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    • This is a catastrophic omission. Can we demand a recount?

      People shouldn’t be allowed to create polls like this without putting them through some sort of quality control.

      There should be an official Arbiter of Prog to oversee them. I nominate you.

  2. I think we all know what no 1 will be here. The interesting (well, maybe not that interesting) question is what the others in the top 10 are, and if ANY post 1977 tracks have significant votes. A handful of post ’77 tracks are OK to me, but I would have preferred it if Phil Collins worked as a session drummer (and yes, if he must, have his solo career) and the others went off and did their more or less progressive things. I really didn’t enjoy the post-Hackett years and lost interest in 1980 having given them the benefit of the doubt up to then.

    • I only scanned the list before selecting my 10, rather than selecting dozens and painstakingly narrowing the selection down, but Mama and Home by the Sea (both from the 1983 Genesis album) got the nod from me.

      • It wouldn’t surprise me if Supper’s Ready gets the nod, but I don’t understand the enduring reverence for it. If you were one of the lucky few to have seen them performing it early on, then fair enough, it’s going to be dear to your heart. But it’s not the best thing they ever did, not by a long chalk. Personally, I lose interest about halfway through, after Willow Farm.

        • I cycle to work every day past the end of Willow Farm Lane which means that I regularly used to have the second half of Supper’s Ready going through my head as I rode – and then it would start again at the beginning. It’s taken a superhuman effort on my part to learn not to look at the road sign as I go past – and not to think about not looking.

  6. I think ‘In The Cage’ is one of their best, and most exciting, songs. I’ve liked it since I was a solitary teenager. That opening line “I got sunshine in my stomach …” is so suggestive and tantalising. It grabs you straight away. And the music is wild and thunderous. There’s so much going on, it’s staggering that the whole thing stays together. There are some amazing moments. Phil Collins pile-driving on the drums, while a distorted Peter Gabriel scream-sings from some remote and distant void: “Outside the cage I see my brother John … “; the utterly manic finale “Raindrops keep falling on my head …”.; it ends like a mad machine spinning out of control. It’s utterly brilliant. I saw them perform it on the 2007 reunion tour at The Hollywood Bowl, and I was just so happy to submit to it all. It was a real moment.

    Something from Trick of the Tail needs to be in there too. I never tire of that album. It’s so crisp and wintry, but beautiful at the same time, with its twelve string lusciousness. Maybe ‘Entangled’ or ‘Mad Man Moon’.

    Post ’77 I like ‘Deep in the Motherlode’ from And Then There Were Three, ‘Duchess’ from Duke and ‘Like it or Not’ from Abacab, but I’m not sure any of those would make my personal top ten.

      • Hmmm … you’re right, Steve. My eye must’ve skipped over it first time.
        “Wot Gorilla” isn’t really one of my favourite Genesis tracks. It was just flippant little comment.
        I have, however, discovered a proper error in the list.
        “Seven Stones” is incorrectly listed as “Seven Stories”
        And that song really is one of my favourites. I love all of “Nursery Cryme”, really.

    • Well said retro! It’s Steve Hackett at his very finest. I love this track. And will forever hate Daryl Stuermer for the horrible mess he has always made of it since he arrived on the scene.

    • I saw a truly magical performance by The Musical Box at the Albert Hall in about 2005. They played all the classic Gabriel era stuff, the centrepiece of which was the entirety of Selling England… Steve Hackett came on for an encore of Firth of Fifth. Maximum vibrato!

    • Well of course this is the correct answer.

      When they were at the height of their powers, before they became Tony Banks’ backing band. That slide started as soon as Hackett left. Mike Rutherford might as well have been a cardboard cutout after about ATTWT.

  11. A few years ago, all my picks would have been Gabriel-era….now, though, it’s about the post-Gabriel band before Hackett left….so it’s Dance in a Volcano (especially hearing it on release, first track, first album after the split), Entangled, Blood on the Rooftops, Eleventh Earl of Mar, One for the Vine….

    • I love Hogweed. But, being of a biological bent, it’s always bothered me that they get the scientific name wrong at the end. Its Heracleum mantegazzianum and not Heracleum mantegazziani. Pedantry of the first order, I acknowledge.

      Recently came across a huge colony of giant hogweed along the River Bollin on a walk through Dunham Massey, near Altrincham. They are towering, intimidating plants.

    • Are you David Hepworth in disguise? I remember DH’s feature review of the Genesis back catalogue in Q, probably late 80s. Not sure. Anyway, I don’t think DH is a huge fan of prog. in general. Whether he woke up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, or simply wanted to offer one of his definitive takes on the matter, his assessment made grim reading for fans of the ‘classic’, Gabriel-era band. This is all from memory, but I recall that there was a liberal sprinkling of one and two star reviews for the Gabriel albums. Only as the songs got shorter, on the later stuff, did he feel generous enough to proffer more than two. Invisible Touch he considered the pinnacle of their achievements, and gave it, alone, five stars.

        • It’s the peak of their pop period. If you’re familiar with the singles from that time – Land of Confusion, In Too Deep, Invisible Touch, Tonight Tonight Tonight, Throwing it all away – then you’ve heard over half the album. I was shocked when I first saw the cover. I thought it looked really half-arsed, and probably felt the same way about the music. Genesis do pop doesn’t work for me. There’s a track called Domino that goes on for over ten minutes – perhaps a nod to the older fans, if there were any still listening -but there was little left of the musical nuance that made the band so likeable in the first place. To my ears it’s a bland, repetitive record, lacking in character. I never play it. But I’m judging it on what came before. I think the album gained them millions of new fans, and it sold by the truck load.

      • What I remember is that when Q reviewed the remastered CD releases a few years later, the ratings were pretty much reversed with the peak Gabriel albums getting five stars and a gradual decline down to one star for Invisible Touch. As it should be, but indicative of the reassessment of prog and a sea change in sentiment over the interim period. (See also Alexis Petridis’s shocked realisation that The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway contained loads of _actual choons_.)

        I’ve now had to vote in this poll to counterbalance those voting for Follow You Follow Me, particularly as they may also have voted for the execrable Afterglow.

        • I’ll be interested to see how many votes “The Waiting Room” off side 3 of “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” gets in the fans’ chart of favourite Genesis songs. That was a rare occasion when the band took a real left turn into more …. random sound collage sort of territory. As a teenager, I found “The Waiting Room” very strange indeed.

          • I think Brian Eno gets a credit on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and I’ve got a hunch he may have been involved with that track. I think Phil Collins played on Another Green World, which is contemporaneous. I seem to remember seeing a doc., possibly the one that accompanied the last set of remasters (and remixes), where Tony Banks, in trademark supercilious style, poured cold water on Eno’s influence.

  20. Mad Man Moon – won’t win but it’s the perfect distillation in one song of why Genesis was so great. Prog sections and time changes, lyrics that fit perfectly but probably don’t mean much and, more than anything, truly great melodies at all stages.

    I love Genesis, whatever the line-up, until they moved to a three-piece after which I think they settled for the cash, but that song moves me every time.

        • Here you go…..

          GENESIS TOP 40
          1 Supper’s Ready
          2 Firth Of Fifth
          3 The Cinema Show
          4 The Musical Box
          5 Carpet Crawlers
          6 Dancing With The Moonlit Knight
          7 Watcher OfThe Skies
          8 In The Cage
          9 Ripples…
          10 Dance On A Volcano
          11 I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)
          12 The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
          13 Afterglow
          14 Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea
          15 BloodOnTheRooftops
          16 Entangled
          17 Follow You, Follow Me
          18 Los Endos
          19 The Knife
          20 Mama
          21 Squonk
          22 The Fountain OfSalmacis
          23 One For The Vine
          24 The Battle Of Epping Forest
          25 Can-Utility And The Coastliners
          26 The Lamia
          27 Abacab
          28 A Trick Of The Tail
          29 Back In N.Y.C.
          30 The Return OfThe Giant Hogweed
          31 Eleventh Earl OfMar
          32 Dodo/Lurker
          33 Robbery, Assault & Battery
          34 Domino
          35 Get ’Em Out By Friday
          36 Duchess
          37 Deep In The Motherlode
          38 Duke’s Travels/ Duke’s End
          39 Silent Sun
          40 Fading Lights

          • Blimey … neither “Mad Man Moon” nor “Seven Stones” nor “Anyway” nor “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging” even made the Top 40. I demand a recount!
            And I’ve never understood the popularity of “Dance on a Volcano”. It’s one of my very least favourite Genesis songs.
            And “Get ’em Out By Friday” should’ve been higher than no. 35.

            • “Ripples” and even sodding “Afterglow” ahead of “Entangled” and … “Blood on the Rooftops”??!!! What is this bullshit. Half the top 10 I love, the other half not so much.

  23. I have taken one for the team and bought the digital copy. I’ll post the top 40 once I get through the other articles about prog bands I’ve never heard of

  24. Whilst it’s sad to see the physical demise of Phil Collins (although full credit to him for still going out to play live), this clip of him and Mike Rutherford doing Follow You Follow Me was lovely to to see……

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