Genesis the most influential prog band?

Lucent wrote: The T wrote: Lucent wrote: Genesis?  The most influential band? The most overrated, yes...but not the most influential.   What a lot of arguments you give.....     I knew I could rage up the forums with that post... I'm one of those kind of guys who doesn't like to make super long paragraphs in order to state a point, so I'll just say that the musicianship is good, but the compositions don't sound refined, but much more so taking an elitist approach to music.  A good example of such would be the intro to Firth of Fifth. Second, Gabriel's voice annoys me to no ends...and probably about as much as that of James Labrie (Dream Theater.) Third, nothing jumps out.  It's dull.  It's not energetic. Note, this is all opinion.

Gustavo Froes wrote: please define elitist;I'm really curious to know what do you mean by saying frith of fifth's intro is elitist.

Genesis have always been hugely popular and spawned hugely successful solo acts which the other bands of the 70s didn't . Their talent line up seems to be best . But I think KC and ELP pioneered a sound that the other prog bands tried to emulate and therefore would win an influence contest .


Maybe because of their success the modern bands look to Genesis . But I think in their day Genesis themselves looked for creativity to bands like Yes and Pink Floyd.

Lucent wrote: Gustavo Froes wrote: please define elitist;I'm really curious to know what do you mean by saying frith of fifth's intro is elitist. In the same sense of Dream Theater being an elitist band after Kevin Moore left.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Lucent wrote: Gustavo Froes wrote: please define elitist;I'm really curious to know what do you mean by saying frith of fifth's intro is elitist. In the same sense of Dream Theater being an elitist band after Kevin Moore left.   Please explain your point, your comparison with Dream Theater says nothing of you perspective because there's nothing in common between both bands and much less with this track, maybe if you compared The Knife I would see some remote connection, what you're answering is "It's elitist because it's elitist" being that your argument doesn't hold water, or as a fact says nothing coherent.   Even when I can't disagree more, I could understand you didn't like Genesis, even if you hated Steve Hackett and islike Peter Gabriel's voice to the guts, but please, how can a simple Grand Piano introduction be elitist?   The melody is not particularly  elaborate or hard to digest, no complex instruments or pompous arrangements it's just a quite simple and ejoyable piano intro that flows gently or is it maybe that piano is an elitist instrument for you?   Iván

If you specify "Gabriel-era Genesis," then the answer is - yes:  Genesis is one of the most influential bands.  While you could argue that Emerson plays good classical music riffs like Tony Banks, and Steve Hackett was a Robert Fripp wannabe, the fact that the one band, Genesis, had both Banks and Hackett at the same time (not to mention Collins' impeccable drumming ability) speaks volumes as to the type of music Genesis put out especially from the NC album to TLLDOB - a truly amazing quality of work...

prog4evr wrote: If you specify "Gabriel-era Genesis," then the answer is - yes:  Genesis is one of the most influential bands.  While you could argue that Emerson plays good classical music riffs like Tony Banks, and Steve Hackett was a Robert Fripp wannabe, the fact that the one band, Genesis, had both Banks and Hackett at the same time (not to mention Collins' impeccable drumming ability) speaks volumes as to the type of music Genesis put out especially from the NC album to TLLDOB - a truly amazing quality of work...

no one debates the body of work from a quality standpoint.. it does stand the test of time.  Calling Genesis most influential ...  that is a bit of a stretch though really.. they really have nothing on their contemporaries.  It hits the wall simply against ELP... who singlehandedly defined two of major aspects of prog...  the forefront use of keyboards ..and the rapidly expanded palate of keyboards like the Moog... not to mention being the classic case of being a group of 'virtuoso musicians'. Two of the 3 being thoughts of ..if not THE definiing insturments on their respective instruments.. then at the very top at least.

when one suggests that Genesis was most influential...  and you step back from the quality of music...  of course there will those who think that people can not seperate subjective values of quality from the objection quality of how they impacted their contemporaries and groups that came later... ie.  Influence. Thus.. make the point that Genesis is overrated.  not in quality.. but in how people percieve the group.

yes... in fact... I'd say that Genesis's influence is primary.. but sort of limited to Neo. They were obviously influenced more by their contemporaries than influencing them. And that influence on Neo came from the late 70's version of Genesis. Past Neo I don't see that much.  Neo was a bit of a snapshot in time of 1980's English prog. In itself, sort of overrated as the so-called 'savior' of prog. Prog as we all know never really went away, just sort underground in the 80's.. mutated past the classic strains of prog.  Today's prog, it's influences draw from other sources that is why some of the traditionalist have such a problem seeing it as prog.  

Edited by micky - February 09 2009 at 07:38

I don't see how Genesis was influenced by their contemporaries, except maybe by King Crimson because Gabriel took a copy of ITCOTCK to the Trespass sessions.

Genesis music has absolutely no relation with Yes, Pink Floyd or ELP, Genesis music was so different that was extremely unpopular in UK, to the point that they almost had to move to Italy to survive, because it was popular only there and in Belgium.

If Genesis music was highly influenced by this much more popular bands, would had been accepted in UK instead of highly rejected.

1. For example, ELP and Yes, have a high content of soloing, while Genesis has almost no soloing in their albums
2. Pink Floyd has a lot of jamming, Genesis has no jamming
3. Of course it would be absurd to say that Genesis was influenced by Jethro Tull or anything done by King Crimson after In the Court..

Genesis was probably the most original sound, they developed their own style by themselves starting from a POP album, while Yes started strongly rooted in The Beatles and ELP never could leave behind the direct Classical influence and re-arrangement  op the Post Romantic musicians..

Now, saying that Genesis only influenced Neo Prog, is going against history, all French Theatric Symphonic (Ange, Mona Lisa, Atoll) is DIRECTLY influenced by Genesis.

Bands as Anglagard are influenced directly by Genesis, even Italian Symphonic receives a high Genesis influence mixed with elements of other bands, if you listen for example Felona e Sorona, the Genesis influence is more than evident.

I'm not saying Genesis is the most influential band, but surely is among the most influential along with Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson and even
ELP.

Iván

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - February 09 2009 at 10:09

If we begin to travel to the past we'll see that all music came from the cavemen of course. So I just need to know one thing to answer that question: when does jazz/pop/classical/younameit music becomes prog? If someone tells me that I'll answer.