who likes noodling, I would suggest you probably don't.

Genesis were all about the song not technique. If you don't get them, you almost certainly won't get Yes or King Crimson etc.

However, are you sure you have the right album? I happened to listen to Foxtrot for the first time in ages just last week, and it was fab...

D'oh

Different strokes etc. At least you listened with an (almost) open mind.

Forget the albums.

Genesis are like a lot of prog bands of the period, bands built on albums. Unfortunately their full length albums have not dated well. I hate The Moody Blues albums but their 2CD Best Of is a cracker. Genesis have a 3CD Best Of called The Platinum Collection (basically a 2CD Collins best of and a 1CD Gabriel best of). It's all you'll ever need.

I have Foxtrot and I don't care for it either. "Supper's Ready" is vastly over-rated simply because it's the longest song they released. Which isn't even accurate as it's something like seven songs (six of which are completely unrelated to each other) stitched together with the joins very, very exposed.

An easy entry point into 70's prog? Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd is the most accessible prog album from that era. If you don't like that by the fifth listen then just give up.

I should also mention that you can't really judge prog on just a few listens. You have to give it time to sink in, to make sense of itself. Repeat listens over the period of a few months usually begin to wield results if the music is any good.

I've had years to know that Foxtrot isn't up to much. Give it another listen in a month's time and you might, or might not, be surprised.

I made this 1CD Prog Best Of. It was designed to be enjoyable, something I would actually enjoy listening to on a regular basis. No impossible to love songs are listed here. It's as accessible a list of prog songs as you'll ever find in my opinion.

I've put a star beside the songs you might enjoy.

* Genesis – The Knife (the heaviest dirtiest Genesis song?)

* The Alan Parsons Project - Can't Take It With You (has a tune and a lyric that tells an interesting story)

The Moody Blues - Question (a pop song with a proggy sound)

* Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb (great guitar work that anyone can appreciate)

Radiohead - Subterranean Homesick Alien (can be a struggle to find the tune)

Tool - Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman)/Rosetta Stoned (if you love heavy metal then you'll dig this)

* The Beatles - A Day In The Life (it's a pop song)

ELP - Knife-Edge (a straight forward rock song, but the keyboards have dated it quite badly)

* Television - Marquee Moon (very melodic)

Van Der Graaf Generator – Killer (decent song about a killer shark)

Goldfrapp - Utopia (ambient noodling)

agree that moody blues is a good intro - arse end of pysche and proto-prog but with enough old fashioned pop nous to underpin the pretentiousness - nu-prog fave LP of recent times is fiery furnaces 'widow city' can't believe it didn't even make wire's top 50 LPs of 2007 - 'clear signal from cairo' alone is worth a tenner of anyone's dough.

There is a fantastic live version of "Roundabout" by Yes on iTunes for 79p - try that - if no good it probably isn't for you. It's also on YouTube if you want to be really cautious.

Some good songs and some more harder edged pieces. No student-y twaddle

Yep did the same thing, finally after avoiding them for 35 years bought my first Genesis LP and it was Foxtrot. Sorry it did nothing for me. I think a lot of the "Prog" revivalists are just indulging in a nostagic stroll down a warm and fuzzy Memory Lane. There is nothing wrong with that of course but I came away feeling a bit cheated. After all the recent buzz about "Prog", I thought perhaps I had misjudged this music back then. I will say one thing though I bought a few Family CDS and the first four Jethro Tull albums and I was not disappointed although I am not sure that either of these bands fall into the "Prog" catagory.

Happy listening!

Sorry but don't really understand this idea that you find an easy bit of prog for beginnners - (shorter and with less time signature changes than usual or something) then you move onto more challenging stuff, intermediate, before being finally ready to take on the really tricky stuff, advanced prog studies - presumably like Lark's Tongue In Aspic or whatever. After which you perhaps get presented with some kind of certificate - graduated in prog listening.

I think you just have to try things for yourself. There's no logic to it.

and I'm afraid they're out of stock at Amazon.

In 1969, when the first King Crimson album arrived, for most record buyers below say, 30, there was no obvious precedent, particularly in a rock milieu, for the intensity of the music they produced. It's impossible now, in the presence of Coheed & Cambria, The Mars Volta, and goodness knows who else, to experience the absolute 'what-the-f*ckness' they brought to the youth club Dansette in the local church hall. Try playing table tennis while listening to 21st Century Schizoid Man. You can't.

No one plays table tennis in youth clubs anymore, they're all too busy indulging in pointless chat on MyFaceBeboTwatter, in the sorry solitude of their bedrooms, to actually have a collective experience like hearing Greg Lake sing "Death seed, blind Man's greed, nothing he's got he really needs, 21st century schizoid Man".

Here we are in the 21st century, and we might wonder about how Pete Sinfield got it so right, but we're not getting together as bright young things to hear the next apocalyptic seer spew forth venom so we can all go 'Wow!' together. Shame.

As stimpy has already pointed out, the 'prog' label that suggests it's all about bands like King Crimson, Yes and Genesis is really a later shorthand, an invention. In 1969 you either liked 'commercial' stuff like 'pop' or 'soul', or you liked 'progressive' music, which meant anything from Roy Harper to King Crimson and all points in between or sideways that were in some way, shape or form non mainstream.

The bands it was cool to like if you felt yourself to be a 'progressive music fan' were as much defined by the label they were on as by the type of instruments, subject matter or lyrics they deployed. Quintessence were an Island signing, as were Free, as were Spooky Tooth, and as were King Crimson. Island was one of the quintessentially (!) 'progressive' labels, along with Harvest, Dawn, Vertigo and many others.

If you want to give 'progressive music' as it was perceived in the late sixties and early seventies another go, there are a million places you could start, but there's no single canon of work that defines the genre; it was an attitude to life as much as anything.

If you want to try another of the bands that are lumped into the disdainfully limiting 'prog' definiton as it is today, you could do much worse than try the first Crimson album, or 'The Yes Album' from er, Yes, or even persevere with early Genesis and give 'Nursery Cryme' a listen. This last one is a much better album than 'Foxtrot' in my opinion; it's just that more people had caught on by the time 'Foxtrot' came out, and it's therefore remembered by more hardcore Genesis fans as the first thing they heard.

..if you have to try, it doesn't work.
(And that's the ONLY reason it's like sex.)

...go back and listen to what John Peel was playing in the early 1970's. You can bet he never played ELP but still had an ear for what was good in that era.

It always took me several listenings to "get" a new prog album, but the results were usually worth it: Cressida's two albums "Cressida" and "Asylum" are two albums which did nothing for me on the first few listenings. But in those days music was harder to come by, so if you didn't like this month's album purchase at first hearing, you'd listen again and again and again.

Eventually they clicked and to this day they are among my top 10 favourite albums of all time.

With music crashing in at me from all angles, I often wonder how many potential Cressidas pass my ears but could never get enough headtime to click in the same way. With all the suggestions made, and so much of it available in an instant, what chance has Iain got of hearing anything often enough for it to click? But definitely worth the effort.

It was okay. The problem is that side 2 overshadows side 1. You spend your whole time in anticipation of Supper's Ready and you kind of dismiss all the songs on side 1 as being lightweight material just because it isn't 23 minutes long*.

And I stand by my comment that Supper's Ready is a just a collection of song fragments strung together with only the start and end song fragments having anything to do with each other.

Not bad, but nothing great.

* This problem also affects "Meddle" by Pink Floyd with the 23 minutes Echoes song dominating the album at the expense of side 1.

the title of this thread would be "Now Let Us Prog!" and you would hear it in Alan Freeman's voice as you typed

..the idea that a fondness for certain progressive music of the era instantly brands one a dewy eyed nostalgist.
Good music is good music, and whole reams of hippie-era Genesis are just that.