There are a few new members on here since Rotf's last great Prog thread.
So i thought it might be good to start another one.Whats your fave Prog Rock band and why?
Tonight i have been playing Eloy.
I only found this great Prog band because of Rotf.
Also this year Porcupine Tree i can add to my Prog list now because of this place.
Munch

I doubt I could add much to what I posted before - my favourite prog-rock bands are Emerson Lake and Palmer (up to and including Works), and Colosseum. My favourite prog-rock album is either Valentyne Suite by Colosseum or ELO's Eldorado. If Amon Duul II are prog-rock then their first six albums are essential listening. The Stranglers are a decent prog-rock group who pretended to be punk and got away with it.

I've not really listened to the new wave of prog-rock. My prog-rock is firmly from the 70s. It probably stopped in 77 when new wave music injected some fresh impetus in to the music scene - remember the University juke-box had the Eagles, Jackson Browne and umpteen tracks by a group who had the nerve to call themselves Fleetwood Mac on it and so hearing the Clash was like Picnic: A Breath of Fresh Air.

However, new wave music was swept aside by the abomination that was disco and then by the 80s dross - sorry I know some folks on the forum like New Order, ABC, Duran Duran, Spandex Ballet and Culture Club, but I hated it and guess I always will.

Of course there were recovery moments - the 80s saw at least one great record in This Is The Ice Age and then along came HMHB and I started to buy records again.

Interestingly, when the BBC put that Stiff records programme on, which they do regularly, it starts with Fanfare for the Common Man and although the programme has likeable artists such as Ian Dury on it, I still can't help liking Fanfare better than anything else on the show. I'm sure punk rock was supposed to sweep aside the Osmonds, Sweet, Slade and all that glam-rock stuff (Bowie and Bolan excepted) as well as the AOR on the juke-box rather than the groups that tried to be interesting and best of all pretentious for the sake of it. It was those that churned out factory hits for the masses that I wanted rid of - not Faust, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.

So if you want to hear the best of 70s music then slap on

Valentyne Suite
Eldorado
Brain Salad Surgery
Vive La Trance
Octopus
Phantasmagoria
Quatermass
Moving Waves
Black n White
Aqualung
Book of Taliesyn
In The Court of the Crimson King
Warrior At The Edge Of Time
Greenslade
Once Again
London's Calling
Captain Lockheed

and enjoy the spirit of the age.

ATB Rotf

Van Der Graaf Generator reformed and still powerful, inventive and for me still the best.

Yes, King Crimson and Jethro Tull were great bands. Have never been sure if Pink Floyd would be considered prog rock, but a damn good band of the same time.

Porcupine Tree are the only neo prog band who seem to break new ground (progress!) rather than simply offer reminiscence.

Tangerine Dream for electro prog, and although very reminiscent, bands like Redshift, Free System Projeckt and Arc are making great music in that style today.

For Prog Metal it has to be Tool, Rush too from the 70s.

Genesis have dated badly for me on the whole, I still like a few albums, but not as much I did many years ago.

Favourite prog albums:
Van Der Graaf Generator 'Pawn Hearts'
Yes 'Close to the Edge'
Chris Squire 'Fish Out of Water'
Tool 'Lateralus'
Tangerine Dream 'Encore'
King Crimson 'The Great Deceiver' (boxset)
Porcupine Tree 'Signify' or 'In Absentia'
Jethro Tull 'The Minstrel in the Gallery'
Rush 'Permanent Waves' or 'Hemispheres'

If you want to stretch the term prog, Orbital and Underworld have been referred to as progressive house/techno, and I have found a lot of fans of prog rock have embraced the qualities these bands offer, especially their ability to develop an idea through 10-20 minutes of music.

And just to throw a rock at any punk fans looking at this thread with derision, how about Public Image 'Album' which was described on 'The Old Grey Whistle Test' as John Lydon playing prog rock, and the 'Happy' tour which had a stage set as lavish as a Yes tour (damn good gig too!). Also Killing Joke 'Pandemonium', another possible prog metal album/band.

From what I have seen, those who spend a lot of money on hi-fi (Naim buyers) do seem to have a disproportionate number of prog fans among them, especially seeing the Porcupine Tree, Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd threads on the forum recently. Maybe it is the age/disposable income equation.

Prog Archives - is an interesting webiste on the subject, although somewhat lacking in objectivity (some reviews seem to be 'Good = like Camel, Bad = unlike Camel).

Very good post Jamie.

I agree Van Der Graaf were/are a tremendous group and Pawm Hearts a super album; additionally Peter Hammill's solo albums are worthy of inclusion (e.g. Fool's Mate).

It was this forum that helped me with Camel - and I'm very glad they did.

Please click here for the previous thread Pysch/Prog/Folk Thread for Anybody Interested, which covered psych and folk as well as prog - so I could include Pink Floyd (Psych) and Fairport Convention (Folk-Rock) and I didn't have to classify Caravan or Soft Machine, other than under great music.

Were Fairfield Parlour prog-rock or just one of the most underrated bands of our time irrespective of genre?

ATB Rotf

Tangerine Dream prog rock? Surely not.
Likewise Eloy. Both great bands and not a concept album in sight. They can't be prog

quote:

Eloy. - great band - and not a concept album in sight

You jest do you not, jcs?

Eloy's Power and the Passion was the template for a concept album

The story is even illustrated on the sleeve: Jamie, son of a mad scientist, who accidentally swallows a 'tardis' drug that sends him back in time to 1358 in Paris where he meets and falls in love with a girl called Jeanne, gets embroiled in a peasant uprising, is imprisoned and finally finds his way back to the 20th Century to ponder his sense of loss for Jeanne and how little the world has changed in 600 years. Humans have made great strides forwards in technology, but little in the way of relationships and humanity: the focus may have shifted, but the world remains full of greed, suppression and exploitation.

Great stuff.

ATB Rotf

Spock's Beard is new(er) band to consider.

Well ok everyone makes a mistake. And despite that it's a good album, but as far as I know it was the only concept they did. I'll have to dig them all out now just to check

Is that a must have criteria for a prog band that they made a "concept album"?

quote:

Originally posted by BigH47:
Is that a must have criteria for a prog band that they made a "concept album"?

Certainly not, otherwise The Who would be at the centre of prog rock.

I have always understood it to mean performing music that has a more complex, and usually longer song structure than the 'verse chorus x2, middle eight, verse chorus' format.

Van Der Graaf Generator did not do a concept album, Genesis were certainly at the centre of the scene long before they recorded 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'.

Yes many prog bands do make concept albums, but that is not the only criteria for inclusion.

Prog archives definition - gives a lengthy definition of what might be considered prog. They also have multiple far reaching categories, which is why I included Tangerine Dream in my listing, but did qualify it is electronic prog.

This is the list of prog sub genres that prog archives offer, it is pretty wide:

* Canterbury Scene
* Crossover Prog
* Eclectic Prog
* Experimental/Post Metal
* Heavy Prog
* Indo-Prog/Raga Rock
* Italian Symphonic Prog
* Jazz Rock/Fusion
* Krautrock
* Neo Progressive
* Post Rock/Math Rock
* Prog Folk
* Progressive Electronic
* Progressive Metal
* Psychedelic/Space Rock
* RIO/Avant-Prog
* Symphonic Prog
* Tech/Extreme Prog Metal
* Zeuhl
* Various Genres/Artists
* Prog Related
* Proto-Prog

Really the specific pigeon-holing is probably not the point, but discussion of bands who have common themes, and so might introduce people here to bands they had not heard of before, or had not considered might be of interest to them.

Jamie

OK I forgot a

No no no we don't need all these bloody pointless genres. It's prog,it's not prog. It's rock,it's not rock etc.
It's so simple really,only people making dividers for record shops need all these subspecies.


From a frigging post apocalyptic proto neo trad nose music fan

quote:

post apocalyptic proto neo trad nose

I haven't got any records that fit that classification - any recommendations?

quote:

No no no we don't need all these bloody pointless genres. It's prog,it's not prog. It's rock,it's not rock etc.
It's so simple really,only people making dividers for record shops need all these subspecies.

I quite agree, I just thought the listings there were interesting, but ultimately futile.

As for record shops dividing music into categories, Jumbo in Leeds is impossible to find anything in as they put bands in the most bizarre classifications.

I do remember seeing Micheal Nyman classified as Techno in one record shop, which does have a kind of bizare rationale to it.

But prog is a good general label for a lot of music, but the music is the important thing. It is useful to let people who like one band know that they might like other bands who have some similarities in their music.

Coheed and Cambria - 4 albums

"The Second Stage Turbine Blade"
"In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3"
"Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness"
"Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coheed_and_Cambria

Long distance calling

http://www.longdistancecalling.de/

I listened to a program on Resonance FM yesterday that was only playing Italian prog. It sounded pretty good. For some bizarre reason it sounded much better than English, American, French or German prog

Guys being a novice I don't really have a definitive list.

At the Moment I'm making my way through Yes' back catalogue and I am enjoying it and the Prog Archives is a great site. Bought Genisis' Trepass and a couple of others from the PC era and definitely prefer Trespass but I'm not enjoying it as much as with the Yes stuff I'll try another PG era Genisis album before I leave them alone and I've got my eye on an original copy of In The Court Of King Crimson . Next I think it'll be some modern Prog Porcupine Tree and Spocks Beard. Though I can recommend two modern Prog related bands.


Jaga Jazzists & The Mars Volta, JJ are Post Rock really and TMV are really Metal Prog.



Dean..

This might be just a bit more on the rock side of prog, but if you like Rush you will love this album.

Only because his underpants are even tighter than Geddy's.

The Mars Volta = AWESOME!!!!!

Some interesting opinions from Robert Fripp's Diary about KC's current rehearsals & fan base

Working on the less secure pieces with a set run-through. The two drummers are increasingly coming together as a team.

This is not a band that any women are likely to enjoy. If any women enjoyed Crimson before, they will most likely change their minds with this incarnation. This is a band where queues to the ladies’ room will not only be short, but that a ladies’ room is to even necessary.