1000 : prog/kraut

Search: Metal Box - P.I.L. (no really!!), Rubycon - Tangerine Dream, Another Green World - Brian Eno, Future Days - Can (and the other cool abums too), Hairway to Steven - Butthole Surfers, Low - David Bowie, Meat Puppets II - Meat Puppets, 'Dark Star' - Grateful Dead (as featured in intro of "Zabriskie Point"), Ummagumma - Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother - Pink Floyd, Spirit of Eden - Talk Talk, Standards - Tortoise, ...And Justice For All - Metallica. Can't think of anything more at the moment :(

Destroy: Yes, Kansas, Van der Graaf Generator, Genesis, oh and the worst band of the 70s: Gong.

Prog Likes: long flowing melodic lines and spiritual/hippy-dippy sensibilities. Prog Dislikes: existential doom-and-gloom lyrics.

So, any suggestions?

And to continue our search. I'm still on the fence re. King Crimson. Somebody once gave me a couple of their records but I never take the time to investigate. Bit too busy, not enough space.

As an aside, I'm 39, and was therefore 15 in 1976, and punk changed my life. For maybe 10 years I stupidly wouldn't even consider listening to anything from before 1976, year zero. A few exceptions would be Bowie, Velvets and some glam. Maybe the Who.

Anyway to get to the point, the absolute enemy was prog-rock. Whilst I now love Led Zep, The Stones, The Byrds, Small faces, Kinks and hundreds of other artists from pre-76, I still consider prog as being beyond the pale. I cannot bring myself to go there, as everything I've heard has been drivel.

Some artists I've softened on - Pink Floyd. Obviously the early stuff is pretty good. Traffic - God knows why, but I bought a 'best-of' a couple of years ago liked it, and have got 2 or 3 more albums since. Not strictly prog, more R+B rooted anyway. Oh, and I liked the Tangerine Dream sample which DJ Shadow uses on 'Endtroducing'!

Anyway, to get to Omar's list. It's all great, with the exception of Grateful Dead (they're shit - sorry!) The thing is, it's not 'progressive' as much as just great music. Meat Puppets - there's a great band! I'd have to go for 'Up on the Sun' as my favorite, but 'II' isn't far behind. I could come up with a similar list, but I'll stick to one artist who I'd define as 'modern progressive' if I had to - Tortoise.

On Grateful Dead: I don't like them at all, with those folksy guitar parts, never understood the appeal. But...slo mo images of young hippie faces through orange filters with 'Dark Star' as a soundtrack, respresents one of the most beautiful beginnings of a movie ever.

Anyone heard the band Flipper by the way, I never can find their records, supposed to be good.

"Prog Dislikes: existential doom-and-gloom lyrics."

Could you clarify a little more here? The impression I get is that you're referring to - or at least hinting at - Roger Waters from 1973 onwards, and especially after "The Wall" in 1979, and in that case I'd agree with you. Amazing how rapidly Pink Floyd's music became stadium dirge as his influence smothered the band.

However, you also say:

"Prog Likes: long flowing melodic lines / spiritual hippy-dippy sensibilities."

I only half agree here. The problem I have with a lot of music of that era generally (not specifically prog) is how it tends to indulge itself with such sensibilities rather than asking serious questions or genuinely evoking a particular setting / way of seeing the world (this is a massive generalisation, I know). If David Inglesfield's reading this, I'm sure he remembers our conversations on this matter and his difficulty in finding a vocalist; how all too often the tentative "resurgence" of prog provides a vehicle for those throwing together third-rate and tenth-hand hippyisms, and more original lyrical voices often seem frustratingly hard to find.

A lot of prog might be better with no words at all - I even felt that way about the quasi-prog of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android", an astonishing sound tainted by the only lyrics I've ever heard which I think could *never* have been written by someone educated at a comprehensive school (you know the ones I mean).

The second question: If it's genuine, I do appreciate the spiritual side of prog. If it's not, it's just embarassing. The real thing slowly draws you in, and leaves you with ideas you didn't have before. Fake spirituality doesn't tell you anything, other than "look how cool I am".

Bands who think they're saying something profound probably aren't. And that's my biggest pet peeve in rock.

"If it's genuine, I do appreciate the spiritual side of prog. If it's not, it's just embarrassing."

This is pretty much what I was saying as well. As I confessed, my posting was a massive generalisation.

"Bands who think they're saying something profound probably aren't."

And, likewise, there's more profundity in "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun", its genuine mysticism and tantalising aims at something spiritual, than there is in all Waters's post-1973 songs put together.

I can take that kind of sonic crudity more easily when it was all that was being aimed at or intended; hence why I love The Sweet.

And music that fails to live up to it's high-minded aspirations can be thrilling... you get caught up, not by it's subtlety or maturity, but by the raw musical narrative.

I think you'll find, that the music that really moves people is the stuff that doesnt instantly settle in your brain first listen but becomes part of you on the fourth one

Of course, everyone has different ears. Anybody like Thinking Plague here? (wherever here is)

http://www.cardiacs.com

Pink Floyd -- These guys floated through psychedelic, progressive, and "mainstream" stages but they held it together with an ability to create vast, hopeless sonic architecture. Best albums: _Piper At The Gates Of Dawn_, _Animals_, _The Final Cut_

Genesis -- My opinion on this band is 180 degress from the malignant norm. Superb band through and through -- playing, writing, costumes, great costumes in the early days. Yeah, they did some sellout pop crap, but their progressive stuff is great, as well as some of the pop. Best albums: _Selling England By The Pound_, _The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway_, _Wind & Wuthering_

King Crimson -- The real innovators of prog, doing exactly what most prog bands only claim to be doing: "Progressing" rock into new sonic realms (sounds like the title of the latest dreamcast game). Best albums: _Larks' Tongues In Aspic_, _Red_, _Thrak_

Yes -- Most people love it or hate it. Either prog at it's best, or a genre at it's worst. Well, I take a middle ground. One of the few prog bands that live up to the genre stereotype of being self-indulgent and overlong, they still have created some of the most surprising and moving music I've ever _heard_, much less in rock. Even the lyrics work most of the time, by being unintentionally funny. Best albums: _The Yes Album_, _Fragile_, and Jon Anderson's solo album, _Olias of Sunhillow_.

Prog (and psych; the borders are blurry) is such a broad genre that if you think you don't like it, you just haven't heard enough of it. Other prog bands to search:

Gong Camel Metamorfosi, Quella Vecchia Locanda, Locanda Delle Fate Apoteosi, and the other Italian biggies. Magma -- Definitely one to try if you "don't like prog." These boys did their best to out-do Coltrane, Orff, Miles Davis and Darth Vader's Theme. Anglagard Brainticket _Some_ ELP White Willow etc etc.

Destroy: Like most genres, the list is endless. Destroy most prog-metal, and most of the direct clones, like Triumvirat.

I can definitely identify with Inukko, who mentioned that prog appeals because it's easy to "get caught up in it, not by it's subtlety or maturity, but by the raw musical narrative." It's definitely escapist music, which is one reason I think it gets the label of immature music, created by and for 15-year-old male nerds and formerly 15-year-old male nerds -- despite the unquestionable amount of musical and compositional complexity and craft on display. Prog is escapism, and if you like the sonic trappings, you just can't help but getting swept up in the grandeur of it all, damn the details. Note I'm talking about the _music_ here, not the lyrics.

You should check out Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - there's a superb track to download on their site.

Those sad NME readers going on about these bands being something for 15 year old nerdy boys... talk about showing your age... last time I looked I was only one of those things.

Ah, you had me then you lost me. I don't think Yes' lyrics work by virtue of them being unintentionally funny. I think one either thinks they were honestly good (I do), or one thinks that they genuinely suck. For me, I often prefer Yes lyrics' to that of many of the other prog bands: Gabriel's lyrical heavy-handedness in Genesis, Peter Hammill's overwrought lyrics in VdGG, Peter Sinfield's flowery twaddle on early King Crimson albums, Adrian Belew's cue-from-David-Byrne lyrics on 80s King Crimson albums (let's not even get into Greg Lake)...

I react to Yes' vocal/lyrical approach much the same way I react to Magma or Cocteau Twins (Ruins, Cos, list probably goes on and on), it has the same 'functionality' and impressionistic quality to it, a concentration on emotion rather than content. The only difference is Yes' raw material in constructing their new language was straightforward English, rather than some made-up language. I know one person I once read (talking about Magma) put it like this (physiologically inaccurate I wouldn't doubt, but makes for a good, basic metaphor): listening to the vocal approach of [Magma] is like disconnecting the left hemisphere of your brain while the right hemisphere is left in tact--that is, all traces of the logical, 'linguistic' content are left behind, but the 'emotive' content is still in place for the listener to absorb. With Yes, it's the same for me. Put in yet another way, all these bands have a talent for singing gobbledygook of various sorts in a convincing and often passionate manner. :-)

With regards to the "sincere" versus "insincere" distinction up above, my question would be: how can you tell? For example, Renaissance is as twee and utterly hippy-drippy a prog band as one can probably find; yet to me they never sounded anything less than sincere in expressing that sentiment. Conversely, Van der Graaf Generator were as utterly 'doom 'n' gloom!! AHH!!!!' as one can probably find; but still sounds sincere (as in, they believe what they are singing) to me. If anything, I'd be more inclined to view John Lydon's snarling and posturing when he went on the Tom Snyder show circa the Sex Pistols as insincerity (or at least, a better example of unintentional hilarity), but then again, it comes back to that's just my personal impression--others will argue it was utterly sincere. I guess my point is, surely this notion is a wholly subjective impression that will vary radically from person to person?

Again, (not to pick on you, Jack! :) ), but this does not ring true for me, or at least I think you're relying heavily on stereotypes about the genre here. I started listening to prog when I was about 12 or 13 (I am 30 now), and never at one point did I listen to it in order to "escape" from something (the real world, whatever you want to insert here) any more than anyone else listening to their favorite music, or to 'project my musical superiority on others' or anything like that.

It really just comes down to enjoyment, really, nothing more or nothing less. When you listen to a piece of music that hits you and you say to yourself. Wow! This is some pretty exhilerating and even spiritual stuff (period)! What else sounds like this? I think that's what it provides to those who love listening to it, much like any other music that people are into (rap, country, whatever)...

Also, certainly geekiness is very much in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? Even back then when I was 12 or 13 years old, I realized that listening to Motley Crue or Dokken (what all my guy friends were listening to while I was off in the corner listening to 90125) or getting all googly-eyed over George Michael and Andrew Ridgely (the girls in our class) was certainly no less ridiculous.

How about on any Can album with Jaki Liebezeit drumming on it? :-)

Maybe because Prog has ambitions beyond the mundane it is linked to punk.

Hawkwind as prog = Hall Of The Mountain Grill.

Hawkwind are better than Neu at Krautrock

dave gilmour sticks a load of blues scales over wrights dorian keys and they are prog? [it took six months to do 'echoes' ]- technically proficient?

Pink Floyd - aren't they Kraut rather than Prog by phil's defn ?

I certainly think Floyd and Tangerine Dream have more in common in terms of sound aesthetic than, say, Floyd with National Health or Tangerine Dream with Amon Duul 2.

Anybody heard Chimera? early 70s, a bit like a lighter Atomic Rooster with utterly dope vocal harmonies. yesyesyes

where from?

UK I think. The Atomic Rooster comparison isn't really accurate cos they're not keyboard-focused. I think it was the psych-turning-into-prog think that made me think of them. Vocals are quite Fairport-y akshully.

k I found a link:

http://m-u-s-t-a-f-a.livejournal.com/50390.html

wow. i'm listening to the first song right now and it's already great. has the sanctuary reissue come out yet?