Genesis

A Trick of the Tail is a good one to start with. If you like the proggy elements you can work your way backwards and try the Gabriel stuff (I recommend Selling England By the Pound to start) and if you like the poppier side you can try the 80s stuff (Invisible Touch for this).
 
What's great about the pop era is the fact that you can hear the albums in whatever order you like. Of course, my personal reccommendation is Genesis, their self-titled album. But I wouldn't mind it if you picked Abacab or Duke. They're all fairly close in quality!

Except We Can't Dance. That album has some decent songs here and there but nothing great and it feels like nothing more than a Collins solo album, just with the Genesis moniker slapped on it.
 
The Gabriel era...I would have listen to them in this order.

1: Selling England By The Pound
2: Foxtrot (doesn't really matter if you pick this one first)
3: Nursery Cryme (This one's actually really similar in structure to Selling England By The Pound)
4: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (Probably the easiest to start with and the hardest to really get into)
5: Trespass (After you heard all those albums, I'll reccommend this one next)
6: From Genesis To Revelation (You should only listen to this album after getting yourselves well-aquinted with the rest of the discography, not just the Gabriel era but the Collins era as well...because it's the one most different from the rest and it has pretty terrible production (not as bad as I first thought...) and the songs are just your average baroque pop)

Oh and by the way, stay as far away from Calling All Stations as possible. Why? Just don't!
 
I could agree with most of that. Your Gabriel Era list is spot on. For the 80s it's definitely true that you can start with any of them, but I think Invisible Touch has the perfect mix of their pop/prog style. You get the two epics and then a bunch of solid pop songs. Plus the instrumental at the end is the icing on the cake. The other albums are good but don't strike this balance. Plus the self titled is consistent but for some reason I rarely go for the entire album.
 
Actually not so much. Giant Hogweed protects itself with an acidic coating, and gives human skin third-degree chemical burns on contact.
 
I'm actually surprised that Selling England by the Pound is so popular among Genesis fans. It's good, but I think most of their other prog classics are better. My personal top four of the band's discography is The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Foxtrot, A Trick of the Tail and Duke. Not sure about the exact ordering there though.
 
Selling England starts and ends very strongly. With Firth Of Fifth and Cinema Show, it's got two major classics that rival the top two from any other album. I also like Phil's vocal on More Fool Me; the first four tracks don't have a weak moment. So, I can see how it would get ranked highly, if a person also likes Epping Forest.

I go for Foxtrot personally. Only Can-Utility feels like filler, and it's good filler.
 
I've always loved "Can-Utility". The other songs on the album may be even better, but I don't see it as any kind of weak spot at all.

I waver between Foxtrot and Selling England by the Pound. The first has slightly better songwriting, I think, but the latter feels more coherent, the most fully realized depiction of that half-reality, half-fantasy world of Gabriel et al. Nursery Cryme isn't quite there yet and Lamb has too many weak songs on the second record.
 
Shadow said:
I waver between Foxtrot and Selling England by the Pound. The first has slightly better songwriting, I think, but the latter feels more coherent, the most fully realized depiction of that half-reality, half-fantasy world of Gabriel et al. Nursery Cryme isn't quite there yet and Lamb has too many weak songs on the second record.
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Exactly this.

Foxtrot is the best of them, with every song being great IMO. Selling England has a couple weak spots but at its best it has some of the best material that lineup produced. Firth of Fifth is what got me hooked on Genesis and I'd probably consider The Cinema Show to have my favorite instrumental work from them. Actually, the only rival for Cinema Show is Firth of Fifth.
 
I think Trespass is waaaay underrated.
I have the box set of the 1970-1975 years and the surround sound versions are freakin' amazing. I love being wasted at 2am and cranking them. Ha.
 
Steve Hackett was excellent this past Friday night! Played one set of his solo stuff and then another set of Genesis songs.. He is great live, definitley see him if you never have
 
Stardust said:
The Gabriel era...I would have listen to them in this order.

1: Selling England By The Pound
2: Foxtrot (doesn't really matter if you pick this one first)
3: Nursery Cryme (This one's actually really similar in structure to Selling England By The Pound)
4: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (Probably the easiest to start with and the hardest to really get into)
5: Trespass (After you heard all those albums, I'll reccommend this one next)
6: From Genesis To Revelation (You should only listen to this album after getting yourselves well-aquinted with the rest of the discography, not just the Gabriel era but the Collins era as well...because it's the one most different from the rest and it has pretty terrible production (not as bad as I first thought...) and the songs are just your average baroque pop)

Oh and by the way, stay as far away from Calling All Stations as possible. Why? Just don't!
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Disagree with that. CAS is a fine effort. It's not a Genesis album really any more than WCD is.
 
Calling All Stations show's a band that was out of ideas. They were focused on the sound of the album more than they were with the quality of all those mid-tempo(boring) songs.
 
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