Trick of the tail at the time

Re the original question: Gabriel left Genesis when I was about 12 and just as I was getting into music. I was bigtime into Floyd and Hawkwind by 1975-76 in the calm before the punk storm, and I may have been aware that a band named Genesis existed, but it would be a year or two before I started paying attention to them.

This is how it happened from my POV. It's a bit back-to-front. 

At the start of 1977 I saw the clip for Peter Gabriel's 'Modern Love' and was utterly gobsmacked. I still am. It was an incredible song, especially as a proggish song coming out right at the birth of punk. So I immediately got the first Gabriel album (for some reason I remember getting the second album first, so maybe it wasn't immediate).  Then at the other end of the same year, Genesis had a sizeable hit in Australia with 'Follow you Follow Me'. This seemed a pleasant tune, but compared with 'Modern Love' seemed lightweight and hardly an auspicious introduction to the band in the year of The Sex Pistols and The Stranglers (it probably didn't help that there was an Abba single with a similar title).

I had just gotten into music as a prog fan, only to be enthused by new wave,  which left me with a permanent guilty feeling about prog (if you weren't there at the time you have no idea how hostile the music press was to it, and how desperately uncool it was to like anyone who's first album was from before 1976, unless it was the Velvet Underground) Genesis needed to be more not less edgy to capture my alegience.

But I did backtrack into the Genesis discography because of Gabriel. Loved nearly all the Gabriel albums to one extent or another. When I got to 'Trick of the tail', which was a couple of years old by then, it just seemed to lack any real edge to me, and it still does. I had friends who were nuts about it, but to me Genesis after Gabriel were never more than mildly interesting at best. I preferred 'Wind and Wuthering' (perhaps becasue nobody was telling me how great it was), but not by a lot. I had an uptick of interest when 'Duke' came out, but from memory by this time Gabriel had his amazing third album, and again, Genesis just sounded like a proggish pop band whereas Gabriel seemed both genuinely progressive and had a new-wavish edginess as well, in a similar way to Hammill (who I was discovering by now).

M27Barney wrote: Epping Forest was an instrumental peice that gabriel then added the lyrics to. Perhaps there is too much going on for some people. But as prog lyrics go I think that Gabriel nails the zeitgeist of sixties gangland culture. Fine comedic social comment. Banks and collins tried to do the same with Robbery, Assault n Battery...but fail miserably...After Harold the Barrel, the lyrics in battle are the best comedy lyrics Genesis did...

 

Agree about Robbery, Assault and Battery although it is the only low point for me on Trick (although I mentioned I love the drumming before so that is something at least) . Nothing on Epping Forest much appeals to me. It starts promisingly enough but as soon as the 'posh vicar' pipes up I just switch off. It does make me think that you can hide a multitude of sins in prog by just extending songs by 6 minutes! They did estue the long form approach on Lamb and that works brilliantly apart from the weird psyche stuff on Waiting Room. Trick was powerful and to the point and knew its boundaries. W&W ( weaker than Trick imo) was their last attempt at Symph prog but they were obviously not alone in moving away from long tracks towards the back end of the eighties. However they could make it work for a while then the 80's fried everyone's brain for a while. 

I wanted to spring "Trick" on him, but he heard it before I could get my hands on him....predictably, he not only became a huge fan of TOTT, but of all Genesis, including Gabriel's era.  It was quite hilarious!  

I only saw Genesis on their ATTWT tour, which was excellent (with Wayne, of course!).  Seeing them with Bruford would have been quite amazing! 

Sure, I got that that's what you meant and was agreeing with you.  That is, that the accessibility of Trick of the tail is deceptive because it's still full fledged prog.