Genesis..Trespass into Nursery Cryme...a bumpy road

Being fairly new to Genesis I recently I picked up Trespass after it being compared to Atom Heart Mother by Pink Floyd which by the way I absolutely love.It took me a few listens to finally get it.Once I did though it was fantastic.So my next choice was naturally the next offering..Nursery Cryme .I don't know what it is but I am having a real hard time getting it.Musical Box is not bad but the rest so so to me.Is this the post Trespass Genesis?Will Foxtrot and Selling England.. be pretty much the same.I have TLLDOB and other than TLLDOB and Carpet Crawlers I am having a hard time with the rest of disc one.

 

For me, Nursery Cryme is a huge step up from Trespass, and Foxtrot is a huge step up from Nursery Cryme.
Selling England is my favourite of the Gabriel era, and Lamb I would put just behind that and Foxtrot.
Lamb is the one that took the longest to fully appreciate, mainly because it's a double.

 

My feeling exactly. I only like Trespass, most of Selling England and these 2 tunes from the Lamb from the Gabriel years. Never cared for NC or Foxtrot. IMHO they didn't record their masterpiece until Peter left - I mean A Trick of the Tail of course.

 

Well, the conventional wisdom is that the albums get better and better until Lamb. I'd say most "Gabriel-era Genesis" fans pick one of Foxtrot, Selling England or Lamb as their favorite. But you've already heard part of Lamb and not dug it, so you may just not like them that much. (There was a guy on another thread recently who declared Trespass the crowning achievement of all prog rock, so if that one winds up being your favorite, you'll be unusual but not alone in that opinion.)

My advice would be to jump to Selling England, and to sit down and give Lamb a complete listen in one session. If those two don't do it for you, then write it off and find some other group to listen to.

Also try listening to Nursery Cryme and Lamb a few times, maybe. Since you said Trespass is fantastic once you listened to it a few times, it might just take that long for it to "sink in".

 

Just to give some background prog music was never on the front page with me.I was more of the rock type(LZ,Who.Hendrix etc.).After so many years I started to dig deeper into the early 70s prog and really enjoyed it.I was the guy on the other thread declaring Trespass the crown.I was a bit hasty in saying so and retract that statement.I still have quite a bit of the early 70s prog to listen to before coming to a conclusion.Yes is probably somewhere at the top of my 70s prog as far as saying "Yes,Yes is probably the best".Anyway I think I'll take your advice and jump to Selling...My take on this era of prog is some of it is absolutely fantastic but a lot of it I just don't get.

 

To expand on my previous response a little: If you ultimately found Trespass to be "fantastic", you should find something to like on Foxtrot and/or Selling England. Nursery Cryme is a good album with two great songs IMO (The Musical Box and The Fountain of Salmacis) but the next two albums are great pretty much all the way through.

Lamb is its own thing, a real one-of-a-kind, so if you don't get into that, it doesn't necessarily mean you won't get into the earlier stuff. Ironically, while all of Lamb tells a single story, the individual songs are generally much shorter than the epics Genesis recorded on their earlier albums, so, as I say, it's its own thing.

TL;DR: Don't give up on Genesis, try Foxtrot or Selling England next.

 

Ha ha, so maybe you are the only one!

I think it really comes down to which bands you like in the end. I love Genesis, Yes and King Crimson but there's plenty of "prog" that doesn't do it for me at all (heck, there are plenty of Yes albums that don't do it for me at all, even though some of their albums are among my all-time faves).

 

Selling England is a great place to start - you get a whole bunch of what made early Genesis great, and a little of their shortcomings. A really good balance, and the good stuff is great. Was my first prog-era Genesis purchase, and it keeps coming back around as my favorite.

 

Trespass is my favorite too. I think the most similar albums to it they did are Selling England followed by Trick of the Tail.

 

I haven't a clue what you're on about. Really, the bane of many groups are fans who like something then want the same thing over and over again. The 5 Gabriel albums are really where it's at. Trick and Wind are progressively retro attempts to do Gabriel Genesis without Gabriel - I like them but much of the magic, strangeness, and menace departed with him. Listen to Moribund The Burgemeister and you can hear what's missing in those Gabriel sized holes in Trick and Wind. And, if any Genesis album kicks ass, it's Nursery Cryme. Keep listening and thank me later when you grudgingly begin to see the light.

I'm not interested in competing opinions, so don't bother. And don't say Hackett was a bigger loss, that stopped being clever - if it ever was - after the first person ventured to offer that misguided and uninformed opinion.

That felt good.

 

Don't think they made a consistently good album until Foxtrot, which is when they started to get some respect and selling a few albums!

 

Nursery Cryme is my current favorite. I haven't listened to Trespass as much, but I don't particularly love "The Knife", so I don't have high expectations. But yes, the next three are very very good ones. In fact, "Battle of Epping Forest" is my favorite Genesis song.

 

Selling is the pinnacle.

 

Nursery Cryme IMO is a tough listen the first few times. Look at all of the crazy key changes in the song Seven Stones. NC is really out there musically and is totally unique in all things prog.

 

I'm glad you were able to get that off your chest.

 

It must have served some need at that particular time. I just don't get the liking Trespass and not NC. Akin to liking The Yes Album but not liking Fragile.

 

I agree with everyone who's saying move on to the next album. I love Trespass, but I couldn't find anything at all to like in Nursery Cryme. But Foxtrot, Selling England, and Lamb Lies Down On Broadway are all amazing (Lamb is only enjoyable if you're the kind of person who can enjoy double albums though--otherwise it'll be a bit of a drag). There's also some great music on Trick of the Tail and And Then There Were Three (I'm not a fan of Wind & Wuthering). Everything after that is kind of crap, except Duke, which is all right.

But I mean, I'm not the typical Genesis fan. I actually really like the debut (From Genesis to Revelation).

 

De gustibus non est disputandum.

 

I love pretty much all Genesis (excepting Calling All Stations) so I think you have many riches before you if you continue to sample the albums in order.

I would also offer this: Trespass is heavily influenced by original guitarist Anthony Phillips, who left the band after its release. If you like the pastoral, ethereal sounds of Trespass, you owe it to yourself to check out some of Ant's solo work, such as his debut The Geese and the Ghost from 1977.

 

'The Fountain of Salmacis' has been in my Prog Top 10 for the past 30-odd years.... (Don't ask me what the other 9 are though... )


Edit: Oooohhh look what I've found.....

 

Some people's preferences seem to me a bit arbitrary and unfathomable given the material in question. The albums in question aren't that far apart

Lets try it

Seven stones - Visions of Angels
Musical Box - The Knife
Fountain of Salmacis - White Mountain
Harlequin - Dusk

Is this material really that different that to like one and not the other shouldn't cause some head scratching.

 

I love that whole Pop Shop footage - even more than the Shepperton gig. Pre costumes and with a wild and rawness about it.

 

Relax.

 

Nursery Cryme is the album where the band seemed to take on their "historical era". For me being British, it narrates the twilight of the Victorian period and the pre WW1 Edwardian era. From the artwork to the lyrical imagery, it is the sound of an empire that is in terminal decay and obsessed with the past and fearful of the future.

The likes of Freud were changing the our very perception of us as "humans" so there is that almost classic denial of sexuality whilst simultaneously and with true British cognitive dissonance, being utterly obsessed with it. "Musical Box". Yet there are still those out there pushing the very boundaries of that empire even as the presage of its' collapse loomed large "Giant Hogweed". You have the musical hall of "Harold the Barrel", the esoteric tradition in "Seven Stones". The constant harking back to classical civilisations "Fountain of Salmacis

Hailing from Charterhouse school, i suspect the band had a keen eye on all this as the "Public schools", were still very much rooted in the traditions of empire and all its' trappings. They would have watched from Charterhouses' cloistered splendour as the world changed out of recognition for many old timers, in front of their adolescent eyes.

So maybe, try to view in that context and I think the album makes far more sense?

 

I'll relax when I'm ready to relax - you relax.