Genesis

[Ryth]

Band Name: Genesis
Genre: Progressive Rock/Pop-Rock (Depends)
Career: 1967-1999, 2006-Present

Current Line-up:
Phil Collins (vocals (took lead after Gabriel left), drums)
Mike Rutherford (guitars, bass)
Tony Banks (keyboards, vocals)

Former Members:
Peter Gabriel (vocals, flute)
Steve Hackett (Guitar)
Anthony Phillips (guitars)
John Mayhew (drums)
John Silver (drums)
Chris Stewart (drums)
Ray Wilson (vocals)

Legendary progressive rock act, and a huge influence on prog's heavy mellotron use. Started with Peter Gabriel, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Chris Stewart. Their debut, From Genesis To Revelation, came out in 1969 produced by Jonathan King, and sounded a good deal like the Bee Gees.
During this album's recording Stewart left the band and replaced with John Silver, who was replaced by John Mayhew before starting their second album Trespass. Which was their first actual prog album, it was no doubt rough around the edges (the same way Rush's Fly By Night album was a rough first try for Rush). It contained long operatic pieces, short humorous numbers, changing time signatures, and elaborate arrangements resembling that of other prog bands like Yes, King Crimson, and Gentle Giant.
Due to ill health and recurring stage fright, Phillips left the band in 1970, which deeply upset the band, for Phillips was a founding member of Genesis and played a big role in the creation of Trespass. There was doubt over whether Genesis could continue without him. Eventually, the remaining members renewed their commitment to the band, while deciding to release drummer John Mayhew, replacing him with Phil Collins. Phillips was later replaced by Steve Hackett.
Their next album released in 1971, named Nursery Cryme, was a huge improvement over Trespass, and features one of their most well-known song; the ten minute epic dubbed The Musical Box. Then their album Foxtrot, which is my personal favourite, was released in the October of 1972 and contains their best song ever, the 23 minute long epic piece known as Supper's Ready, this album put Genesis into the mainstream and one of the most popular 70's prog acts at the time. However, many people seem to find they enjoyed their next album even more than Foxtrot, Selling England By The Pound, where Hackett became one of the first guitarists to pioneer "picking" techniques (normally mistakeningly credited to Eddie Van Halen) as well as "sweep-picking" (which was later popularized by Yngwie Malmsteen in the eighties). These techniques were incorporated on the song "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight".
After this Genesis started writing a much more ambitious project in the more of the two-disc rock opera The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (which is just barely beat out by Foxtrot in my opinion) released in 1974. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway comprises a collection of shorter tracks, connected by a number of segues. The story describes the spiritual journey of Rael, a Puerto Rican youth living in New York City, and his quest to establish both his freedom and identity. This is marked as Peter Gabriel's final album with Genesis, who felt estranged from the other members, and his marriage and new-born kid added to his personal strain.
The band placed Collins as Genesis' new vocalist and recorded A Trick Of The The Trail in 1976, which I personally thought seemed to try too hard to sound like Gabriel was still in the band, but didn't pull it off as right as it would be if Gabriel were actually still in the band. Regardless, I did like it, it wasn't until later that year they released Wind And Wuthering which really improved on ATOTT, and sounded a lot less Trying-To-Be-Gabriel...esque...Genesis was looking good with it's current line-up.

Then Steve Hackett left, who felt disenchanted and restricted by the band (partially due to the freedom he had making his first solo album at the time, Voyage Of The Acolyte) and Genesis went sky-rocketing down into annoying pop-rock.

They released and And Then There Were Three... in '78, which kept the prog sensiblites of their past work but someway or another was able to make the album painfully dull. Their last good album came out in 1980 (in my opinion), and it was Duke, originally to have a 20+ minute epic but the idea was tossed aside and made the song seperated into different songs (and generally didn't flow like an epic consequently), they did this in fear it would be compared to Supper's Ready. It was a pretty good album.

This is when Genesis sucked incredibly hard, Abacab, which sounded stupid enough, was terrible, and by their '86 album Invisible Touch they were nowhere near prog. Gabriel-era fans rejected this new Genesis, and concerts could get pretty rowdy, the crowds being pissed at the playing of "Me And Sarah Jane" and "Land Of Confusion" instead of classics like "Firth Of Fifth" or "In The Cage." Then they released something even worse in 1991, We Can't Dance, and Phil Collins left, and for whatever reason Rutherford and Banks thought it'd be good to keep making music, and they hired Ray Wilson of post-grunge band Stilkstin, and the new album Calling All Stations (1997) sucked, simply to say, harder than anything imaginable. Then in 1999 they broke up, and last year they reassembled for a reunion tour...though Hackett and Gabriel both denied to join the tour...! Yeah!


Anyone a fan? Discuss.

Some vidoes:

And yes, I know, Gabriel can act and dress very flamboyantly. Listen to the music.

Watcher Of The Skies (Foxtrot)


Dancing With The Moonlight Knight (Selling England By The Pound)


Musical Box (Nursery Cryme)


Carpet Crawlers (The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway)


The Knife (Trespass)


I'd look for Supper's Ready, but it wouldn't much matter I have a strong feeling the people here don't feel like listening to a 23 minute song, and the people who do likely have the song itself already. xD And if you're interested in hearing pop Genesis, go look for it yourself.

[unspun]

I like Phil Collins ^.^ especially the original video for the "Land of Confusion" (or whatever it was called, it's been forever) and I even downloaded "I can't Dance" just to watch Phil Collins walk around with an alligator lol

[Ryth]

He's a great drummer, that's for sure. And I guess he makes "great" (and I mean this as "in comparison to everyone else") mainstream pop...but that doesn't say much.

[unspun]

have you ever seen the original land of confusion video? if not, you should. I argue that Phil Collins is one of the great original Pop artists, as everyone now sucks.

[Ryth]

He's definitely one of the better pop musicians, still don't like any of it though. xD I might watch the video on mute, though.


Now more talk of the Gabriel-era.

[Slumber]

I just got into then a while ago. I really like alot of the music I've heard from Phil Collins era, but I definetly want to check out some of the Peter Gabriel era stuff (he looks like a great preformer).