had all the post- Gabriel albums & I listened to them & liked them but they weren't a big deal. Then finally when Sum Of The Parts came out I thought 'I need to watch this' & sat there with a big stupid grin on my face the whole time. It was the first time I had ever heard any Gabriel era Genesis. I am aware that many fans are unhappy with that documentary but it was the catalyst for me. I went & bought the rest of the albums & more solo albums, etc. For whatever reason they suddenly became very important. I can't explain it better than that. My knowledge remains limited compared to many people on this board & I am still reluctant to give too many opinions on songs which I am still getting to know. We saw Steve last year. I'm getting there.

Sounds kind of familiar to mine... Well, in parts anyway...

"Follow You, Follow Me" was also the song that I first knew as a Genesis song. It also became, at least temporarily, "favorite song of all-time", dethroning "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Well done, Genesis!

I heard all the singles over the years ("Misunderstanding", "Abacab", "Man On The Corner", etc.), but "Mama" absolutely floored me! I LOVED - and still love and will always love - "Mama". I bought that cassette (yes, cassette - it was the 80s) and played it raw - esp., "Mama" and "It's Gonna Get Better". Interesting detail - when you play "Mama" and you flip it over afterward, you're almost perfectly at the start of "It's Gonna Get Better". Of course, I also loved both parts of "Home By The Sea" and "Silver Rainbow" too. I liked most of the rest too ("Taking It All Too Hard" didn't thrill me). Well, I worked backward after that. "Three Sides Live" which introduced me to the "In The Cage" oldies medley and the songs from "Abacab" and "Duke", the latter two I bought next. I loved both of them. ATTWT reacquainted me with "Follow You Follow Me" and the first hints of the older sound. Of course, later I bought IT and WCD (and CAS, but let's not talk about that) as soon as they were released.

The 4-man albums took some getting used to, but they did attract my ear. "The Lamb" confused me at first - had to put that on the back-burner and let it be the slow burner that it was destined to be for me. SEBTP I liked right away, and thus my appreciation for all eras was well on the way. Now, the 4-man version of the band is my favorite, with the 5-man and 3-man versions in a virtual tie - it depends on my mood on which I am listening to more often. Long ago, 3-man usually prevailed; now, the 5-man version is champ.

The "Sum Of The Parts" DVD is fine - it's just that older videos, IMHO, did a better job. Also, Steve does get very short shrift in "Sum Of The Parts" - almost like the 4-man version of the band was this brief inconvenience in between the version that is usually critically most-acclaimed (5-man) and the commercially most-acclaimed (3-man). I get the feeling that it's not the band who was responsible for that - perhaps Mr. Smith? I don't know... (It would be good to know.)

Your development sound completely fine to me. Not everyone was around to experience all of Genesis in chronological order - so here's to the later incarnations and learning their history sporadically.

I'm one of "those" fans who discovered Genesis through Phil Collins. I wasn't really aware of them until Invisible Touch but recognised straight away that this was something pretty special. From the immediacy of the title track and a couple of the other hits singles to the sprawling Tonight Tonight Tonight, The Brazilian and the politically aware Domino, I was amazed at the diversity of the album and also just how good it sounded. Later that year I heard the concert at Wembley Stadium on the radio which was my introduction to hoary old classics such as In The Cage, Afterglow, Los Endos and In That Quiet Earth. Not only did I love everything that I heard during that show but I was also mightily impressed at the ease with which Phil handled an audience of over 70,000 people.

Over the next couple of years, I worked my way through their albums, marvelling at how the band had progressed over the decades. I consider that period to be the first stage of my fandom. The second stage was collecting the bootlegs and being introduced to the "live" world of Genesis. I'm now in my third stage, which is revisiting the albums with which I am so familiar and making my own fan-edits of certain tunes (a whimsical and indulgent past-time, no doubt, but an enjoyable one all the same).

Quote from Gabble Ratchet

Good stuff! I’m at the stage of seeking out interesting medleys. Perhaps you could start a thread with links to live medleys you’ve come across and any fan-edits you’ve created. I’d love to follow that!!! I posted a couple of medleys on my Genesis Top 10 Countdown thread. You’d make a great contributor so please consider joining us. We’re counting down from 10 to 1 by naming 1 track per week. We’re currently on number 9 so it’s easy to catch up. And nothing’s set in stone so if you later wish to re-jig the order of your listing, I can amend for you, no problem.

Thanks but I would find it absolutely impossible to list a top ten of my favourite Genesis tunes! Also, I don't belong to any file sharing groups, I'm afraid, so I wouldn't be able to post any links to my edits

I'm sure I talked about all of this on the old forum so I'll keep it short here.

1978: First heard of Genesis from hearing "Follow You Follow Me" on the radio. My first impression was that it sounded like Cat Stevens. Didn't think about the song or the band for a while after that.

1980 (a): Saw a poster for the newly released DUKE at a local record store.

1980 (b): Heard "Turn It On Again" on the radio and was blown away. Knew right away that it was connected to that DUKE poster I'd seen. Was also impressed by hearing "Misunderstanding" shortly afterward.

1980 (c): Checked out DUKE from the library and loved most of it.

1980 (d): Came across NURSERY CRYME & FOXTROT in my stepdad's record collection. (These were non-gatefold copies with practically no information on them.) Was mildly surprised at how different the band sounded on these.

1982: Once I had enough money, I bought almost every album (including the live ones) from FGTR through ABACAB, plus Phil's FACE VALUE, at one record store in a single day, and listened to them in order over the next few days. (FOXTROT wasn't available there so I had to get it a little later, but at least I was already familiar with that one.)

In retrospect, I was most blown away on first listen by TRICK, while most of the Gabriel-era stuff took me years to really warm up to. And, of course, I'll never forget that feeling of "there must be some mistake!" when I first put on FGTR (a reissue with the singles tacked on at the beginning and end) and heard "The Silent Sun"...

I was, I believe 16 and coming from two years of absolute Beatlemania, it was time to explore. I borrowed Foxtrot from an older friend, a musician and he extolled the virtues of the band but warned me at the same time the group was over, as the lead singer had left, I think it was 1980. I gave it a listen and obviously I rejected it completely, it was too much to take, used as I was to 4 minutes songs, it really did nothing for me, so I returned it to my friend, holding it with two fingers and plugging my nose. My friend simply smiled. In the following days though, I found myself humming the the 'And it's, Hey Babe, with your guardan eyes so blue' bit from Supper's Ready over and over. I simply couldn't get it out of my head and I decided to give it another go, this time much more determined to invest more time and effort into it. Again I borrowed the album and again he smiled knowingly. It took me a couple of listens but I got into it and was mesmerized, completely hooked. I then proceeded to buy their records in a really random order and was delighted to find out the band was far from over, after Peter's departure. I bought Trespass which fascinated me and then Trick which bowled me over, to this day my favorite album, followed closely by SEPTP. A great musical journey.

A little later than some here, but my entry was via Phil's solo stuff. Not hugely, in that I was a massive fan then got into Genesis, but I was just more aware of Phil on the radio growing up. My earliest memory was You Can't Hurry Love on the radio, then Against All Odds, then Another Day In Paradise (with only one out of those three being returned to regularly some 30+ years later). It was his Serious Hits Live album that I first listened to from beginning to end when I was about 12 or 13, which happened around the time that No Son of Mine was released, and I became hooked instantly.

From there it was a quick progression. I worked backwards a couple of albums, before finding SEBTP in my dad's vinyl collection, and tapes of one of the versions of FGTR and W&W, a strange combination as he was never really a fan of their music. I couldn't get into W&W on first listen, nor on many subsequent listens, but that has changed considerably now. SEBPT I played a lot - the only vinyl experience I can recall in fact - and Firth of Fifth has remained at or near the top of my Genesis tracks ever since.

Foxtrot was next. I remember being crushingly disappointed, having bought the tape and got home, to find it was faulty in some way. Getting in to town back then wasn't a common thing, but I convinced my mum to take it back and get it replaced the next day. Only problem was, I told her the wrong music store, but she argued with the person there until I think he just gave up and gave her a new one. It's a bit hazy after that as to what came next - I think ATTWT, ATOTT, and Abacab, with the rest following very quickly after. No rhyme or reason to the order, largely what the record store had in at the time, and little means of researching the band back then, so I had little idea early on which incarnation of the band was playing on which album I was buying.

I feel like I've missed out by only getting into Genesis so late and quite envious of many of you who have memories of older tours. I do count myself fortunate to have seen them live a couple of times though. Also my school friends were getting more into grunge and other stuff that does nothing for me, so I had no one to share my love of their music with, and Phil started to get particularly bad press at the time, so it wasn't "cool" to be a fan of either as a teenager. Still, despite flirting with a few other bands and artists over the years, it's Genesis that I always return to - nothing and no one else ticks as many boxes for me as my first passion.

Quote from A Whorish Ant

it wasn't "cool" to be a fan of either as a teenager

I was never a fan of any band when it was "cool" to be. I guess it would go against my nature.

The thing I don't understand about my own journey is why, when I was such a huge fan of both Phil & Peter, when both FV & So were such huge influences on me, why didn't I go & buy the Genesis albums I didn't have. Why did it take so long? Perhaps I was scared off by 'prog' which I didn't even vaguely start to appreciate until I got married. Even having said that I was a huge fan of the two 'big' Pink Floyd albums. Maybe I was still too consumed by the Eagles (who took up years of my life at the expense of a great deal of other music I could have been listening to). Better late than never I suppose.