• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Greatest Progressive Album ever

#101
I read a interview with Steve Howe (can't remember where) in which he stated that he cannot read music. Rick Wakeman is classicaly trained of course so his literacy is a given. Chris Squire I have heard conflicting statements over the years as well as for Anderson and White.
 
#103
tangentmusic said:
What would you consider to be the greatest progressive album ever recorded? Why?
Click to expand...

Switched On Bach.

Why? Because it was the hugest single paradigm shift in recorded music that I can remember in my lifetime.

If you really meant Progressive Rock though, I couldn't single out just one. Something without vocals though, for sure. Maybe The Inner Mounting Flame. I saw KC, ELP, Yes, etc back in the early 70s, none came close as far as being genuinely progressive IMHO. They all had FM radio hits after all. There was nothing overtly jazzy about Mahavishnu at the early shows I saw, it was strictly balls out extremely dissonant rock. And like anything truly progressive, that only lasted a very short time. I'd put some Pink Floyd pre-Dark Side in there as well. Not so much the vocal stuff, just the instrumentals. I also consider Discipline as a truly great Prog Rock album and an even better tour, but I really hate labels to begin with.
 
#104
lucas vigor said:
It could be a case of convergent evolution...fusion really started in 1968-69 with Miles Davis "In a silent way" (or some might say with "filles de kilimangaro")
Click to expand...

A lot of the Berklee guys actually cite Gary Burton's band a few years earlier as the real beginning (I remember Duster being a pretty big deal at the time), but it pretty much went by "jazz-rock" at the time.
 
#105
Passinwind said:
Switched On Bach.

Why? Because it was the hugest single paradigm shift in recorded music that I can remember in my lifetime.

If you really meant Progressive Rock though, I couldn't single out just one.
Click to expand...

Interesting choice. I get what you are saying... I remember that coming out, and it was pretty much 'what the heck was that'. Throw in the fact that Walter become Wendy, and it gets even more 'cutting edge':p
 
#106
KJung said:
Interesting choice. I get what you are saying... I remember that coming out, and it was pretty much 'what the heck was that'. Throw in the fact that Walter become Wendy, and it gets even more 'cutting edge':p
Click to expand...

I think I probably just copped that response from Chick Corea or someone like that, actually. ;)
 
#109
lucas vigor said:
Yep. For me, that's the dividing line and why I don't consider some bands to be purely prog rock...for me, Prog rock is the one style of rock music that does not pay homage to the blues in many ways..but more to western classical music. Having said that, there are some albums from rock bands such as Led Zep's "Physical Graffiti", which has many songs on it that definitely move into the prog rock realm (kasmir, ten years gone, etc) and bands like Pink Floyd which straddle the line. Oh, and you HAVE to have mellotron! That sound just totally makes it prog!
Click to expand...

So I guess this falls into that idea, Not a band that many would consider prog but they are quoting Stravinsky all over the place just like all the prog bands did back then.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwIF6f2F3A0

I loved all the old prog bands and for a while took some guff from a friend or two who would see my Yes, KC, GG, Nice albums etc albums and give me a hard time for "still listening to that stuff"

Peace,
S
 
#111
tangentmusic said:
Lots of great responses here. Will "Relayer" edge out "Close To The Edge" as the greatest Yes album? What about the one epic song per side double album "Tales From Topographic Oceans"?
(Hemispheres gets thumbs up with me too)
Click to expand...

I would put CTTE ahead of Relayer-by a hair. Mainly because the production was so much better and I just think they lost something when Bruford left. Even though I love Alan White and think his drums were phenomenal on Relayer.
 
#112
ster said:
I would put CTTE ahead of Relayer-by a hair. Mainly because the production was so much better and I just think they lost something when Bruford left. Even though I love Alan White and think his drums were phenomenal on Relayer.
Click to expand...

I agree CTTE is without peer. No one can ever say anything bad about Alan White, but even Wakeman said in an interview years ago that when Bruford left "a crack began to appear"
 
#113
To be serious: Can's Tago Mayo.

51T1EZJ096L._SL500_AA300_.jpg
 
#115
It's funny. The past couple weeks I've been trying to get into Tales but I've found it almost tiring.
My fave Yes album without a doubt is Fragile- just pure bliss. The Yes album is in second place tied with Close To The Edge (although I think Siberian should be track 2 with And You And I the closing track for a more flowing album)

Aside from Yes (it's funny how this has simply become almost a Yes debate! But I'm not complaining :D )
Rush- A Farewell To Kings is tied with Caress Of Steel (LOVE it!) or Hemispheres.
Pink Floyd- Animals (incredibly dark concept album)
King Crimson or ELP' court of the Crimson king or brain salad surgery respectively both hold a high-ranking position on my prog list too.
 
#118
I read a interview with Steve Howe (can't remember where) in which he stated that he cannot read music. Rick Wakeman is classicaly trained of course so his literacy is a given. Chris Squire I have heard conflicting statements over the years as well as for Anderson and White.
__________________
Click to expand...

Squire should be able to read music because he was in a choir. White reads music. He took classical piano lessons for years when he was young. White played the piano on "Nous Somme du Soleil" because Wakeman was not available.
 
#120
lucas vigor said:
It could be a case of convergent evolution...fusion really started in 1968-69 with Miles Davis "In a silent way" (or some might say with "filles de kilimangaro")...and that was about the same time period, if not slightly before. It could be what one poster above had mentioned, that some of these burgeoning prog rock bands were definitely taking notice of the new sound of fusion taking place primarily in the US with bands like Mahavishu, head hunters, early weather report. Who knows if they heard "Bitches brew" and went "wow"! There were artists like Sun Ra, that were doing "progressive" jazz with sci-fi song titles even as early as the late 50's, and one can't but wonder how many English prog rockers heard Sun Ra's records.

But I would think that by the mid 70's, most had abandoned the sound of saxes and whatnot, and really moved farther towards the classical side of the thing. Fusion, for the most part, has a much larger degree of improv going on then say a band like YES, who although don't read music still have their songs completed, arranged and orchestrated ahead of time (they have really great memories, obviously!)
Click to expand...
Convergent evolution. I'll have to remember that. Don't know what it means, but it sounds great.

Well, I guess this thread started with a genre, and has inevitably come to a discussion of what is in and what is out of that genre. Prog, fusion, jazz, whatever. I have to say that nothing that Sun Ra did looks like prog to me, despite his Saturnian origins. His music is firmly based in the blues, as is most jazz including free modal jazz. This includes the modal Miles, and even Bitches' Brew just doesn't strike me as fusion, despite the electric instruments, much less Filles, Silent Way, or even the Water Babies selections from the same sessions (which I much prefer to In a Silent Way). I understand the thought that the jazz musicians such as Miles, and the aforementioned Gary Burton, were reaching in the direction of pop/rock off and on, but in my mind this did not reach something that could be called "fusion" until Tony Williams Lifetime or subsequent McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter electric projects. A good case might even be made that Zappa (who was fusing Varese and surf) and the Mothers started the whole thing, but not a mention of him yet, that I have seen.

I certainly have a horrible time thinking about Mahavishnu Orchestra as prog in any way, but it's not for me to say, I guess.

By the way, if Pawn Hearts gets no votes other than mine, I guess I'll have to second Close to the Edge. Third place goes to Passion Play, which I liked more than Brick, though I'm clearly habitually in the minority.:hmm:
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back