Another great Prog band from the 70's rarely heard of here in the states was Maxophone. I think they were an Italian classical based with french horns to boot. Right up there with PFM. I remember Gryphon records " Reds queen to gryphons 3 was one of my favorites. www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1x58IH5DQ8

the darkness lives !!!!

Boy have I been having fun lately finding all these new, wonderful bands to listen to!  The best thing about discovering bands that have been around for a while is that there's MORE out there.  When you run into a hot, new band they usually only have one album out so you have to wait to get another fix, but not with these prog bands I'm just now encountering! 

All I can say is...

Steve Rothery from Marillion has a side project called The Wishing Tree, a little more straight ahead, but nice stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3d08zH3mcw

craigb


Gryphon?  Great.  Another one to add to the list...  In researching Twelfth Night, they were commonly mentioned along with Marillion, Pendragon, IQ, Pallas and Sentient Genus.  And I only knew about one of those before (Marillion).

This is kind of a fun journey!
 

Pallas were another Scottish band who made one superb album back in the 80's called "The Sentinel"


It told the story of the Rise & Fall of Atlantis and back in the day (pre-cd), you could only get the full story from the original LP, a B side of the single "Arrive Alive" and a 12", East West


when it was all ported over to CD, the engineering team made an absolute hash of the original drum sound so that every track was treated to an awful slapback echo which, for me, destroyed the vibe of the entire album.


I was luck to see them live twice, thy went through a couple of personnel changes and never, in my opinion, re-created the magic of their earlier efforts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nClAGN5hIM this is one band i got into recently - Overhead, from Finland. www.youtube.com/watch?v=faMl5AmIlkU

Here is a bunch of interrelated artists making Prog today, they are worth checking out: Karnataka, The Reasoning, Panic Room, Mostly Autumn, Heather Findley.

Glyn - here's another related band to Mostly Autumn - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAolAc59gN8 (Stolen Earth)

The best thing about discovering bands that have been around for a while is that there's MORE out there.

For an impoverished soul such as myself, the best thing is you can buy the CDs second-hand for cheap. 

Most of the time, anyway. Some of the more obscure albums were never put onto CD, or are only available as an expensive import. 

And don't forget the one-hit-wonders (e.g. Focus, Golden Earring, Kansas, Argent, Uriah Heep) that everyone's heard of but whose most interesting material never saw the Top 40.

Although maybe not "prog", I have to also plug one of the best concept albums of the 1970's (I consider it in the same league with Dark Side of the Moon): "Hope" by Klaatu.

Ozric Tentacles were an awesome prog rock band, of which Eat Static came out of. The mastery these guys had of analogue synths I've never heard anyone match