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OT: progressive rock

Bigboote

Bigboote

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It's been a week or so since we've had a new music thread. I heard a "music critic" on NPR a couple of years ago talking about progressive rock. Said it was big for a few years in the 70's and disappeared thereafter. It predated the 70's by several years and has never disappeared.

So let us know who your fave prog rockers are. ELP, King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, and especially the more obscure and less appreciated. I'll begin with the obscure (please hide your shocked face). Here's a band who were around for a year or so around 1970. I believe the sum-total of their output was an album and one additional single. I discovered them a few years ago in a "best bands you never heard of" post somewhere. Bought the album immediately and have loved it.

 
Here's one of my favorites from Procol Harum. @nwhoopfan will be glad to know this is what led me to looking up Walpurgisnacht, the spring version of Hallowe'en.

 
One more from the late 90's-early aughts. From a Dream Theater album about what someone learns from a past-life regression. The album is brutally powerful, and this cut is achingly beautiful. I've literally listened to the album four times in the last couple of days.

 
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Somehow I've never firmly grasped exactly what prog rock is. Listening to some of these songs I don't know, from bands I'm not familiar with, I'm certainly hearing influences that would lead to stuff like Boston and Styx, right?
 
Scud49 said:
Something obscure from BB.....? Shocked, simply shocked I tell you. :):):)

But really, progressive stuff - a great idea.

This one from Traffic came to mind right away, haven't listened to it in years:

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The lyrics to this one fit the dream scenario quite well
 
nwhoopfan said:
Somehow I've never firmly grasped exactly what prog rock is. Listening to some of these songs I don't know, from bands I'm not familiar with, I'm certainly hearing influences that would lead to stuff like Boston and Styx, right?
Expand ...
From Wiki: the style was an emergence of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing.

So Yeah, Boston and Styx dabbled in the Prog Rock. They were also considered Arena Rock.
 
Pretty sure this fits. Always liked this song from their Point Of No Return album.

Lightning's Hand - Kansas

 
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I don't know if this qualifies but it's "out of this world." I was into New Age around this time so I really too progressive. Sorry.

 
In between the Airplane and Starship days, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, and friends like Jerry Garcia did some very interesting side projects. This was one of them - "Sunfighter" - the song is Holding Together:

 
King Crimson, of course.

… The keeper of the city keys
Puts shutters on the dreams
I wait outside the pilgrim's door
With insufficient schemes
The black queen chants the funeral march
The cracked brass bells will ring
To summon back the fire witch
To the court of the crimson king...

 
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Pentangle - Hunting Song.

Jacqui McShee providing the haunting lead vocals:

 
meyers7 said:
From Wiki: the style was an emergence of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its "progressive" label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of "art", and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing.

So Yeah, Boston and Styx dabbled in the Prog Rock. They were also considered Arena Rock.
Expand ...

Yeah, and ask ten people what Progressive Rock is and you'll get, well at least 2-3 different answers. I looked up the difference between art rock and prog rock once. They described the characteristics of each, where there was probably 80% overlap, and the differences, which were few. And when they listed bands as examples of each, there was again about 80-90% overlap. The one person I've seen described as Art Rock whom I wouldn't consider progressive rock is Tori Amos (although anyone, including me, is free to post something from her).

I've been surprised in recent years to find that a lot of people consider bands like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report to be prog rock. Since John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer, Jerry Goodman, Joe Zawinul, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, all grew up in jazz, I'd always considered them progressive jazz.

But the tent is big, and nobody has a monopoly on what constitutes what, because there isn't a hard-and-fast definition. I've enjoyed everything posted, and learned of a few new bands, whom I'll visit on YT in the coming days. Y'all have beat me to some bands, but I'll post something more from Camel, King Crimson, and maybe ELP or Yes. Keep it coming!
 
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