Genesis- the non album tracks

[JJ88]

Because Genesis are really an 'albums band', most of the threads on here focus on the albums. As such, the many non-album tracks don't seem to get mentioned so much. So it would be nice to discuss them here.

As for me, I don't find any of the Gabriel Charisma-era ones that great- even the early live favourite 'Twilight Alehouse', which is patchy IMHO. However, the Collins-era has an abundance of riches. 'Inside And Out' is a real classic, a story-song concerning someone sent (possibly wrongly) to jail for sexual assault/rape and a big instrumental finish. It would have beefed up the flat middle part of Wind And Wuthering. 'The Day The Light Went Out' is also far better than 'Scenes From A Night's Dream' on the following album.

'Evidence Of Autumn', only a B-side in the UK, is great and popular among fans...it has those A Curious Feeling-style keyboards. 'You Might Recall' and 'On The Shoreline' are also excellent, 'traditional' Genesis tracks left off albums which again contained some dodgy material.

Post your own favourites and why.

[arturs]

Funny enough I don't know many of these. Are they all available on the box sets somewhere?

[JJ88]

^Yes, the boxes are the only way that they were all gathered together...and the boxes are all now out of print.

Some of them are still on the Turn It On Again-The Tour Edition 2-cd best of, but in remixed form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_I...e_Tour_Edition

[paythesnuka]

Feeding the Fire has been one of my favorite Genesis songs, let alone B side.

I also love Twilight Alehouse and the live versions of Going Out to Get You

[mozo-pg]

I like Its Yourself and Vancouver.

[Mister Triscuits]

I like Its Yourself and Vancouver.

I think "Vancouver" is really touching--I like it more than anything on ATTW3.

[chescorph]

It would be interesting if someone could correlate the non album tracks with the album they could have appeared on, because off the top of my head they could easily have made those albums even better.

[mx20]

You Might Recall (Abacab) and It's Yourself (Trick) are my two favorites. Always thought More Fool Me and possibly After The Ordeal should have been held off of the Selling England LP to ensure a higher-fidelity slab of vinyl (less running time).

I don't agree that the Spot The Pigeon tracks would have improved Wind & Wuthering. That record needed serious revisions of the existing material; revisions it was never going to get because of squabbles about songwriting credits.

I think were some tunes from the WCD era that were better than the album material (and I've heard people say that about CAS, too), but that's hardly worth thinking about, for me anyway.

[mx20]

Oh, and I love the single version of Watcher of the Skies! Seriously bummed it didn't get the remix treatment in 2007 (although I tend to prefer the orginal mixes of Trick and Duke).

[Progatron]

'Inside And Out' is a real classic, a story-song concerning someone sent (possibly wrongly) to jail for sexual assault/rape and a big instrumental finish. It would have beefed up the flat middle part of Wind And Wuthering. 'The Day The Light Went Out' is also far better than 'Scenes From A Night's Dream' on the following album.

'Evidence Of Autumn', only a B-side in the UK, is great and popular among fans...it has those A Curious Feeling-style keyboards. 'You Might Recall' and 'On The Shoreline' are also excellent, 'traditional' Genesis tracks left off albums which again contained some dodgy material.

Agreed on everything here, although I quite like Scenes From A Night's Dream.

Feeding the Fire has been one of my favorite Genesis songs, let alone B side.

Great tune, should have been on the album!

I like Its Yourself and Vancouver.

I've never warmed much to Vancouver. It's okay, has a certain charm to it but I rarely listen to it. It's one of the few where I agree with cutting it from the final album. It's Yourself on the other hand, I love. And I wish they had included it on the album, would have flowed beautifully into Los Endos.

It would be interesting if someone could correlate the non album tracks with the album they could have appeared on, because off the top of my head they could easily have made those albums even better.

... off the top of my head:

Twilight Alehouse, Happy The Man & Going Out To Get You - Nursery Cryme
It's Yourself (Beloved Summer) - A Trick Of The Tail
Match Of The Day, Pigeons, Inside And Out - Wind And Wuthering (all officially released as Spot The Pigeon EP)
The Day The Light Went Out, Vancouver - And Then There Were Three
Evidence Of Autumn, Open Door - Duke
Submarine, Naminanu, You Might Recall, Paperlate, Me And Virgil - Abacab
Do The Neurotic, Feeding The Fire, I'd Rather Be You - Invisible Touch
On The Shoreline, Hearts On Fire - We Can't Dance
Papa He Said, Banjo Man, Phret, 5/8, Sign Your Life Away, Anything Now, Run Out Of Time, Nowhere Else To Turn - Calling All Stations

... of the ones not discussed so far in this thread, I am very fond of Submarine, Open Door and Match Of The Day. I basically like all of them apart from a couple of the Calling All Stations tracks and Me And Virgil.

[2steves]

Inside and Out would have made W&W better if it replaces Your own special way----skipped the song 80% of the time.

[flowerking]

I like Twilight Alehouse, its got a pretty awesome Hackett solo near the end. Inside and Out musically is brilliant but I find the lyrics to be pretty disturbing and really at opposition to the style of the music.

[bill g]

Evidence of Autumn is very likely my favorite post Hackett Genesis track.

Do The Neurotic for me blew away everything post Abacab. Being a 7 minute prog instrumental, I wonder if they wrote it for the prog fans, knowing they'd pick up the b-side, but not harming sales for Invisible Touch. Course they had 'The Brazilian' on there, but I always thought DTN was much better.

Abacab has some good b-sides, 'You Might Recall' is nice, certainly better than 'Whodunnit' or 'Man on the Corner'. 'Naminanu' should have closed the album over 'Another Record', and 'Me & Virgil' has more going on in it than perhaps any of the songs on Abacab, with the possible exception of 'Me & Sarah jane' Of course I prefer 'Sarah Jane' since it is brilliant, but M&V I think is good too, probably too proggy for the time period. 'Submarine' could have been much better. It has the atmosphere, but Tony should have experimented more with chords in that one, I think.

'On The Shoreline' would have made a great opener for We Can't Dance, an album I think suffers from lack of depth, and I hate to say that about a Genesis album. But I do like 'On The Shoreline'.

'Inside and Out' should definitely have been on W&W instead of 'Your Own Special Way' (which I don't dislike, it has a nice outdoors feel), but 'Wot Gorilla' should stay on the album since it reprises a theme from 'One For The Vine'.

'Run Out of Time' from the 'CAS' era was great I thought, moody as heck, and should definitely have made the cut.

And 'Its Yourself' is a personal favorite. Always loved that one.

[AncientChord]

Did we forget "Happy the Man?" My fav non-album track from the Gabriel era. Typical hilarious lyrics that are just great..."Someone says he's Jesus Christ, but I don't care!" always brings a smile.

[GuitarGeek]

Technically not a "Genesis" song, but one of my favorite songs that "didn't make the album" was always Silver Song. For those who maybe don't know the story, this was a tune that Ant Phillips had actually written for John Silver, the band's drummer during the From Genesis To Revelation period. I guess they had become close friends, and when John left the band, Ant wrote the song as a friendly gesture or whatever, hence the title.

So anyway, I believe it's been in 1974, when the band were on hiatus following the end of the Selling England By The Pound touring cycle, Mike, Ant, and Phil went into the studio and did a full blown recording of it. This was apparently the first time Ant had been in a studio since the Trespass sessions, as he kinda left "rock music" behind to study classical music or whatever for a few years. There was apparently talk of it being released as a single, but that never happened, and it was never included on any of Ant's solo records. Well, not until the deluxe reissue of The Geese And The Ghost that came out about 10 years ago (apparently right near the end of Ant's association with Voiceprint, as I believe just a few years later, Esoteric started talking about reissuing Ant's catalog yet again).

I guess on the surface, ti's kind of a slight song, there's basically a single verse that's repeated ad nauseum, with a sort of jazzy guitar solo int he middle, but I've always liked it. To my ears, it almost sounds like a "lost Genesis song". There's even a synth line on the ride out choruses that sounds like something Tony might have played.

I first heard it on a bootleg I picked up when I was a teenager, and that's apparently the same place everyone else who knew about the song knew it from. Phil apparently did a radio interview in the mid 70's, and he brought the song along on a cassette, and it was played over the air, and that's where the bootleg recording came from. There was a point where there was a reissue of Private Parts And Pieces (the original one, from 1978) had a re-recorded version that Ant did on his own, with the liner notes stating that there was absolutely no chance the 1974 version would ever be released, but that's obviously changed.

[ThomasKDye]

I'm going to put in another good word for "Me and Virgil." The lyrics are a little corny, but it has a cute happy ending and a sweet little finale. I also like the middle section, especially, "Best keep going, don't look... BACK!!!" The song is massively outclassed by "You Might Recall" but it's a fun song to put on every now and again.

Inside and Out musically is brilliant but I find the lyrics to be pretty disturbing and really at opposition to the style of the music.

Yeah, I get uneasy at a song saying "women lie about being raped so they can ruin guys' reputations." I try to treat this as one individual story rather than a statement in general.

[ThomasKDye]

Do The Neurotic for me blew away everything post Abacab. Being a 7 minute prog instrumental, I wonder if they wrote it for the prog fans, knowing they'd pick up the b-side, but not harming sales for Invisible Touch. Course they had 'The Brazilian' on there, but I always thought DTN was much better.

Tony once said something about "Neurotic" being left off the album because it was more of a structured "Los Endos" style instrumental, while "Brazilian" was more quirky and different.

[yamishogun]

I'm going to put in another good word for "Me and Virgil." The lyrics are a little corny, but it has a cute happy ending and a sweet little finale. I also like the middle section, especially, "Best keep going, don't look... BACK!!!" The song is massively outclassed by "You Might Recall" but it's a fun song to put on every now and again.

I thought, and still do, that both were stunning songs in very different ways. I agree about the middle section. You Might Recall is my favorite song from the 80s. I don't have to think long about it...

Edit: Wait! "How Soon is Now" is a tie!

uh oh...there may be more. No! Those are the two!

[smcfee]

Need to listen to that 76-92 box set again. I usually just listen to the live disc.

[Progatron]

Inside and Out would have made W&W better if it replaces Your own special way----skipped the song 80% of the time.

Agreed there. It's the only track I skip from W&W, and Inside And Out is the precise song I would use as a replacement.

'Submarine' could have been much better. It has the atmosphere, but Tony should have experimented more with chords in that one, I think.

I disagree here, I think the simple, somewhat repetitive nature of this track lives up to its title. I don't know, I've just always been very fond of it.

Did we forget "Happy the Man?"

No, I mentioned it earlier in the thread.

[Digital_Man]

I've never owned any of the box sets but I've heard a bunch over the years on youtube etc.

Did anyone mention "the day the lights went out" yet?

I also like "it's yourself" and "submarine."

[JJ88]

Lots of replies, thanks! Also thanks to Progatron for putting all these songs into context.

RE; 'It's Yourself'. It's a nice song but again, I think at this point their quality control on the albums was spot-on (that changed with the next one!). I don't think it's stronger than anything on the album. That long psychedelic outro (alas, edited down a little on the Archive CD) is neat but is unlike anything else they did. There's also, of course, the bit they used for the intro to 'Los Endos'.

RE; 'Naminanu' and 'Submarine'. Both are good instrumentals but they do feel like B-sides...that is, things that stand somewhat outside of their usual sound. I know there was talk of them being used in a suite with 'Dodo/Lurker'...it doesn't strike me as obvious, really, although the album does take a nose-dive in quality after those tracks!

I said in my first post that the couple of Charisma-era Gabriel ones aren't that special, for me. 'Happy The Man' is a fairly inconsequential acoustic number, not dissimilar to 'Harlequin' and I think that has more about it. 'Twlight Alehouse' is interesting in places but doesn't gel, and Gabriel goes over the top IMHO. Also, listen to the instrumental linking section before 'The Serpent' on From Genesis To Revelation and you can hear some of '...Alehouse' there- that's how long they'd had this one!

[JJ88]

Going Out To Get You - Nursery Cryme

This is an odd one. The studio recording and another one called 'Wooden Mask' it was planned to be on a single with has long been lost. They did play it live around then, though, and it bears fairly little resemblance to the dreadful demo version. IMHO these two tracks are the holy grail.

I suppose there's also the three non-album tracks from the Decca period, which hardly ever get mentioned here- 'That's Me', 'A Winter's Tale' and 'One Eyed Hound'. I like all three, although the two B-sides are very rough-around-the-edges. 'A Winter's Tale' was a failed single...I've always been fond of it, IMHO it has a great deal of period charm. (The 'single version' of 'The Silent Sun' is also included with these songs...I always felt the difference between the two is very minimal, if there is any, beyond it being in mono. I could be wrong though!)

[LeFrog]

The 'single version' of 'The Silent Sun' is also included with these songs...I always felt the difference between the two is very minimal, if there is any, beyond it being in mono. I could be wrong though!

It's the only difference.
Going slightly off topic: although Silent Sun is not a good example, the rest of the FGTR album has many interesting small differences in its mono mix. I wish it was released on CD one day, I prefer it to the stereo mix where the band is confined to one stereo channel and the strings to the other.

[JJ88]

^Thanks for confirming that.

Yes, it's a mystery given all the times that album has been released on CD that nobody has put out that mono mix. I think it had a reissue on record a while back though. The stereo mix is clearly a rush job; on the songs with strings, they just put the band onto one channel and dumped the overdubbed strings onto another.

As is common for non-album tracks, I'm guessing the three never were mixed into stereo at all. I believe their first appearance on an album would have been as part of the Decca series Rock Roots, which had all their Decca output. Most subsequent releases of the album have followed that exact same Rock Roots sequencing.

https://www.discogs.com/Genesis-Rock...release/755331