Genesis were bad to its fans.

I still have to ask the question, are the three capable of another album of new material as Genesis?

Edited by Slartibartfast - May 08 2009 at 15:56

I remember seeing Genesis on the Abacab tour in Birmingham, and an audience member, right from the off, continually shouted "The Knife, The Knife, play The Knife!". Collins eventually brought out a toy rifle and pretended to shoot him. However, much to our surprise and delight, they did actually play it as an "extra" encore piece.

There are some people who will never forgive Collins for the direction the band took after ATTWT, but they always miss the point. The other two were still principal songwriters and agreed almost wholly with the move to writing shorter, catchier tracks, except maybe Banks who loathed the second side of the Genesis LP, a mistake that was never to be repeated.

I also enjoyed Calling All Stations, especially its darker moments, but by then the game commercially was really well and truly up.

Fans who expect bands to continually rehash the original glories upon which they set their love of the band should contain themselves to watching the ridiculous number of tribute bands that are touring. The bands themselves move on, and we either live with it, enjoy, or simply choose not to buy. As I said in my series of Genesis LP reviews, most of the commercial music Genesis wrote as a threesome was damn good commercial music, and I will, for the rest of my life, be grateful to a band, in all its forms, that has given me so much pleasure over the years.

Someone offered to give me a free Phil Collins VHS the other day.
I took the Prince one instead.

Epignosis wrote: Zappa plays whatever he wants. Nobody can fault him!

Fripp plays whatever he wants.

Can't fault him there.

Does anybody have a problem with the 80s King Crimson being King Crimson and not Discipline?

The second album I bought was the shapes album when I was 11 or 12 years old. I listened to that thing hundreds of times and really enjoyed it. Along with Peter Gabriel's pop output, this is what led me to the classic era. I actually enjoyed Abacab too. My younger brother listened to Invisible Touch a zillion times (when he was about 8).....that music connected with people at that time in that place. It doesn't hold up artistically in the same way years later, but I still have some fond memories.

If Genesis ingnored their fans, then what explains the appearance of Apocalypse/Eggs is eggs and Los endos in the Invisible touch tour setlist?

Yes, their musical tasted changed and they did (very good) pop albums in the 80's, but they always played some of their old epics live. And their later albums do include more unusual stuff, like Domino and Home by the sea.

You can be as cynical as you like, but I really believe that they changed their style because they just wanted to play more straightforward material, and the wanted to survive.

And what comes to PC calling The musical box "old crap", I'm sure that's just a rumour.

I had a long response planned out, but I'm too lazy to actually type it all, so I'll make my response a bit shorter.  If it weren't for albums like Abacab, Genesis and 90125, I might not have discovered prog, at least not as early as I did.  How many others in their mid- to late-30's/early 40's did Genesis and Yes bring into the realm of prog by exploring more radio-friendly territory?  Also, neither band completely abandoned their prog roots.  Genesis continued to do some long-form songs and usually had one nice long instrumental jam on each album.  And some of their pop stuff (though not all) was quite enjoyable.  Yes, although shortening the song length generally during Rabin's tenure, still performed complex music, with some great vocal harmonies, and even threw in a really cool 15+ minute song in the form of Endless Dream. 

Cheesecakemouse wrote: Perhaps I should have made this a blog. But basically my point is, it's not unreasonable for a progger to feel some sort of annoyance at collins and co. I am surprised by many of your responses many of the review written about 80s Genesis belie 'matter of fact' responses this thread has generated.  My point here is to put things in perspective. I believe fans are important to a band, Iron Maiden has shown this by them coming to NZ recently, if they didn't feel anything to their fans then they wouldn't have come. The fact is folks these bands are in entertainment its all about their audiences, if not it annoys us after all some posts have expressed frustration about Fripp's treatment of fans, the fact that he has got his lawyers to take off his music of the archives gave many annoyance. Also those posts about hoping bands will come to your home country and play. This website is all about fans, you members are fans of different bands, so what on earth are you all talking about fans being silly? We are the fans, and about bands owing you nothing, don't we all attend or try to attend concerts, so spare me please this all these posts about bands owing nothing, I'm just being honest about my fandom, in NZ we get zilch prog, so count yourselves lucky that your bands do consider you and tour in your countries.