I'd like to start the thread with a reconstruction of what was seen on The Lamb tour. It's the song "The Colony of Slippermen," which is one of my favorites of the band

Not innovative? How many other bands had singers who dressed as a flower and all sorts of other things and told stories in between songs?

I agree that they don't deserve their own thread because they are one of two or three bands talked about all the time on here. Unless you are brand new to prog you already know a lot about them.

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1. Abacab

2. Selling England by the Pound

3. A Trick of the Tail

4. Duke

5. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

6. Genesis (Shapes)

7. And Then There Were Three

8. Wind and Wuthering

9. Foxtrot

10. We Can't Dance

#s 1-3 are flawless masterpieces - I wouldn't change a thing.

#s 4-6 have a few minor flaws, but I wouldn't want to be without them.

#s 7-9 are transitional albums - some awe-inspiring moments, some not-so-awe-inspiring.

It was REALLY hard to choose #10, but "Driving the Last Spike", "Hold on My Heart", and "Fading Lights" won the day in spite of some truly AWFUL material on that same album.

I think too that Genesis get appreciation enough already, but "since we are appreciating", I can tell that Genesis together with ELP seem to be my most favourite bands, and I'm fond/very fond of the albums 

Trespass

Nursery Cryme

Foxtrot

SEbtP

The Lamb

We Can't Dance at least showed some attempt at long form writing with Driving The Last Spike and Fading Lights. I also like Dreaming While You Sleep. That's a healthy 27 minutes of prog across those 3 tracks. You have to go back to Duke to find that amount of prog on one Genesis album and it's not by much.

Generally I don't hate on their 80's stuff as much as many do and I don't love all their pre ATTTW output as much as many do. I think they continued being a creative band but Collins being so successful and being part of Live Aid ( a mostly prog free zone) rubs many up the wrong way it seems. No Genesis album is perfect. It's totally debateable that they made any true Masterpieces but Foxtrot must be damn close. SEBTP only seems higher rated because it has higher production values otherwise I don't get it. Lamb and Trick are other great albums along with Nursery Cryme for me. W&W seems to be a band splintering apart. I don't mind Abacab but I mostly dislike Shapes even more than Invisible Touch in truth. A Genesis fan I roomed with at college tried to convince me that it was a great album when it came out. I hated it though. So plastic sounding and uninteresting. That was their low point until maybe Calling All Stations which was just deeply puzzling. IMO

So does Calling All Stations which incurs even more hate than IT.

All three of Ray Wilson's solo albums I've listened to so far sound better to me than Calling All Stations, although Genesis set a pretty low bar with that album. 

Although I don't dislike CAS I admit it's probably their weakest album in some ways. The one thing I'll say about it is that it's at least not as poppy as the four or five that came before it. 

Maybe Steve Hackett did not invent tapping, but he sure made it very popular within prog and rock in general. EVH may have taken it to a higher level of popularity though....

To me just how they wrote songs and constructed the music was innovative.