Genesis/Yes comparison

• 1.- Dark Side of the Moon . Pink Floyd (At least dubious if it was conceptual and still it's N° 1)
• 5. Antichrist Superstar - Marilyn Manson
• 13. Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
• 14. Duke - Genesis (Was it even conceptual????)
• 28. Kilroy Was Here - Styx

It's not Proggerbashing my friend, It's that I hate dogmas except in Religion.>.

Why do you accept dogmas in religion?  Is it because you've just given up on any notion of religious faith? I think one of the reasons musical discourse can become dogmatic is that music is like religion to people and has been so closely linked historically to religion, in the most romantic sense if nothing else. It expresssed in ineffable

It is easier in academia to just go along with the ship and those who fight against status quo usually end up losing  the battle.  Case in point, myself who fought against the grain for over ten years in academia, both as a student and teacher. I realized that they really do not want to teach students becasue to teach them to think would fundamentally challenge the status quo.  We can't have workers who think after all.  Somebody needs to move the hands of the clock in Metropolis. There is something to be said for that.  The machine functions best when it is well oiled. In any event, I applaud you for railing against the status quo , taking the heat for it and coming out ahead. I think one expects that from lawyer.

I think there is some merit to what progger says.  I think that Genesis has always been overrated and probably Pink Floyd as well.  There are certainly bands that have been underrated, Gentle Giant and VDGG. I think  a more interesting question is to ask why they are so popular rather than complaining about their popularity. I would rather hear one strong, biased opinion than one hundred rants of how great some group is. The fundamental idea in progressive rock is that it is not based on popularity.  So no matter how many people love Genesis or Pink Floyd, it does not matter because that in itself does not grant value to the music. 

I think that Genesis and Pink Floyd are so popular because of what they were saying not only lyrically but in their music as well addresssing aspects of alienation so fundamental to modernity and perhaps trying to find a way out, a re-humanization of mankind so to speak. But most of the prog bands sang about these themes, as did GG and VDGG. That quest is still so crucial and the reason why prog won't die. For me, listening to prog caused me to take the road less traveled and that has not  alway been easy.  A matter of a fact it is down right impossible in today's world.  I wonder how many people who listen to prog have made a similiar choice in how they have lived their lives

So what about Yes from the initial album to Going for the One - all great albums - thats a total of 9 great albums.

I wouldn't say the first two are great . The first is good and the second better. The sequence however was really broken with TFTO which is good in parts and dreadful in others so a long way from great. I only accredit The Beatles with 3 great albums ( Revolver , Seargeant Peppers and Abbey Road). Yes I accredit with five ( Yes album, Fragile CTTE, Relayer and Going for the One ). So although overall I rate Genesis and Yes equally imho Genesis had 8 great disks against Yes' five and a half (Time and a Word is almost great ).

Albums that are great throughout are rare.

LOSENDOS says

'I wouldn't say the first two are great . The first is good and the second better. The sequence however was really broken with TFTO which is good in parts and dreadful in others so a long way from great. I only accredit The Beatles with 3 great albums ( Revolver , Seargeant Peppers and Abbey Road). Yes I accredit with five ( Yes album, Fragile CTTE, Relayer and Going for the One ). So although overall I rate Genesis and Yes equally imho Genesis had 8 great disks against Yes' five and a half (Time and a Word is almost great ).

Albums that are great throughout are rare'.

LOSENDOS the above in red is an excellent point - they are very rare.  IMO - Trespass, Genesis Live, SEBTP are the only Genesis albums to achieve this.  But (I know I maybe alone - hope not) but I really do love all those first 9 Yes Albums.  Why - because each have there own character - you can see YES progressing - growing - changing styles.  Out of those 9 albums there are maybe just a few songs that dont hit the mark and they are actually on Yes Album.  TFTO can be boring, even Rick got sick of it.  But it was well constructed - original for the time and I do love the whole theme of the album.  Everyone knows it was mainly written by Anderson/Howe and hence it can be a little pretenious - but hell music is for enjoying and it gives me JOY.

Dont get me wrong I love Genesis and I always felt they sold there souls after W and W.  They went over to the DARK SIDE.  With only a few great songs been written in the 80's and 90's.  But even in the beginning they were bitty.  But those great bits could be awesome and take up most of the album.  Sound musicans and clever creators of music.  But YES members just had the edge.

Both of them I listen to though to sooth different musically moods.

Albums that are great throughout are rare'.

LOSENDOS the above in red is an excellent point - they are very rare.  IMO - Trespass, Genesis Live, SEBTP are the only Genesis albums to achieve this.

  But (I know I maybe alone - hope not) but I really do love all those first 9 Yes Albums.  Why - because each have there own character - you can see YES progressing - growing - changing styles.  Out of those 9 albums there are maybe just a few songs that dont hit the mark and they are actually on Yes Album.  TFTO can be boring, even Rick got sick of it.  But it was well constructed - original for the time and I do love the whole theme of the album.  Everyone knows it was mainly written by Anderson/Howe and hence it can be a little pretenious - but hell music is for enjoying and it gives me JOY.

 Noone can dispute your taste. I'd query the ommision of Nursey Cryme, ATOTT and Foxtrot which I consider three very consistent albums.I'm curious to hear your objection to them. I can accept the Lamb has filler but the rest of it is so good to make up for it. The filler on Lamb such as Silent Sorrow and Arrival are experimental  and I find at least they are interesting whereas the filler onTFTO is   either Howe jamming , repeating themes pointlessly or nothing happening. It is then that TFTO bores me completely.

 Seems you are being more lenient in your assessment of Yes

dojonane wrote: ken4musiq, how can we say that Genesis were overrated as if its some quantifiable, scientific mandate that has proved itself through time and serves as the most universally valid theory on the matter? (as in physics, until another simpler, more expansive theory replaces it) i respect that it's your opinion, which you humbly pointed out yourself. I still just cant grasp how that sort of statement is even applicable here. Are sunsets overrated? how about jazz in general? decaf coffee? mexican food? For me, the absorption of ANY artform is best left at is weird, nebulous, spiritual base rather than excavated by TIME LIFE magazine and editorialized into a archive of diagrams. Rational thought confuses the creative muse (unless your writing a song to 'sound' complicated, which is more utility than poetry) this 'empirical' way of discussing something as ambiguous and interpersonal as 'which band we like more' just seems to miss the mark. its a bit like interpreting a sonnet with algebraic algorithims, or (the inverse metaphor) using finger paint to create a map of mollecular DNA. sure it can be done, but the means fundamentally conflict with the end and vice versa. don't get me wrong, i'm not blacklisting your views or claiming you have no right to feel as you do. i'm just wondering, towards this thread in particular, what the use of dressing up a raw, gritty, incalculable personal perspective as a rational, substanciated truth is (as ivan so sniper-like revealed progger's views to be) if were taking about average rainfall in iceland, lets get out our almanacs. discussing a band's role in history can still be done with objectivity, reasoning the specifics in an almost anthropological way. but making sweeping statements about a band's being overrated or underrated cheapens the romantic, quasi-exhibitionist point of these kinds of discussions. arent we all here to just sortof don a mask and dance around the stage, adopting different roles. its all just artifice, and it should be held in the spirit of a cafeteria foodfight (since thats about the level of seriousness these things can in the end amount to.) what's more, how can the genesis WE are discussing come out as more ovverrated. I'd be hard pressed to find a large contingent of the general public that were even aware of Gabriel as anyone other than 'that sledgehammer guy.' Sure, I'm more likely to hear Collins voice at my local CVS pharmacy then 'Awakening' coming in overhead, but not 'my' Collins, if you catch m'drift. I mean, have I ever even heard 'I know what I like' or any vaguely poppy Gabriel era stuff on the radio? Roundabout reigns supreme in the pre-programmed canons of classic rock. Thats been my experience at least. whoa, sorry for the essay heehee. This is just, you know, my thing.

Talking about music in quantifiable objective terms is problematic, athough it is done all the time. But we don't need to go there.  What am am asking is more routine than that.  

The popularity of Pink Floyd comes not only from Dark Side spending 730+ weeks in the Billboard top 200 but the popularity of The Wall, which I need only turn on my radio to hear somewhere. Genesis is also extremely popular; that popularity comes from the number of top 20 hits that caressed the airwaves of the 1980s by the band and Gabriel, as well. Both bands relied on their a great part of their popularity with works that are not progressive. Let's not forget, both Floyd and Genesis were stadium acts of the 1980s-90s as ELP was in the 1970s but was a stadium act that relied on a progressive aparratus. I still would not have wanted to see them at Cal Jam.

Fripp and Ian Anderson both steered from becoming stadium acts citing that it destroyed the unique quality of what their music was trying to do, reconnect with its audience.  I think that this relationship is the key foundation of what progressive rock is, what music is, and the demise of progressive rock in the late 1970s has often been cited as being caused by the bands loosing touch with the audience.

What is it that should really grant Floyd or Genesis stature over King Crimson, Jethro Tull, VDGG or Gentle Giant . . . in a progressive rock forum? Is it that they are more accessible and if so, then their popularity in such a forum is questionable. Pink Floyd is often overly accessible and simplistic, certainly lyrically as compared to Gabriel or Ian Anderson.  Wish You Were Here is virtually cover to cover in g minor/major.  Don't get me wrong; I enjoy Pink Floyd.  it was never a strain, however, to pick up a Floyd album and get into it as it may be to get into a Crimson or VDGG album.

What I am saying is not that Pink Floyd or Genesis are bad bands or not deserving of our adulation.  I am just questioning whether their popularity grossly out balances their true position in the genre.  Maybe it does not.  Perhaps Floyd and Genesis were the two bands who were most important in the genre.  They certainly did fully develop the narrative. But I think that they are the most overrated in the genre and not overrated because they are not great bands but over rated because their popularity out shines the unique contributions of other important acts to the point where one might think that Waters and Gabriel were really the exclusive visionaries of the genre.

The ambiguity of the genre is that although we the fans see it as something that is reacting against the mainstream of popular music, many of these acts wanted to be popular songwriters.  Waters and Genesis are examples but even Steve Howe left Yes because he wanted to be with a band that made albums that really sold well.  That's greedy, since Yes had several huge albums and Going for the One hit number one.

So we listen to Waters speak about how we all have been programmed to want a lifestyle we can't have, new car caviar and all that nonsense, but he criticizes the machine and then gets to live that  lifestyle. So all the effort I put into this essay will probably get someone to buy a Pink Flyd album and he'll but just that much richer. Like Johnny said, "Have you ever felt like you've been cheated."

Mine:

Albums:

The Yes Album > Tresspass

Fragile = Nursery Cryme

Foxtrot > Close To The Edge (only because I like Genesis more , and Supper's Readyyyyyy....)

Selling England By The Pound > Relayer

The Lamb > TFTO

A Trick Of The Tail > Going For The One

Members:

Gabriel > Anderson (though Anderson might be the best singer ever)

Banks = Wakeman (same for me, both awesome)

Collins > Bruford (don't like Bruford but hes a crazy drummer)

Howe = Hackett (same for me, both awesome)

Squire = Rutherford (same for me, both awesome)