I was talking with someone, let’s say Keith, last week and I mentioned that “Selling England by the Pound” by Genesis was one of my favorite albums.

Keith responded with “Genesis… Genesis… Wasn’t that Phil Collins’ band?”

To those who know my musical taste: No, I didn’t hit him. I struggled to give Keith a reasonable response instead.

The way that Keith asked the question, he was asking if Genesis was Collins’ band in the same way that the E Street Band was Springsteen’s. The answer to that is “No.” Genesis was very much an ensemble band. All of the band members had their hand in the writing of their songs (except for the pre-Collins drummers – long story). In that sense, Genesis hadn’t been Peter Gabriel’s band either.

Keith may have meant the question as “Wasn’t Phil Collins a member of that band?” The answer to that is “Yes.”

The reason that some folks wondered whether I hit Keith, is that I very much love the Genesis albums from when Gabriel was involved and the Genesis albums without Gabriel are lesser works.

I’d rate most of the Gabriel era albums at 8 or 9 out of 10 with “Selling England by the Pound” as a 10. I’d rate the first 2 albums after Gabriel left, “A Trick of the Tail” and “Wind and Wuthering”, at 7 or 8 out of ten. After that, Genesis never made anything better than 3 except for a couple of tracks from “Invisible touch”.

The first awful album by Genesis was “…And Then There Were Three”. With some albums, I need to listen to them a few times to start really enjoying them. With this one, I kept listening to the damn thing over and over trying to figure out the secret to liking it. It was a lost cause.

I soon started hearing one of the songs from this album, “Follow You, Follow Me” on the radio. One of my friends told me, “I never had much use for Genesis but, now I see why you like them.”

Apparently,  the remaining members of Genesis decided to stop writing the stuff that I like and start writing the stuff that got them sh1tloads of money. I guess that I can’t fault them for that.

<sigh>

Every 10 years or so, I get their later albums from the library to see if maybe I was too harsh and that they really aren’t that bad. That’s how I discovered that “The Brazilian” (I wonder if that had the same connotation then as it does now?) from “Invisible Touch” was an outstanding work. Apart from a couple of exceptions, they’re still sh1t.

I stifled my urge to hit him and said “He was a member of that band.”