50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time

Thanks for the post! I now have a new "listen to" list

Oh great!  I can't imagine how much time I'm likely to spend going over this - lol!
 
First to see if there's anything on there I don't already have... 
 
 

Hi,
 
The list is:
 
Happy the Man
Ruins
FM (Black Noise)
Crack in the Sky
Carmen (Fandangos)
Triumvirat (Illusions on a )
Strawbs (Hero and Heroine)
ELO (Eldorado)
Meshuggah (Destroy Erase Improve)
 
AD2 (Yeti)
Soft Machine (3)
PTree (Fear of a Blank Planet)
Gong (You)
Marillion (Clutch at Straws)
Harmonium (Si On Avait Besoin D'Une)
Banco (1st)
Caravan (In the Land of Grey and Pink)
Tool (Lateralus)
 
Kansas (LeftOverture)
Renaissance (Ashes are Burning)
UK (UK)
Dream Theater (Metropolis 2)
Opeth (Blackwater Park)
Supertramp (Crime of the Century)
VdGG (Pawn Hearts)
The Mars Volta (De-Loused)
Magma (Mekanik)
Tangerine Dream (Phaedra)
 
Rush (2112) Camel (Mirage)
KC (Lark's Tongues)
PFM (Per Un Amico)
FZappa (One Size Fits All)
Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells)
Gentle Giant (Octopus)
King Crimson (Red)
Genesis (Foxtrot)
Pink Floyd (Animals)
 
ELP (Brain Salad Surgery)
Rush (Hemispheres)
YES (Fragile)
Genesis (Lamb)
CAN (Future Days)
JT (Thick as a Brick)
Genesis (Selling England)
YES (Close to the Edge)
Pink Floyd (Wish You Were Here)
Rush (Moving Pictures)
KC (In the Court)
PF (Dark Side of the Moon)
 
Wow ... I'm only missing 10 of these albums in my collection! And 8 of them I won't get ... like Rush, Kansas since I have already heard them a zillion times!
 
(More in a bit!)

Hi,
 
All in all, this is probably the best list that RS has ever made, and it is really not as great as it could be, and it still goes way too much towards the "hits" and the best known bands. Rush is a very good band, but aside from one or two albums, it is hardly progressive. But it is very nice music!
 
The list is missing somethings here and there, that could easily have replaced duplicate albums, which is my biggest complaint ... it should not be about "albums" but "artists" and this would take out a bunch of albums by YES and GENESIS, RUSH and KING CRIMSON, and make room for other bands that deserve the credit.
 
It just gets boring, listing the "albums" as if it were a top of the pops thing ... and this is not a good way to define the "art" ... at all! It is based on the high and the mighty sales, though the list went out of the way to get around that with some very good listings!
 
It was, NICE, to see Rolling Stone, finally accredit something that from day one they went out of their way to trash senselessly. However, to have "Close to the Edge" and not "Tales from Topographic Oceans", still tells you that they want hit materials and not eccentric pieces of music ... making one wonder if Stravinsky would even make a dent today, instead of 90 years ago! Not likely, because the music would have been so weird that Rolling Stone would immediately tell you that Henry Cow, Slapp Happy, Cabaret Voltaire and Faust is just total crap and not music!
 
Missing for starters:
Ange - Au Dela Du Delire (or even Emile Jacotey)
Djam Karet - Suspension and Replacement
Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene
Vangelis - Blade Runner Sdtk (or even Chariots of Fire Sdtk)
Aphorodite's Child 666
Focus - Moving Waves (or Hamburger Concerto)
Kayak - See See the Sun
Klaus Schulze (since they got TD)
Riuychi Sakamoto - Beauty
Egberto Gismonti - No Caipira (original)
Terje Rypdal - Eos (with David Darling)
XTC - The Big Express
The Groundhogs - Cross Cut Saw (and Black Diamond)
Herd of Instinct - Conjure
 
The surprises in the listing are actually nice and OK with me. Renaissance, Can (not their most progressive at all!!!), ELO, FM, Carmen and even Strawbs, were all very nice albums and enjoyable all around.

Hi,
 
I'm not a "good" person to help with a description of "progressive" music.
 
The reason why is that I am "multi-national", and too much of the list in the "progressive" thing is just a cultural list that fits one or two countries, but not a whole lot of others, and they leave behind way too many things ... with one exception ... gotta have a lot (never too much!) of English and American since they own the world, and some folks in the PA board are even vehement about having "started" progressive, as the term apparently was first used by Melody Maker and the New Music Express way back in 1969 or 1970. Thus, having the English contingent, means that they "defined" progressive, since no one knew to apply the term to any other language or culture at the time!
 
Now we have some issues ... you have heard about the War of Roses, right? Guess what? Not a single "French" anything will ever show up in that list! AND, btw, GONG was more AUSTRALIAN, than it was English! But Daevid got his start in Soft Machine with the BEAT POETS that were all living in the same house as he and most Soft Machine folks were!
 
My issue with the term, would suggest, then, that anything from Latin America, South America, even the Far - East, has no chance for creating anything that could also be considered "progressive", when some of the things listed in the English/American list were nothing but a nice mix of present and past musics ... like they never happened in India or Japan, or Chile?
 
It only suggests that we do not listen to music ... we only listen to hits, and that which we are fed by mom and pop!
 
To be "truly" progressive, you have to get off that mode, and learn to listen to anything/everything ... and that is hard for many of us, even me sometimes, though I have less problems with cultural musics, due to my travels and appreciation for different things.

craigb

Moshkito
Wow ... I'm only missing 10 of these albums in my collection!

And I was only missing two (which I just may have to rectify!  ).
Strawbs (Hero and Heroine)
Meshuggah (Destroy Erase Improve)
 
I agree that a lot of the list was wasted by choosing albums instead of artists.  Heck, Opeth's album from last year, Pale Communion, is far better than many of those that made the list.  It's like listening to fresh King Crimson.
 
I have almost all of Pedro's additions as well (except Ange, Terje Rypdal and the Groundhogs).  BTW - That should be Herd of Instinct not Innocense.  More to check out!

 
I liked "Ghosts" better than "Hero and Heroine", though both together are the ultimate Strawbs for me.
 
Meshuggah, I have not given a fair listen and will. Same with Tool. Opeth, I have not been able to get through very well. I have to give it a listen now, hopefully with a fresh'er ear!
 
Herd of Instinct. Fixed!
 
Ange, is worth it all the way to their "Tome vi" album. Very French, and in my book made Genesis sound like a cheap rock band that could not make up their mind what they wanted to do. Right from the start ... "ecoute ... ecoute ... " in whispers, it lets you know that this band is not just a pop band! "Au Dela" is probably one of the nicest rock albums ever in my book. Beautiful from beginning to the end. Emile Jacotey was copied by Roger Waters in the 90's. I like it better than Roger's, though that album of Roger's is also special! It probably should be in the progressive list!!!
 
Terje came off the ECM school, and EOS is the best "chamber music" electric guitar you will EVER hear. It's pure total beauty and let's call it a Jimi Hendrix meets a Cello on an open stage ... skip the first cut ... the rest is dreamy, crazy, and one of the prettiest things ever done. This is where Jeff Beck learned to do that high end soaring style, btw ... Terje did it all over "Odyssey" with a slight jazz tinged mood, but all rock for the most part, and this was many years earlier!
 
Groundhogs' best two albums are tour de forces. Cross Cut Saw is magnificent all the way through. Black diamond has some unreal songs in it, beautifully defined, (check out Live Right) and a piece that is a bit on the Layla side as well, the title cut. Unffortunately, too many folks will consider this just power blues and ignore the rest ... it's still excellent, and Toni's use of special effects on his guitar is almost 2nd to none.
 
I have not given The Mars Volta a fair listen. I got stuck on Hipgnosis wonderful editorial cover that they rejected, and somehow there has never really been a cover that Hipgnosis did that was not ... on par ... with their music, and the idea of the "modern metal object" scaring the old lady out of her curlers, was actually something that I found interesting and thought that the music would be over blown and I have never really given it a good listen since. Hipgnosis has, for me, almost never been wrong! Even with a mouth zipped and the songs all beautiful vocal arrangements!

Cool. Gonna have to go through this list. I love prog but since the rest of the world are too in love with simplistic, shmaltzy bubblegum it's hard to really get a handle on what's what. I find jazz (the good stuff) to be the same way. I mostly have to rely on technical metal to get my nerd rocks off (let's face it... technical metal is just slight more simplistic prog rock played using the darker modes with extra distortion and Cookie Monster vocals) and the old standby prog bands that managed to breakthrough like Rush.
 
In a lot of ways my preoccupation with my own music and tendency to get distracting by shiny things has somewhat prevented me from actually hunting down the quality "musician's" music I know is out there. Part of the problem too I think is unfortunately a lot of prog and jazz ends up being a little TOO focused on being fancy and technical while ignoring the whole "well executed movement/pleasing to listen to" aspect that is so very imperative to keeping my attention.
 
Funny thing is I've known of the Strawbs for years because of The Monks. As a silly punker Bad Habits appealed to me in so many ways. As I understand it that was supposed to be mocking the punk phenomena because their fancy froo stuff was being ignored during the punk revolution yet ended up being more popular than their own work (that's what I was told anyway). How frustrating would that be... lol. Yet to this day I don't think I've listened to a full Strawbs album nor could I even name one of their songs.
 
Bad Beepster. BAD!! No nerd cookie for you!
 
Meh... thanks for posting. Considering it's RS I'm sure it's still a middle of the road type "Top X List" but they are certainly better at knowing what's what than most of the numbskullery pop culture lists that get produced.
 
Cheers.

big weenies.

There are 50 prog rock albums!!??

i think they had only 3.

bayoubill
NEKTAR - Remember the Future -- and Recycled (which has Larry Fast)
GURU GURU - Dance of the Flames
 
 
 
More new friends!

Yep!  More good stuff. 
(Got several albums from both.)
 
All this nice prog and I'm currently listening to New Wave on shuffle-play.  Oh well! 

bayoubill
NEKTAR - Remember the Future -- and Recycled (which has Larry Fast)
GURU GURU - Dance of the Flames 
 
More new friends!

The 2 long cuts in the DotF's album you will learn real quick ... but see if you can keep up with that drummer ... he is one of the finest in rock music ever!  And his favorite joke is that he doesn't play with the bass or rhythm ... he plays with the band! Basically, in Guru Guru, a bass player is on his own ... because Mani is flying just like the guitarist!
 
One funny note here ... on their 5th album (Tango Fango) there is a piece of music making fun of East German marching band music and it is a joke song, that mixes it with rock'n'roll ... and the gest is ... this is our God! This is our party music! Rock music, complete with feedback and the good stuff ... not the other stuff. And this was done before the Wall came down, and in many ways, tells you how important the feeding of rock music to the other side was in the late 60's and into the 70's until the Wall finally came down!
 
Rock music, progressive or not, was, very important. It wasn't just a song! It was a sword and a cannon, like most would never consider.

Hi,
 
(An attempt at a definition!!!!! hahaha!!!!!)
 
Thanks for getting me started on that Bit ... here goes.
 
For me, the best term for the time and place, is NOT "progressive', but "psychedelic", of which, the likes of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, and most of the California bands, would, THEN, have some serious representation. However, I think the London contingent would have an issue with "losing" their "mastery" over the definition of their "music", which as stated and defined, will not include a lot of American and European bands at all!
 
Later it did, but not in the early days, despite the fact that Europe has a massive artistic/theatrical/film history that happened BEFORE popular and rock music, and it was quite vivid in the 60's all over. But it did not have a "hit song" to represent itself ... and this means that Godard is an idiot, Fellini is a bad clown, that Antonioni forgot to turn off his camera, and David Lean was exercising his narcissistic love for endless images that never died! And we have not even mentioned theater yet!
 
For me, the term that helps and defines it best ... is "psychedelic". The only problem with it, is that we automatically associate it with DRUGS, and we quickly forget to take a look at Picasso's Guernica, and how psychedelic it really was, and all of a sudden it gave rise to a new art style that became called "cubistic", and it wasn't about cubes ... it was about all the body parts that a kid was seeing outside his window in an ugly Civil War in Spain. Body parts and dead folks in the streets. What is it about that painting that isn't true? It is only "cubistic", because it is easier for us to imagine that we cut up the picture with scissors, so that we do not have to imagine the total HORROR that the person painting that was really seeing.
 
And 50 years later, we do the same thing with a different kind of music, that became popular, which was another element that hurt. The music and art controls, up until that time had been the movie studios and in the 50's TV started to break it apart some. And in the 60's, the studios and upper class, would no longer control the majority of the arts in these new times and places. Today, as you know, it's wide open!
 
The term, "psychedelic" for me, is just like reading "The Doors of Perception", and your curiosity, and innocence and even naiveté, lives ... just fine, along with everything else, and you do not even notice that the perspective is different, until later, when you try to recall and formulate a theory of relativity for yourself. If you "can't", you will forever be a slave to the drug, or some kind of religious soothsayer telling everyone else about the evils of drugs ... never mind the person behind it!
 
The only point, which matters, for me, is that it was done, and the expression has stood the test of time. That in itself, is a solid explanation for its strength and inner design, although I doubt that Jim Morrison would have said that they sat up all night for 7 days to write this story for a song! Or that Grace spent 4 days writing a set of lyrics that defines a whole generation that we're trying to forget ... never mind the fantasy that was before it, in the first place! Like the writer himself did not do the same thing?
 
The perspective is missing, and this is the part of "progressive" that bothers me.  Thus I prefer "psychedelic", knowing that as time goes by, this will get separated from drugs a bit more and the process and design, intentional or not, experimental or not, improvised or not, created an expression that was truly valuable as an artistic process. This "process" is highly valuable in theater/film acting processes, and has been for 50 years ... but for the most part it has been ignored by musicians, that seem to be more infatuated with fame and fortune, than they do their art. I'm not sure they "know" what their "art" really is, beyond a sing, and that could be a slight problem.
 
For some reason, I do not feel "confused" on this at all. The term would fit well in the designs, although it could easily be said that it started way back when with Stravinsky as well.

Hi,
 
The only issue I have with that, and btw, that is a great description of things and I enjoyed it tremendously, is that in America and England, (well we don't know about Japan, China and the like!) the "pop" music world really does not care about the definition as long as they can compartmentalize it, so that someone "knows" where to find it to buy it.
Better yet ... the VIRGIN factor!
 
This was on the Dave Cousins' book about VIRGIN. They were not making any headway in their sales and one day they decided to create their own top ten list ... and the next day, 20 of their artists were selling a million and the other list was not as important or as big as Virgin's!
 
Plus they had the stores and distribution for the work, which made it easier ... good gracious ... all the albums are gone ... actually they were in the back office, but who cares ... it worked and sold!
 
I am not sure that pop music and its immediate communicating device (radio, tape, cassette, cd, etc) will have a proper, concise and complete history for a few more years. The majority of it, was originally owned by the movie studios (so they didn't have to pay for the use of the music to anyone else!), and eventually, radio devised the way to keep the money home, and blah and blah ... you know that part already.
 
But with the complete dismantling of the studio/corporate systems, and many bands making it on their own without these systems, the story is still ongoing and developing, and I think it might be another 25 to 50 years before we can give it a proper history ... that might make better sense of things.
 
The question, still is, how will it affect the "history of music", and not just one style, but the over all history of the art. For example, "pop art" did not hurt the history of the "art" with the likes of Andy Warhol, and many others. In fact, it enriched it. The same with the literature world, where a lot of writers, ended up being appreciated in the long run, even though they are not "major" by a wide margin, but it did not separate itself from the art at all. It blended rather well, and Naked Lunch and On The Road are "classics" today. The rock/pop music thing, is still stuck on the star system and on the sales system and it still ignores the arts ... because it likely knows that half of what it does is just money anyway and not art!
 
In this sense, then, some of this music is doomed to be just another "Elvis Outfit" and no one will remember the songs! But this has not happened to the stuff we're discussing here, which is still selling as well as it ever did, and in many cases, way better!
 
I would think, and still define it, as what we have come to call "progressive' as music by people that wanted to do more than just a song ... in some cases it was still a song, but in many it WASN'T. I think those folks deserve some credit for their work, but because it is a pop music thing, it's like ... all those players are just bums and they are not musicians, and I find that insulting! I honestly believe that many and most of these people, including those I have met and talked to, were out for a lot more ... and some of them were highly literate folks! They were not "bums".