Abacab was released 39 years ago today ... and still only hat 7 votes... who wants to change that? 
Your favorite GENESIS studio albums (pick three)
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Abacab was released 39 years ago today ... and still only hat 7 votes... who wants to change that?
You mean, taking the vote back?
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For example
or simply vote in case you haven't done that yet
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So, it turns out SEBTP is Giles Wood's favourite album!
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Abacab was released 39 years ago today ... and still only hat 7 votes... who wants to change that?
I am one of the 7 people who voted for Abacab.
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You mean, taking the vote back?
It's one of my four favorites! I chose the other three.
Interestingly, I was sitting outside a restaurant about a month ago with a friend (father of my daughter's friends really). He's a bit older, and commented that the music they were playing, which was new wave and 80s, reminded him of college. Abacab came on and I learned that my buddy knew a fair bit about Genesis and was something of a fan.. I've never heard the title track of that album played in public before. It was a pretty nice experience!
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This list is quite interesting. The albums after Duke are way down in the polls. Fascinating to look at. I didn't help their cause, not that I don't love each one in their own way, but my picks were:
The Lamb
Trick of the Tail
Duke
This has been my top 3 for a long time.
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The albums after Duke are way down in the polls.
It has always been a case though, in many different forums and throughout the years. Perhaps there are some Forums where later albums are top choices but personally I haven't come across any of them . Curiously enough, Duke which usually ranks quite high, as it should imo, is a 3-man era album and cannot certainly be defined as prog, which would appear to indicate there is no particular bias at work.
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It has always been a case though, in many different forums and throughout the years. Perhaps there are some Forums where later albums are top choices but personally I haven't come across any of them . Curiously enough, Duke which usually ranks quite high, as it should imo, is a 3-man era album and cannot certainly be defined as prog, which would appear to indicate there is no particular bias at work.
All main eras (outside of the Ray Wilson era and early era) are nicely represented in the top 5 as it stands now which is what is so interesting. There is no bias as you said, just a pure interest in the content of the albums.
I'm a sucker for polls and statistics so this kind of thing is intriguing 🙂
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There is no bias as you said, just a pure interest in the content of the albums.
I'm a sucker for polls and statistics so this kind of thing is intriguing 🙂
Some level of bias has been implied or alleged , on occasion in the past. I've always maintained that time and distance allow a dispassionate look at their whole body of work and a strong album is simply that, a strong album. It doesn't matter who sang on it. If their latest output, regardless of the undeniable advantages it enjoys, is considered weaker, a trend btw applicable to almost any major artist with a decades long career, well, that is probably accurate and reliable.
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I am one of the 7 people who voted for Abacab.
Me too, I think. I'd usually vote that, Lamb and either Duke or Selling. Those 2 pairs of back to back albums are their absolute peak for me.
EDIT: Just checked, I voted Selling. Other days I'd vote Duke but Lamb and Abacab are always my top 2.
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We once had a regular meet-up with some Genesis fans here in Dresden. We always went to a different pub or restaurant and sometimes we asked them to play Genesis. In a greek restaurant we gave them the Abacab CD and after three tracks they basically said "sorry, this kind of punk think doesn't work here and all the others don't like the music"
Well...
Well there you go. Precisely the reason why I love Abacab so much is that it seems to be an answer to punk, rather like Queen's News Of The World.
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I have created another poll, asking which album was the first one you ever BOUGHT
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I've been a Genesis fan for over 40 years, albums have been released , played, listened to, reviewed and criticized ad nauseum. It's safe to assume their relevance in the Genesis catalogue has sunken in by now. Polls are an indicator, more or less precise if you will but they are. If the most recent albums which have the huge advantage of being the most recent, almost invariably occupy the last positions, perhaps it isn't a coincidence.
The band is no more, they haven't released an album in over 20 years and I reckon they won't anymore.
With all this in mind, as long as I make clear that I'm expressing an opinion and I am respectful of anybody's taste and opinions which is not always the case here, as I was able to appreciate from very recent comments, I see no point in tiptoeing around or mincing words and I reserve the right to call it as I see it. Sure, some fans might think that say, Another Record, just to mention a dud is a great song, I happen to think they can write stuff like that in their sleep and by gravity a song like that, with time, gets the relevance it deserves. None. It doesn't mean somebody cannot possibly like it, more power to them but we seem to be unable to break out of the equation I like it=it's great or at least it must be great. I wish my favorite band had only released perfect albums with perfect songs, unfortunately for them, as for any other artist it wasn't always the case and I think we should be able to say that. Very few bands are able to keep the fire in their belly with a decades-spanning career, I would say that U2 for instance, whether one likes them or less, deserve a lot of respect because they constantly tried to do just that: keep the flame alive. Genesis simply didn't imo and I don't feel like blaming them, I just liked them more when they were less sleek smooth and glossy but so very intense, original and unique. There is no sin in saying it, I reckon.
We all have our pet songs and albums, our guilty pleasures and our blind spots, but as you infer, we also should be able to get some perspective after all this time.
To put it simply: there was one band that was 'intense, original and unique' - young musicians listening to their muse(s), learning their instruments based on the demands of the material they came up with (more or less) as a unit, and in the process offering the world a string of albums second to none - from Trespass through The Lamb, with TOTT and WW excellent additions to the definitive body of work.
Then that band gradually morphed into a cash machine, which (again!) I'd never hold against them - we all need to make a living. It just needs to be said that to make money, though, one needs to get out of a failing niche market/put out a product with mass appeal whose artistic relevance can only ever be both thin and incidental.
Music used to be more than serial killer fodder (hehe) - it used to be the soundtrack to people's life, not just another fashion accessory.
I don't mean to be arrogant (I know I sound it), but a lot of people need to work on said blind spots
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I enjoyed them from Trespass to Duke which for my money is still a great album. I think Side A of Genesis or Shapes was very good, I enjoyed then the occasional song on the different albums, they clearly had a style which I came to like that obviously didn't go entirely lost but yes, the spirit radically changed. It wasn't just them, it was the entire music business, all the great, historic names, including Peter were went quite commercial in the second half of the 80s. As you said, it shouldn't be resented, nor do I resent later fans for appreciating stuff I personally find appalling. I'm just surprised when the marvel at the polls results.
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We all have our pet songs and albums, our guilty pleasures and our blind spots, but as you infer, we also should be able to get some perspective after all this time.
To put it simply: there was one band that was 'intense, original and unique' - young musicians listening to their muse(s), learning their instruments based on the demands of the material they came up with (more or less) as a unit, and in the process offering the world a string of albums second to none - from Trespass through The Lamb, with TOTT and WW excellent additions to the definitive body of work.
Then that band gradually morphed into a cash machine, which (again!) I'd never hold against them - we all need to make a living. It just needs to be said that to make money, though, one needs to get out of a failing niche market/put out a product with mass appeal whose artistic relevance can only ever be both thin and incidental.
Music used to be more than serial killer fodder (hehe) - it used to be the soundtrack to people's life, not just another fashion accessory.
I don't mean to be arrogant (I know I sound it), but a lot of people need to work on said blind spots
I've always hated this line of thought. And I still do!
That there's some intrinsic purity to the older material that only fans who have reached a certain level of enlightenment such as yourself can appreciate. You have grown wise enough and sophisticated in your tastes to recognize that even if you enjoy a song like Paperlate (to choose a representative example), it's a 'blind spot', and the song is somehow objectively garbage despite your enjoyment of it. This argument is drivel of the lowest order. There is no inherent value to one song over another, only different attributes that you might enjoy more than another person. I personally prefer Firth of Fifth to Paperlate but is that because it's a 'better' song and I know what a good song sounds like because I'm a smart person with refined tastes? No, because that would be bullshit. I just prefer it because I like a long dramatic song for one, and I love the melody in the opening piano bit and the atmosphere in the guitar solo. Could I understand someone preferring Paperlate? Of course. To each their own.
Finally I like to think the band would cringe at the ideas you espouse. They became good at writing taut, short rock and even pop songs. Success followed and was bloody well earned. This concept that they turned into an atm and sold their souls, left their muses wailing in despair, is about beyond my ability to express in words how condescending I find it.
I totally get it if a huge fan of their stuff from the seventies doesn't enjoy the later material (especially someone who was 'there'), but I do not get these intellectual calisthenics to justify preferences that in the process cast those who do enjoy or even prefer the later stuff down to some inferior fan/connoisseur level.
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Finally I like to think the band would cringe at the ideas you espouse. They became good at writing taut, short rock and even pop songs. Success followed and was bloody well earned. This concept that they turned into an atm and sold their souls, left their muses wailing in despair, is about beyond my ability to express in words how condescending I find it.
Interesting post, several points I might agree with, some other I clearly don't but it's not my place to reply. This one I found interesting though, I can only speak for myself but I don't give a you know what whether the band cringe at my personal taste, assessment and appreciation of their music. It applies to Genesis and well as to any other artist and I don't think anybody should care or it should be a factor in the appreciation or dislike of their music. Yes band members seem generally to think that Relayer is one of their best albums, they are entitled to this opinion of course, I and a myriad of other fans disagree profoundly and we are equally entitled to an opinion. An artist releases an album, promotes it, often stating that it is their best to date, it doesn't mean I have to agree. As many artists would tell you, once it's out there, it doesn't belong to them anymore, the audience will make it or break it and time will put in context. I will agree with you that it is always difficult to surmise somebody's true intentions and I for one, don't think that Genesis sat down to write a song thinking, let's cash in! Some of the stuff they were writing simply sounded like a good idea for those times, that's all, just like a mullet seemed an acceptable thing back then. That's why we have old pics or old albums, we look or listen back and think; Yeahhh....Not so great, perhaps. I don't think it is correct to over-idealize their 70s period either, much as I love it, the muse thing is a bit too much for me, again, they were in tune with those times but it can generally be accepted that during the 70s an artist enjoyed a bit more freedom and independence. They wrote, recorded and released SEBTP without even seeing an executive around but they consulted with Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic records over what tracks to include on Abacab and I don't think it was for ''artistic' reasons, whatever might be understood under that term, They sold out? Not necessarily, it would have been ludicrous to release something like the Lamb in 81 but commercial concerns were probably on their mind, particularly with their singer suddenly becoming a household name and why not? To go back to the poll thread main theme though, it shouldn't come as any surprise though if Genesis fans tend to favor their older albums, the general audience might be fond of songs like Invisible Touch and never heard The Cinema Show for instance but in a Genesis fans forum things are different.
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Then that band gradually morphed into a cash machine, which I'd never hold against them
Are you sure? The manner and frequency with which you mention their latter-career earnings suggests you do have some kind of problem with it.
What are the 'blind spots' you refer to?
