A band as notorious for quality control as Genesis were during their career has ensured that in the first instance many tracks lacking that essential “spark” were relegated to B side status in the first place or in the case of so many early songs, not released at all and conveniently “lost” . And so, if we begin, as all good tales do at the start, then which items from the band’s earliest output fit into this feature?

Well, the band’s first album, From Genesis To Revelation itself has nothing which is offensive to these ears of mine and so, I have to look at those tracks which were subsequently exhumed from the archives for the first Genesis Archive set back in 1998. Of these, there are several tracks which make me cringe when I hear them and no doubt, the band themselves may have felt about them in the same manner hence their exile to the vaults for so long.

Moving forward a couple of years agriculturally speakin’we come to the first album from the classic Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford line up - 1971’s Nursery Cryme. An album replete with acknowledged classics in the Genesis canon and yet, even here there are a couple of clunkers to be heard. How on earth a song as mediocre as Seven Stones made it to the same album as The Musical Box is beyond me. Lyrically and musically this is substandard stuff. Even the weird and wacky Happy The Man had more going for it than this one. Harlequin too is a strange choice for an album so full of power and drama but it at least has the redeeming quality of being quite innocuous.

Foxtrot should have been the Gabriel era band’s definitive album but even here there is room for at least one track which should have been relegated to B side status. In this case it is Can Utility & The Coastliners. This witty re-telling of the story of King Cnut should work but the music and lyrics fail to marry up which always leaves this listener unsatisfied when hearing it.

The Post Gabriel era albums have also proven to be equally as prone to the occasional clunker although it has to be said, as far as I am concerned, their first album after Peter’s departure, 1976’s A Trick Of The Tail is the closest they probably came to the elusive “perfect” album. There is nothing on it which is not worthy of its place and even the one solitary B side - It’s Yourself has musical merit.

Now we come to what most of you will already know as the album I regard as the pinnacle of the band’s output - 1977’s Wind & Wuthering. Sadly, this album is blighted by two errors. Why, oh why, did the inane doodle Wot Gorilla? gain admission to the album over the superb Inside & Out? A mystery we shall perhaps never know the answer to although speculation has always been rife and no doubt always will be but as a result, this marvellous album will never be as entirely satisfying to me as it otherwise would have been. Of the other B sides from this album, Match Of The Day is a track which I can live without and Pigeons, despite its wry reflection on music critics and their barbs, is not one which will ever set the world alight.

And so we come, at last, to my favourite Frisbee. Yes, the album I loathed so much that I turned it into one of those objects after first hearing it. 1981’s Abacab album divided fans probably the most since The Lamb … and it certainly deserves the criticism that has been aimed at it in so many quarters since its release. The band’s realisation that they could not continue to produce the Prog epics of yore in the new musical environment of the early 1980’s certainly led to some brave musical decisions not least the inclusion of the Phoenix Horns on several tracks.

However, it also led to the inclusion of some truly awful music. At the head of this list must come Who Dunnit. Without doubt the most despicable piece of “music” the band ever released. Tongue in cheek, piss-take or whatever else you wish to call it to justify its existence, it does not under any circumstances, deserve a place on a record bearing the Genesis imprint. It is not alone in this however, as both Like It Or Not and Another Record are both mediocre in extreme, the latter in particular being a turgid dirge of a tune. What is even more appalling is that better tracks were available for consideration as the subsequent 3 x 3 EP demonstrated. Any of the three tracks on that would have been infinitely preferable to the trio mentioned above.

And so we come to Phil’s final album with the band, 1991’s We Can’t Dance and only their second double studio album in their entire career. Replete with a healthy mix of long and short form classics. However, two tracks on this one also grate on my nerves - Hold On My Heart and Since I Lost You both of which are so cloyingly sentimental they make me gag whenever I hear them.

Of the B Sides, the proper studio tracks are uniformly excellent and none of them would have been out of place on the album. The increasing use of 12” and alternative mixes to fill in gaps led to the appearance on this album of several unimpressive examples of such things of which the worst is the so-called “Sex Mix” of I Can’t Dance which is banal in the extreme.