Good list. Would have liked to see Gentle Giant up there though.
Good list. Would have liked to see Gentle Giant up there though.
The Prog Corner
Back in the 70s... they all belonged in the list, even Rush, Roxy, Nelson/BeBop et al ...not because they sounded the same, but because they sounded different.
"Always ready with the ray of sunshine"
As to Pink Floyd:
Progressive rock is not a yes-or-no proposition. It is a spectrum, with mainstream rock at one end, and various musics that aren't rock - classical music, jazz of various types, pure sonic experimentation, follow your own muse wherever it goes singer-songwriter - at the other. Just about any prog artist you can name lies somewhere in-between. So Pink Floyd - for whom the overall sound and individual songs are very close to mainstream, but the concepts are prog - absolutely belong here, as an example of the inside end, the one close to the mainstream.
That said, I could argue that they need an example of the outer end. Can are perhaps meant as that - but there are really several different outside ends, and Can is only one particular idiosyncratic one. I might have liked Henry Cow's In Praise of Learning, maybe to replace Thick as a Brick or Court of the Crimson King. Or just expand the list to nine. Or add Magma's MDK as well, bringing in a major French contribution to prog, and make it an even ten.
Last edited by Baribrotzer; 03-23-2016 at 11:44 AM.
It's not a bad list, I like CAN being on it, they are certainly progressive. Pink Floyd are deemed progressive from their early Piper days, when they were much more different & cutting edge than most bands, not the DSOTM through Animals albums though there are certainly had progressive elements.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Prog(ressive music) was / is an umbrella for various *progressive* sub-genres or genres (or *styles* - because some people are taking that *sub* literary, so they don't like the term *subgenre*) and it's not complicated for understanding that avant-rock was considered as prog as same as some other progressive subgenre e.g. symphonic rock.
Sorry, but Pink Floyd never was under the same umbrella, because they were part of 60s English psychedelic rock movement as well. And prog wasn't developed from psychedelia movement - historically even more important thing than prog because it's not "only" music but also painting and film. Many people don't understand that prog is completely authentic music and that it's not a child of psych as Jeff Rindskopf suggested in his article 8 of the Best Progressive Rock Albums of All Time.
Pink Floyd belongs to different umbrella i.e. psych umbrella. Furthermore, they were only one successful English band - from already mentioned English psychedelic movement - who managed to still to be psych after the psych movement died in the begining of 70s. And yes, they also managed to still to be quite experimental and great at their 70s psych masterpieces - except those shamelessly commercial, chill-out psych albums TDSotM and WYWH. But they never were prog as ELP, Genesis, Can or Kansas. In 70s, Pink Floyd were (great) blues-rock based psychedelia.
Okay, the revisionism is done due to Internet sites' "specialists" and that is that. But, to put Pink Floyd stuff on the list as the best prog stuff, it's undoubtedly nonsense.
Hey, what's next thing regarding that revisionism? Maybe Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as the best prog album ever?
Last edited by Svetonio; 03-23-2016 at 11:32 AM.
Your taxonomies are fundamentally absurd. Your claims or revisionism are based on a false premise of some kind of original consensus of what "progressive rock" was. Nothing I've read, outside of your posts, backs up this idea.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
If Eloy is progressive rock, I don't see why Pink Floyd isn't. Eloy - Silent cries and mighty echoes had a lot in common with Wish you were here.
Last edited by Rarebird; 03-23-2016 at 12:41 PM.
I can agree with that being your opinion. But I can't agree with it otherwise. I will, though, ask: Why and how is prog not a child of psych, and why and how does that make it "completely authentic". And would it not be "completely authentic" if it were in fact a child of psych?
History of the world according to Svet stated as fact and all other opinions deemed revisionist. Your wasting your breath guys.
Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-a...re-happy-hour/
Gordon Haskell - "You've got to keep the groove in your head and play a load of bollocks instead"
I blame Wynton, what was the question?
There are only 10 types of people in the World, those who understand binary and those that don't.
Uhm, not exactly.
First of all, there's no need for me to feel "sorry" about anything of what you write here (although I DO feel very, very, very sorry about other silly things). Second, "Prog(ressive)" can unfortunately/luckily not be both an "umbrella" on the one hand and a "completely authentic music" on the other; there's no apparent mysterious vacuum for it to pop up from - rather it evolved from given sources, some of them firmly established. Thirdly, the concepts of "genre" and "style" are not synonymous in musicology; genre denotes an overall adherence of an artist (The Byrds being "rock"), while style descibes the components of a given expression (The Byrds being a rock band playing country music on Sweetheart of the Rodeo). Fourthly (?), progressive rock as phenomenon within rock culture as such *DID* arise partly from psychedelia (which was an artistic movement at large, yes), as the latter essentially introduced a set of traits and virtues which were then studied, reinterpreted, reevaluated and explored further by what they called 'progressive' artists from as early as 1968, to the point where the term 'psychedelic' was no longer applied about rock music (check Gong, Agitation Free or numerous others). Fifthly (!), 'avant-rock' as a whole and the more specified 'avant-progressive' are not the same thing. It's not complicated for understanding this shit.
And you didn't answer what on Earth 'progressiveness' is supposed to imply, and why artists and works that are then higher in 'progressiveness' than Genesis or Yes (or other usual ones) still haven't neutralized the inclusion of these names in the grander hall of ultimate progressiveness.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
Of course that you never seen any statement like that, because they were kings of psych, not the kings of prog. Also, there are not any article writen by some journalist back in the day where Pink Floyd were called *prog*, simply because in that case that journalist would have lost his job. Pink Floyd were provided as "prog" by Internet "prog specialists" - not before the internet forums.
And I said this as a big fan of Mr Gilmour.
p.s. Prog is not a badge of honor as some people thinking.
^I wasted several minutes of my life finding that out, vis a vis The Who.
A reasonable attempt at covering the bases. Every one of these albums is great.
Yes, it is the same thing, and the term "avant-prog" wasn't existed before Internet.
"Avant-prog" is actually a stupid term invented by stupid people.
It's quite same like "symphonic prog"; thus, to say, "hey, this band play symphonic-progressive rock" instead to call it "symphonic rock" as it is historical term for the subgenre, it's like if somebody ask you "which car you drive?" and you answer, for example, "I drive a fast car Ferrari" - *fast* is pretty superfluous word, isn't?
Well, someone should obviously tell all of this to stupid people like Simon Frith, David Keenan, Pierro Scaruffi, Simon Reynolds, Dominic Leone, Chris Cutler, David Toop and so on, and then proceed to tell Jim O'Rourke, Thurston Moore, Ikue Mori, Michael Gira, Brian Carpenter, Rene Lussier, Marc Ribot and others that their entire musical accomplishment amounts to a "subgenre of prog".
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense to me.
However I will tell you that my sister lived in Yugoslavia in the late 70s early 80s and my takeaway from the music there was three bands: Bijelo Dugme, Divlje Jagode (I think she dated one of them), and Leb i Sol. The rest.... not so much. I do however have boxes of cassettes of "gypsy music" (his words) that my dad listened to, and can tell you none of it is "prog".
"Always ready with the ray of sunshine"
1) I can not recall ever encountering a single written incident in which a member of Pink Floyd related to genre distinctions in the manner you imply, and certainly not about them in any way being "kings" of anything - consequently they assumingly aren't "psych" either, according to your logic.
2) No other artists were designated as "prog" in anyone's writing either, seeing as that abbreviation wasn't invented yet.
3) No music journalist has/would ever "lose his/her job" over allegedly designating an artist with the "wrong" genre adherence.
4) Pink Floyd were not submitted to revisionist definition by some internet conspiracy, but placed among the so-called 'dinosaurs' already during the latter half of the 70s. I personally own a number of encyclopedias and indexes and other books from the 80s in which PF's relation to 'progressive rock' appears absolutely axiomatic. And there was no internet.
Adherence to a genre doesn't necessitate exclusion from all other genres. When Rush made their 'progressive' records during the late 70s, this didn't make them any less of a hard rock trio.
"Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
"[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM
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