Best Genesis Album - your opinions please.


OK, after consuming eleventeen beers last night, I spun a couple of albums I haven't played in ages - Duke, followed by Wind and Wuthering. Duke, despite the poor recording quality, is one of the bands most underated albums....sure it's a little glimpse of things to come as far as Phil Collins' dominating influence, but it's still an incredible album, and probably the last 'real' Genesis work before they became too commercial.
What are your top 3 Genesis albums and when was the last time you played one of them?....

Rooze
128x128rooze
Selling England By The Pound is still my favorite, although I latched onto this band around the time of Nursery Crimes. I loved parts of Lamb and the others, but I think this Gabriel era recording holds up with the strongest tracks overall.

I'll never forget the first time I saw Genesis live.

It was during their very first US tour - they played the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, 3rd on the bill to Styx (!!) at an all day concert that featured mainly local bands and has-beens. Little to no pre-publicity - I couldn't believe they were actually going to be in Chi-town. This would have been before SEBTP came out but after Foxtrot. Peter Gabriel was the only band member who stood up to perform - everyone else sat down to play. Only about 30 people in the audience knew who they were and had come to see them...it wasn't pretty at first but they won over most in the drunken crowd with Supper's Ready.

When Genesis came back in support of SEBTP the next year, they naturally played a solo show, which was at Northwestern. By that time I was writing music reviews and was on the guest list. Yay! Chicago eventually became a huge town for the band: the last show Peter ever did with the Genesis was at the Arie Crown Theater in McCormack place during the Lamb tour. It was bittersweet - they encored with Supper's Ready and the entire road crew danced on stage wearing Pete's old costumes (including my favorite, the fox head).

I enjoyed bits of A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering. There were some nice things on them. But I didn't care at all for tthe Phil Collins super-hits era. Yeck.

Gabriel's solo career OTOH soared, if sporadically. He's someone I'll still pay to see - I'm not on many guest lists these days. Peter never disappoints, although he looks alarmingly older these days compared to the beautiful young man he was in 1972 when I first saw him in person.

I've never had the courage to see Musical Box...but now I may do.
Rackon, that's a great period in their history you were able to be involved in. You mentioned their farewell tour at McCormick, there was actually one other show at Milton Keynes in 1982. Gabriel had run into serious money problems promoting his WOMAD project, and the boys rallied for a one-night show in front of about 100,000 wet and muddy Genesis fans. Hackett and Philips were there and it was actually on Mike Rutherfords birthday, Oct 2nd I think.
There were a lot of technical problems but it was an incredible show nevertheless. I wish I could find a video somewhere....

Cheers

Rooze
Yup, it was fun to there, a very interesting time.

Couldn't get to ole Blighty for the reunion, but was very glad to see the WOMAD and Gabriel tours.

I also saw Roxy Music's first US tour in Chicago same year - I met a future boyfriend at the gig and we got to hang out with Brian Eno a bit (not as glamourous as it sounds, Brian mainly wanted to do laundry...and did). I stayed friends with some of RM members for a time - Andy helped me with a music theory paper one time.

I believe Brian Ferry is in a movie coming out soon -
Anything with Collins fronting the band is marshmallow fluff and virtually unlistenable.


Well, that would definately be a matter of opinion, I happen to like later genesis very much, i haven't heard much of the peter gabriel era genesis, but i am going to check it out, a lot of people on here, speak highly of it.
Seconds Out also gets my vote: the dynamics on Squonk are killer and Dance On A Volcano seems almost surreal as they're finishing up. Their Chicago-Rosemount show ran almost 3 hours; the energy level in the hall was absolutely incredible as the whole place was abuzz. The only show I've ever seen that evoked the audience to even greater involvement was Jean Luc Ponty at the Arie Crown; we had 2nd row seats & he was right in front of us only about 20 feet away. Both of those shows remain unforgettable even today.