This. A million times this.

I think their best Gabriel-era record is Selling England by the Pound, if just for First of Fifth alone.

Genesis are a real odd band for me as I don't care much for their output especially Gabriel era but Foxtrot is one of my favourite Prog albums and I can't single out anything that I don't like about it and as for the Collins era I don't like any one particular album yet many albums have some of my favourite songs on them.

From the self titled- Mama and Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea. From Invisible Touch - Domino and The Brazilian and even We Can't Dance had Driving The Last Spike but generally the albums are quite boring.

Foxtrot still stands head and shoulders above everything else though.

getting into Foxtrot

still don't really like "Watcher of the Skies" or "Supper's Ready" much

fave song there is either "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" or "Horizons"

I hardly know Gabriel-era Genesis, but songs written by Collins often tell a story. I think "Home by the Sea" and "Keep It Dark" do it very well, in being strange stories that have an arc and mostly make sense, backed by unusual music.

Most songs written by Collins tell a story? What about Gabriel's storytelling prowess? Have you listened to "Trespass"? The songs "White mountain" and "Visions of angels" certainly tell a story, as does "The knife". Then there's the seminal "Nursery cryme", with the magical adult fairytale "The musical box", the mythological "Fountain of Salmacis" and the science-fiction-themed "Return of the giant hogweed", not to mention the hilarious "Harold the barrel"!

Moving on, you have the FULL "Lamb lies down on Broadway", a double album of one single story/journey, then of course there's "Supper's ready" from "Foxtrot", plus the amazing sci-fi "Get 'em out by Friday" from the same album, and so on.

As for Collins writing songs, let's be clear here: most of the songwriting on albums post-Gabriel (and pre-) was a JOINT effort, and is credited to all the band. Collins wrote two tracks on "Duke", one on "Abacab", and a few more. He didn't write "Keep it dark" (which I hate, as it goes) and had very little solo writing input to any of the Genesis albums, pre or post Gabriel. I'm not saying the one is better than the other --- Collins wrote some fine solo material, although he did also write "Sussudio"/"Who said I would?"/"Like china" etc --- but it seems he had little solo input into Genesis while with them. In fact, Genesis have pretty much always been about the "group writing", but I think you can see Gabriel's hand in most of the first five albums --- even "From Genesis to Revelation" has his lyrical handprints all over it.

You have to take Genesis's output overall as a body of work: certainly, from 1969 up to 1974 it has Gabriel's style, concept and feel about it, whereas the two albums "in the interim", "Trick of the tail" and "Wind and wuthering" still sound to me more like Collins singing Gabriel material. It's not until "And then there were three" that you see a major shift in Genesis's style, and this continues on into "Duke" and "Abacab", replacing the more heavy progressive rock songs and longer compositions with shorter, snappier, more commercial material, which of course then leads to their biggest hit singles. But again, that was a band decision, though I do still hold Collins to account for the godawful "Abacab"....

It's funny because Gabriel's first solo record doesn't sound anything like the final albums he did with Genesis, and he has barely acknowledged them since.

Uh, I stand corrected? Actually, I suspect the Genesis ballads were mostly written by Phil (confirmed for "In Too Deep" and "Misunderstanding"). Anyway, I still like what I like, and I'm sure I could never like Gabriel-era Genesis much. The song titles warn me enough.

No problem: opinion has been divided about "who's better" since Gabriel left, though personally I like both. I just wanted to take issue with your contention (perhaps unintentional or indirect) that ONLY Collins songs told a story, which is certainly untrue.

I think my own favourite Genesis comes around what I termed the interim period. I really like both those albums, though of course I'm kind of biased, as they were the first (other than "Seconds out", which is anyway mostly Gabriel stuff) Genesis albums I listened to. It's like, you go in a straight line BACK from TotT and W&W and the music gets heavier, deeper, more progressive and then in a line FORWARD it's more straight-ahead rock through to pop: 1976 certainly marks the turning point for the style and music of the band. It's up to you which side, if any, of that line you choose to fall behind.

As for Gabriel not talking about his pre-solo work? Who does? Fish mostly ignores his Marillion output to a degree, Collins certainly tends to tiptoe around his time with Genesis, even George Michael wanted to forget his time with Wham! (didn't we all?) --- solo artistes want to be known for what they've done AFTER they leave the band, and not always be related, compared or tied back to their previous work, so it's not surprising that Gabriel seldom mentions his Genesis output: it WAS over thirty years ago now, after all...

to be fair, though, Gabriel's lyrics are usually too obtuse to form a coherent and cohesive story

the only straightforward story I know is "The Cinema Show"

Yeah, "too obtuse" :) Versus sometimes too straightforward for Phil, especially near the end of Genesis as a hit-maker.