Prog rock

[Violet]

Originally Posted by Mightyblue

Got a wild hair last night and tried to remember what prog rock band my father had a random compilation CD of; used to listen to it all the time on road trips.

Remembered a couple of the tracks and that the band name had 'Project' in it somewhere, which eventually led me to the Alan Parsons Project. Turns out the tracks I remembered liking the most came from The Turn of a Friendly Card, so I snagged the bonus track edition off iTunes and been liking it quite a bit. I find it a lot easier to get into than ELP or Yes for instance, I have to be in a particular frame of mind to listen to most prog, which is a shame since JoJo's ED cut of Roundabout reminded me that prog exists in the first place.

Turn of a Friendly Card is a pretty decent album. I'd put it with Eye in the Sky and Tales of Mystery and Imagination as the main "worth listening to" APP albums.

[The Raider Dr. Jones]

Coming soon from the Isle of Man postal service: Roger Dean stamp series.

[Parish]

"I can't believe this letter took so long to arrive."

"Yeah, it got the long distance runaround." Yes, I know, none of those stamps depict the cover to Fragile, but kindly eat my shorts, ya smartasses.

[ArugulaZ]

You too can make your mail look like a scene from Shadow of the Beast!

[YangusKhan]

Originally Posted by The Raider Dr. Jones

Coming soon from the Isle of Man postal service: Roger Dean stamp series.

Those would be some sweet art for MTG Islands.

[Shagohod]

The new Kansas album is better than the new Opeth album. It's Kansas' best album in decades as well.

[zonetrope]

RIP Greg Lake

This terrible year has claimed two-thirds of ELP. Fuck this shit.

[Zodar]

RIP to one of my favorite voices in rock & roll.

[Meditative_Zebra]

Listening to Pictures at an Exhibition and kinda sad that two thirds of those guys are gone now.

[pudik]

Album I missed from a month ago (which makes it last year which means i'm unforgivably late). Members from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, but it's unfortunately missing Carla Kihlstedt. Doesn't make a world of difference though and if you liked SGM you're like this.

[Parish]

Pictures at an Exhibition just arrived here on vinyl yesterday. Let's toast with these 40-ouncers before we pour 'em out.

[ArugulaZ]

I want you guys to listen to this. I know, it's rap/R&B, but I can't help but think that it has some of the same characteristics as progressive rock. It's lengthy and combines several different musical styles into a cohesive whole. I'm not sure if there's a specific subgenre for this kind of music, but I have to believe that there are more songs like this one.

[zonetrope]

RIP John Wetton of Asia and the hard-rocking '70s King Crimson lineup. Singer of both Starless and Heat of the Moment.

[Parish]

Candidate for the best voice in rock. I'm really gutted by this.

I have taken to buying an LP or two of the work of a musician I admire when they pass. I just ordered the entire mid-’70s King Crimson trilogy on vinyl. Rocker mortality will bankrupt me.

[Zarathustra]

Originally Posted by Parish

I just ordered the entire mid-’70s King Crimson trilogy on vinyl. Rocker mortality will bankrupt me.

the Discipline Global Mobile, Panegyric, Inner Knot published reissues on 200gram vinyl are really special and wonderfully done. they're honestly probably preferable to any of the old pressings.

[Matchstick]

Originally Posted by taosterman

RIP John Wetton of Asia and the hard-rocking '70s King Crimson lineup. Singer of both Starless and Heat of the Moment.

Really sad. For those that aren't familiar, his work with UK is also worth checking out.

[zonetrope]

Vulture has a good, short interview with Dave Weigel, whose prog rock history The Show That Never Ends is coming out on June 13th. My favorite part:

The typical narrative of prog’s downfall is that punk turned bands like Yes into dinosaurs. But you argue that the two genres have a lot more in common than people tend to think.

I don’t think you can understand any change in the culture without understanding what it is rebelling against. Twenty-year-old punk musicians who were trying to blow up prog rock in 1977 were the same age the prog musicians were when they started out. It’s the same rebellious energy driving both genres. The difference is that when the guys in Genesis were teenagers, their way of rebelling against formulaic pop was to say, “Our album is going to be a musically complex re-creation of the Book of Revelation,” instead of “Let’s play songs that are 90 seconds long and jump into the crowd.” The same synapses were working in both cases.

Incidentally, he's going to be at Chicago's Volumes Books on June 20th, discussing the book with Scott Tobias, formerly of the AV Club and the Dissolve. I'm planning to make the trek out there, in case there are any other Tyrants at the intersection of Chicago resident and prog fan.

[Parish]

He's right. The classified ad from which Genesis recruited Steve Hackett requested a musician "determined to strive beyond existing stagnant music forms" — "stagnant" music that itself was edgy and rebellious a decade prior. The pop culture ouroboros at work, always consuming itself.

[Becksworth]

See also New Wave, Hair Metal, Grunge, Alternative, Brit-Pop Nu-Metal, Pop-Punk, Garage Bands, Emo, Indie Rock, that weird summer-long fixation Rock had with Dubstep, and whatever the hell contemporary rock music is calling itself now. People more knowledgeable in other genres can fill us in on their cool/lame cycles as well.

[YangusKhan]

I don't particularly care what it was rebelling against if it gave us orchestras playing alongside rock in ELO's Eldorado.

[ArugulaZ]

This has been nagging at me for a while. I hope you'll forgive the indulgence. Okay, you remember the commercials for General Foods International Coffees?



(Yes, I know, I got a chuckle out of "Jean-Luc" too. But that's not important right now.)

All right, now here's the Kansas song Dust in the Wind.



I can't help but hear the coffee jingle in this song! Every time Dust in the Wind plays, I think of celebrating the moments of your life.

[zonetrope]

For me "only for a moment and the moment's gone" in Dust in the Wind is always replaced in my head by "LET THE RHYTHM TAKE YOU OVER BAILAMOOOOOOOS!"

[Becksworth]

Whenever I hear the last bit of Fracture by King Crimson it reminds me of the Simpsons theme for some reason...

[zonetrope]

Hey progheads! Open plug for my friend Dave's new prog rock history, The Show That Never Ends, which came out on Tuesday. I'm about two-thirds through, and it's a really smooth and fun read. I wish it were longer and focused more on the sociocultural context of the music, but that's probably a subject for another book. And he does a great job actually describing the underlying music theory behind prog's greatest epics in a way that's palatable to a dilettante like me.

The book's been getting a decent amount of press, including inspiring a piece in the New Yorker. Could this be prog's redemption?!

[Posaune]

Part of me wants to get this book, but I'm unsure if I know enough about prog to get full enjoyment from it. It seems like it would be weird to be reading about albums I wasn't super familiar with.

[Parish]

I'm sincerely envious that someone managed to get their name in lights writing about prog rock, and it wasn't me. Please punch your friend Dave in the face for me (in a friendly way).

The book seems to focus largely on the landmark bands and the cultural context, so I don't think you have to be super-deep into the genre to enjoy it. I'll be digging into my own copy soon, at any rate.

[zonetrope]

You can always write a separate book on the influence of prog rock on Japanese video game composers. I was playing ELP once, and my wife was able to tell who it was because it sounded like Final Fantasy 6 boss music.

This book has inspired me to break out of my British prog bubble and check out prog from the European mainland. First revelation is that Premiata Forniera Marconi are pretty fucking awesome.

[ArugulaZ]

And the Andy Rooney award for an aging prog rock musician shaking his fist at modern life goes to...

[Bongo]

Y'all like Moog?

[Meditative_Zebra]

It continues to amaze and bewilder me (in a good way!) that Kanye managed to make a mega-hit out of a song written on top of a sample from a 60's prog-rock group, namely that Power prominently features samples from King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man. It's bizzare to be watching an NBA game when suddenly I hear the voice of Greg Lake bleed through the intervening years and played during the ad for luxury watches or whatever.