Prog Rock

not really prog, more jazz-fusion

He certainly plays a lot of beats on those albums, ha ha.

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I've always wished someone would sample Bill Bruford's china-boy extravaganza on "One More Red Nightmare".

and the devi influenced tracks by brian auger's oblivian express.

http://www.suckadelic.com/main.html

I have the lotr one, which is only a little bit funny, unfortunately...

South Side Of the Sky
Going For The One
Ritual (!!)
OOALH
Long Distance Runaround
Soon

Vitalski: It's an obvious answer but do you have Yes' Fragile? The second side is a goldmine. Side 2 opens with the first drum and bass track evah! Also check out the intro to "Heart of the Sunrise" and "The Fish" and the basslines to "Long Distance Runaround" and "Roundabout". Neil Peart is another obvious choice.

I find Inner Mounting Flame more or less unlistenable once I got past how virtuosic it is.

Return to Forever (w/diMeola), for ex., sounds more like emotionless showmanship to me. Fun in some ways, in no way deep like Mahavishnu.

I saw them in Lowell at the Paul Tsongas Arena last weekend (the last gig of this leg of their tour; I think the one right after MSG), which they were videotaping I believe for a PBS special and later a DVD release. They played The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" (an early cover of theirs, but very much revamped) as an encore instead of "Soon", plus "Starship Trooper" as the final closer. Great versions of "And You and I", "Ritual", "Turn of the Century"...

Minuses: They did a shuffle-blues acoustic version of "Roundabout" (like Clapton did for "Layla" on his Unplugged)--sounds too cheezy to me. Dean's inflatable set looked very (ahem) Stonehenge like.

That aside, I continue to be amazed at what a great show these guys still put on, since they're all like 55-60 years old. Plus, the a/c that night was non-existent, so it was like 85-90 degrees on stage the entire time for them.

it actually exists. it's actually pretty good.

good shit! loving that midday veil

the nerd in me wants to ask which version of "disengage"

I would record it but I don't know how!

"Disengage" was the version of Exposure...I forgot there was another one

I've played Chronicles of Father Robin before, that and Wobbler are the two that always make people come back and go "what is this? what year is this from?"

going again tonight. the place is at a cool angle where when the sun sets it kind of hits a window in a cool way, I'm gonna see if I can line up Popol Vuh's "Aguirre" at that moment :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzt_cDhATg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eq7O5Pn-ow
Never knew about this soundtrack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Butler_(singer)
Hadn't heard of her either but she sings on this

I've been quite enjoying the Aqanesuss album from a couple of years ago, it's Yoshida from Ruins / Koenji-hyakkei and some people I've never heard of playing in more of a classic prog style than his usual. Vocals have an Annie Haslam feel to them, which makes a nice change from most prog singers nowadays who sound like they're auditioning for a Lloyd-Webber musical. Possibly some Fruupp influences in there? Half a point docked for AI cover art, no-one needs that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzATCyZhjSs

finally read Dave Weigel's book The Show That Never Ends. it was pretty good - I can recommend it to anyone who regularly posts on this thread. most of the history I knew already but there was still a lot of interesting stuff, particularly about how this music was received at the time. it's chock full of quotes from the musicians themselves too. it does struggle a bit painting a cohesive narrative, mostly because a lot of the major players had vastly different paths after the 70s...Genesis obviously did really well, Yes had a ton of weird shit going on before settling in as a nostalgia act, King Crimson were mostly successful in their successive incarnations (unfortunately the book was written before their most recent reunion), ELP sort of fell apart. but it does a great job nailing the appeal of this music and making a really good case for it as something different than your average musical fad. It does rely a bit on the "punk killed prog" narrative which I don't think is totally true but it does correctly point out how record company attitudes really did change from 1969 to 1979 in a way that makes something like the golden age of prog basically impossible.

mostly I liked it just to get a sense of the major players. Robert Fripp very much does seem like a massive weirdo. Greg Lake comes off like a massive dick. So does Steve Howe to some extent. But most of the rest seemed cool and generally eccentric in ways that I thought were reflective of the music they made. the Gentle Giant guys seemed to be the most self-aware. unfortunately the book omits a lot, or rather a lot of it is out of scope, but it's plenty long as it is.

i am also reading weigel's book, tho i am only up to king crimson 2nd alb currently, and mainly still learning things i already knew (greg lake very much sucks as a person, this was v widely known back in the 70s even to committed ELP fans lol)

the weaving together of the various narratives is useful: what coincides with what and who was reacting to it, viz yes being grumpy and shocked that king crimson 1st alb obliterated their (much more ordinary) debut

weigel misses or muddles a few things by not being a brit maybe (at one point he says that organs are the kind of music you hear at ballgames; true in the US but was this it relevantly true in the UK? i don't think it's part of a UK musician's associative memory back in that era) and he sometimes places the detail of a tale in a faintly strange order ((needed a slightly sterner editor, tho i realise i always say this) (= hire me! i can improve yr book by being puzzled!)

at one point he says that organs are the kind of music you hear at ballgames; true in the US but was this it relevantly true in the UK?

LOL. Check if Reginald Dixon is in the index.

he is not 😔

most 😳 moment so far is the late gordon haskell -- who couldn't see the point of keith tippett and left KC on pretty bad terms -- long aftwards describing the band as "musical fascism, made by fascists, designed by fascists to dehumanise, to strip mankind of his dignity and soul. It's pure tavistock institute material, financed by the rothschild zionists and promoted by two poncy public schoolboys with connections to the city of london" (weigel's own interview with him i think, footnotes are a pain to navigate in kindle)

anyway this veers zero-to-sixty from just-about justifiable hyperbole -- fripp is very controlling and gets what he wants! -- to theodor-adorno-wrote-all-of-the-beatles-songbook level stuff

gotta respect that level of hate

Check out "Envelopes of Yesterday" by Peter Sinfield for more anti-Fripp invective from an ex-Crimson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHlkaCpgF8Q

There's a new Semiramis album, their first studio album since the 1973 debut, anyone heard it?

I have not, but I did see that the people over at Progarchives really dig it, so I'm definitely curious.

Sounds better than you'd have thought it might!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rEFaHa_zXI

there's a homeless (possibly) guy on my street who hangs out smoking cigarettes and listening to awesome prog rock records on a transistor radio

today it was "halfway there" by slapp happy

it's the little things about portland that i love

my latest "it's a real dilemma that listening to prog rock is supposed to make me feel bad about myself and my life choices" jam is "lightning's hand" by kansas (point of know return)

I just got into Kansas recently! had been avoiding them since I found Carry On My Wayward Son to be obnoxious but I just picked up Song for America and holy hell, what an album, especially the title track. to me this is the missing link between early Crimson/ELP and Rush.

Portland sounds wild, rush...can't imagine I know a single person who even knows who Slapp Happy is. and I know some real dorks.

Man I still have not crossed the Rubicon of exploring Kansas, pretty much because I couldn't stand "Carry On" or "Dust in the Wind" and because a roommate that had that greatest hits thing that was pretty much just those two songs and a bunch of '80s stuff.

First 3 Kansas albums are a weird mix of multi-part prog epics and barroom rock numbers. Leftoverture and Point of Know Return are in a more consistent pomp rock style, the aforementioned obnoxious hits are on these records. Still plenty of prog though! After that they headed off towards 80s soft rock. Later records are more prog I think but copying themselves more than anything, like all older bands do.

their cover of JJ Cale's "Bringing it Back" is really great, one of those covers that's so energetic and fun it kinda ruins the original

Kansas is one of the most interesting bands of their time and it's a blessing that they were so weird and still got big.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZs8mwGyjaY

oh wow, that's incredible. love the way Haslam is dancing for the first 3 minutes, I've only seen people dance like that in goth clubs. she's practically raving up there. I've noticed on that record particularly they play some pretty dancey rhythms. lotta drums you could sample.

I was thrown off, because I could have sworn Richie Blackmore was in Renaissance, but I must have been thinking of his own renn faire project Blackmore's Night.

There's a Renaissance thread. I've been enjoying her debut solo album recently.

I totally understand where prog's nods to classical music come from, but maybe you nerds can pinpoint the origins of prog's dramatic/weird time signatures and shifts. Where did *that* trait come from?

Isn't that also a thing in (modern) classical music?

I dunno! I imagine throughout classical music there are surely some weird time signature shifts, but maybe they're not as apparent without a (rock) drummer? Brubeck's "Time Out" was released at the end of 1959, right? As I understand it that was a big moment in time signatures. This bit in the wiki entry was interesting:

The album was intended as an experiment using musical styles Brubeck discovered abroad while on a United States Department of State sponsored tour of Eurasia, such as when he observed in Turkey a group of street musicians performing a traditional Turkish folk song that was played in 9/8 time with subdivisions of 2+2+2+3, a rare meter for Western music.

On the condition that Brubeck's group first record a conventional album of traditional songs of the American South, Gone with the Wind, Columbia president Goddard Lieberson took a chance to underwrite and release Time Out. It received negative reviews by critics upon its release. It produced a Top 40 hit single in "Take Five", composed by Paul Desmond (the only album track not written by Dave Brubeck). Although the theme of Time Out is non-common-time signatures, things are not quite so simple. "Blue Rondo à la Turk" starts in 9/8, with a typically Balkan 2+2+2+3 subdivision into short and long beats (the rhythm of the Turkish zeybek, equivalent of the Greek zeibekiko) as opposed to the more typical way of subdividing 9/8 as 3+3+3, but the saxophone and piano solos are in 4/4. The title is a play on Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca" from his Piano Sonata No. 11, and reflects the fact that the band heard the rhythm while traveling in Turkey.

So maybe it was just the natural progression (heh) as western musicians discovered music from other cultures? For sure stuff like Genesis seems relatively rooted in the English pastoral, but for sure Yes and Crimson and others were drawing from non-western sources. Likely groups like Fairport Convention, too, I imagine, if only (as with many others) by way of the Beatles.

"The Devil's Triangle" off of In the Wake of Poseidon is based on Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War" which is in 5/4 time

For sure. I assume there are a lot of other prog inspirations that hinge of unusual time signatures, like "Carmina Burana." Fripp of course was really into Bartok, he's got some weird stuff for sure. And Stravinsky and Messiaen and ... yeah, lots of "modern"/20th century classical. Maybe it is as simple (so to speak) as no snare/bass drum interplay to emphasize the signatures?

I guess the beginning of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is in 11/4? That one (and other Mussorgsky, like "Night on Bald Mountain") seems like a clear inspiration for a lot of prog. He's second half of the 19th century, right?

I feel that 'The Rite of Spring' contains most of the DNA that fed Crimson/ELP and others, it's still a well that math rock bands were drawing from decades later.

Perhaps there are well-known film soundtracks too that employed odd time signatures? Some classic, tin pan alley songwriting employed cut bars to get from one section to another, but those tend to pass by without you noticing.

In contrast, a lot of prog has a way of emphasising unusual meters as a form of spiralling/disorientating at the same time as a way of saying 'hey! isn't this groovy!'

apparently there are 444(!) changes in time signature during 'rite of spring'. add in all the dynamic changes, the driving intensity and the general volume and yeah it's basically prog rock before the fact

I guess it all depends on how you count it, right?

xpost Or, more perversely, "I dare you to dance to this."

This is probably completely inappropriate because I don't know much about the scenes this music comes from but my nearest reference point is Art Zoyd and Zvuki Mu. Would love to hear more stuff like this. If I just did a general dive into avant garde music I doubt I'd find much as fun as these. Some of the New Art Ensemble covers aren't so great though.

Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz - Ishtar (from Desert Equations)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SpNwk2dGzM

New Art Ensemble (also known as HXA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TievFIjlzmc

These don't seem to be remastered but I strongly recommend if you haven't heard them
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/carmen-the-albums-1973-1975-3cd-box-set

My hot take is that Fucked Up's Year of the Horse is one of the best prog albums of the last five years.

got to see Nektar last night. kind of an odd experience, they've got only one original member and a number of them seemed to be having off nights. drummer kept missing cues I think on account of the singer, the keyboard player really flubbed his big solo, there were a lot of sound issues early on and the guitar wasn't audible at all until halfway through the second song. they also had a backdrop of 95% AI generated visuals which I absolutely hated. its like they just fed all their song titles and lyrics into the algorithm and put "make it psychedelic" into the prompt. that said when they dipped into their classic 70s stuff they absolutely ruled. so I'm glad I went. also, the opener was the Paul Bielatowitz Band and they were AMAZING. very ELP like but with guitar instead of keyboards. half the set was classical interpretations and they were incredible. maybe the first show I've seen where the opener was better than the main act.

Yeah that was basically my experience when I saw Nektar a few years ago. While great to hear “Remember the Future” live, an experience I never thought I’d have, both sound and visuals could have been better. Glad I saw them, would actually do so again given the opportunity, but so wish I could have seen them in their prime.

speaking of ELP, i heard "From the Beginning" on the radio the other day. it was ... amazing? checking Spotify, it's not even a deep cut, it's one of their most popular songs. it definitely has a weird kind of deep cut vibe. reminds me of the dino valente solo record a bit. and it's basically just two chords, and no drums just bongos -- not very prog. idk, had me thinking i should explore ELP but i don't know if they have any other tracks like this

in particular the synth solo is just pure magic. people shout out the Lucky Man solo a lot but imo this one is way better. I love how the guitar chords slow down as it approaches the end. Lake's voice is incredible on that one too. but no, they don't have many tracks like that, in fact the idea of someone buying Trilogy on the strength of that track and immediately getting hit with a 10 minute hymn that blows up into Christmas music is pretty funny

one cool thing about the Nektar show was we were able to get right up in front. at one point the lead singer was looking right at me and I cracked a huge grin which made him do the same thing. but the truth was it wasn't because of the music, it was because in that exact moment I realized he kinda resembled Neil Breen.

Funny the way the ages turn in over themselves. I gather that back in those heady ELP days, there were a lot of listeners who would think, "Hmph. Classical pretensions." Now here I am listening to The Rite of Spring for the first time and thinking, "Whoa, this is so prog."

i should explore ELP but i don't know if they have any other tracks like this

"Take a Pebble", "Still... You Turn Me On" and maybe "Step Aside" from the Emerson, Lake and Powell album. The Lake side of Works Vol. 1 sometimes goes for this kind of intimate ballad, but everything is covered in bombastic reverb that makes it sound like he's singing from a Swiss mountaintop.

Have been enjoying "Circle Of The Crayfish" from 1972 by nuts German organ/drums duo Sixty Nine, pretty much the exact meeting point between ELP and Brainticket.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUK2eG6XhuA

Nothing to do with this thread. But today I misheard "My building has great progressive broadband" as "My building has a great progressive rock band" and I asked "What's their name?"

Well, yeah. What you misheard would be a much more interesting conversation.