PSA: Anyone (young enough to) remember “Prog Rock” ?

BBC4 at 9.00 pm tomorrow night is Prog Rock Night.

Anyone remember Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Genesis with Peter Gabriel wearing various objects on his head?

Can’t wait, in fact I’ll dig out my triple concept albums, vinyl naturally, and turn on, tune in, drop out 🙄

I am 50, at school when the bands quoted were out,

“Emerson, Lake & Palmer“

Is that classical music ?

I suspect I will end up splitting my sides at how up their ar$es they all were!

C’mon gus, you’re pulling my leg!

Anyone seen them live?

only on Top Of The Pops – LoL 😛

Come on, Pink Floyd were the greatest Prog Rock band ever. The others would have been nothing, without the mighty Floyd.

Echoes Pt 1
Echoes Pt 2

” Anyone seen them live? “

I think you’re pulling my leg.

Surely they lived something like 200 years ago ?

Ive seen Status Quo – (dies of shame)

Listening to David Gilmour – Live in Gdansk right now and it’s utterly wonderful!

neverfastenuff – embrace your years!

RudeBoy – no, I disagree. Reckon King Crimson/Yes/ELP.

gus – as I said above, embrace your years!

Actually, did Garry Moore do some tracks with Greg Lake ??

Wash your mouth out. Those bands were barely fit to lick the boots of the Floyd. Yes? Weren’t they recently voted shittest band ever? Rick Wakeman V Roger Waters? No contest.

Pink Floyd were true audio pioneers, and paved the way for others to follow.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
A Saucerful of Secrets

Gary Moore with Greg Lake? Oh, didn’t know that. Saw Gary when he was playing on B B King’s 80th birthday tour. Hoped that the two of them would play together again but they didn’t.

Saw ELP when they “presented” Tarkus, that kinda stuff was all new then!

I think I remember Tarkus, did it have an armadillo or something like on the cover ??

Oh RudeBoy – we will have to disagree! I’ve seen them both, in fact saw Floyd when they presented Dark Side of the Moon at Wembley. Also saw Roger Gilmour and Roger Waters a couple of years ago at a very un-PC event.

Rick Wakeman is very talented – saw him live when Journey to the Centre of the Earth was recorded. A unique experience.

The trouble was that the prog rock thing just got so pretentious …

neverfastenuff – correct! There was smoke coming out of it and Greg Lake used to stand on a Persian rug!!

I’d also disagree with Rudeboy. Floyd are great, but are my third favourite band behind Yes and Led Zep.
Rick Wakeman is a very talented and funny bloke, and very down to earth. The bit about Yes being voted shittest band ever was mentioned by Clarkson when he was hosting Buzzcocks the other day, and Rick found it hilarious. On the other hand the remaining members of Floyd are so far up their own arses they have be interviewed via endoscopes.

Will be watching tomorrow with interest.

OK – much discussion tomorrow then!

Dave Gilmour is quite a handy guitarist admittedly.

Jon Anderson lost the plot hence the talk of triple concept albums.

Endoscopes – lovely comparison!

Anyone into King Crimson? In The Court of the Crimson King anyone?

Well, the first rock album I ever heard was King Crimson’s “In The Court Of The Crimson King”, when I was still at school. Schitzoid Man blew me away, unlike anything I’d ever heard. First live gig I ever went to was ELP in Cardiff. I saw Yes four times, Pink Floyd on the Dark Side of the Moon tour in Bristol. Genesis were one of the great English bands along with the Kinks, incredibly inventive and dark. Yes did get very up themselves, but Fragile had some really good stuff on it, and Close To The Edge still sounds good to me. Elbow are very much in that tradition of anthemic rock that tells a story, and are probably my favourite Brit band at the mo’. You could say that Canadian bands like The Dears, Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade are very much influenced by English Prog bands. Later on I saw The Jam, The Clash, Ian Dury, Souxie and the Banshees, Hole, Curve, Sisters Of Mercy, etc, etc.

oh I remember prog rock.

In fact I’m still in therapy.

Not everyone gets ‘prog rock’ but, really, you had to be there! Agree about The Kinks – way ahead of their time.

Not that fussed by much prog rock (tho’ king crimson were pretty impressive and ELP were total lunatics – keith emerson stabbing his organ, uh, keyboards, on stage etc) but a big fan of kraut rock and space rock.

Anyone into King Crimson? In The Court of the Crimson King anyone?

Yep, 21st Century Schizoid Man is a great track, used to be on the jukebox of a pub we drank in when I was a teenager.

Pah! Blasphemers…

Floyd did stuff with sound, in the sixties, before almost anyone else. They really pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved. Everyone else just followed. Even the Beatles nicked some of Floyds ideas, for arguably their best stuff on albums like Sgt. Pepper’s and MMT.

Granted, they did get up their own arses, and what happened to Syd Barret was very sad. But they were still the best.

I’m talking of course, up to Final Cut. After that, they were just another stadium band churning out formulaic pap.

Genesis? No band with Phil Collins in can ever be considered in the same league as the Floyd.

Collins, V Nick Mason? Don’t be silly…

Peter Gabriel was Genesis not Phil Collins. The sight of him wearing a fox’s head was amazing but I was never really into them. But Gabriel was innovative, you can’t take that away from him.

yep – have king crimsion – ELP – the floyd – rick Wakeman on my ipod – alongside all the ‘Cantaberry’ stuff (gong/steve Hilliage et al – soft machine – caravan)

although there is also plenty of moden stuff – radiohead – embrace – verve

Floyd did stuff with sound, in the sixties, before almost anyone else.

Yeah, but then Syd left and it was all downhill after that – the sterile solos and anaemic sax were almost already there already. 😛

Now, The Misunderstood – the great lost underground band who blew everyone’s minds but disappeared with nary a trace… ah, now you’re talking. I think I’m going to have to dig out ‘Before the Dream faded’… and then the Rubble colections before slipping on Neu!, Can, Hawkwind, Amon Duul II and so on 🙂 Cheers for the thread but the missus, the kids and the neighbours may not be so thankful with the Third Ear Band seeping through the walls and floorboards at 3am lol!

Prog rock. Yes, the reason punk had to be invented.

Self indulgent piffle. 20 minute drum solo’s. Yawn…

(oh and The Floyd were never any good without Barratt anyways…).

And there was so much better music around than prog in the seventies.

Thank F*** for punk 😉

bunch of up their own arse fretboard w*nkery

Think on this tho’ at the height of punk, what was the most successful album? Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Punk never swept away anything, it just gave rock music a much needed jolt to show anyone could be in a band. Most punk bands came from a pub band background anyway, or else art college.

Yeah but there was an awful lot of shit punk and bandwagon jumpers (Boomtown frigging rats, the jam, etc) and even people like the clash had become a boring bunch of hypocritical rock stars by the time lodnon calling dragged its bloated arse onto vinyl 😛

Ozric tentacles!!!

ANYONE REMEMBER???

Oh dear. Are any of you teenagers? And if so, why are you TOTALLY unaware of At The Drive-In or their successors The Mars Volta? Or the Progressive Nation festival, held in 2008?

Not my sort of music, but progressive rock is a fairly well recognized genre amongst the 15-19 age group in both the UK and US.

You guys need to get out more.

On a list of who have you seen from that era;

ELP – Wembley 1974
Genesis – Too many to count between 73 and 79
Floyd – 5 times
Yes – twice
Status Quo, yeah I know they’re no prog, 5 or 6 times
King Crimson
Rick Wakeman
Led Zep
Moody Blues

Ahhh, those were the days.

TOTALLY unaware of At The Drive-In

Uhh, cos they’re an emo band? and the mars volta, like a lot of neo-prog, is all a bit predictable (admittedly not having reached the heights/lows of note perfect but very, very dull Porcupine Tree)

I never said that punk was the be all and end all. Just that it was a necessary reaction to the crap around at the time.

And yeah there was just as much ‘punk’ crap around once they got the bandwagon wound up and rolling…

As I posted previously:

there was so much better music around than prog in the seventies

.

The thing I find funniest though is that ‘punk’ and ‘punks’ in this day and age is more anachronistic than Teds back in the day. The irony of it all. 30+ years after the fact…

No mention of early Rush yet?

2112 – Concept progness gone mad!

The thing I find funniest though is that ‘punk’ and ‘punks’ in this day and age is more anachronistic than Teds back in the day.

Lol. That is very true 🙂

Rush were just getting going in the 70’s and have just got better with age* re their latest album Snakes and Arrows.

* well except for some dire stuff in the late 80’s

There were some really awful prog rock bands, even worse than the likes of ELP, Yes & Genesis. Anyone remember Barclay James Harvest, Focus, Supertramp.
/me winces

I’d add Curved Air to this list, but i still have fond memories of Sonja Kristina 😉

Hmm, just wondered if people would count Gong as prog rock? I only ask because they are *still* teh AWESOME! (Well, with the exception of the Pierre Moerlin variant of the late 70s) – Acid Mothers Gong is one of my favourite collaborations of the last few years. Although I guess Gong (and Acid Mothers Temple for thatmatter) would probably count as good old fashioned psychedelia.