Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: I'm pretty sure there is a concensus that Henry Cow - Western Culture is the last great first wave prog album.

Consensus? I dunno

1979 included

Henry Cow - Western Culture

Univers Zero - Heresie

Pekka Pohjola - Visitation

Arachnoid - Arachnoid

Laurent Thibault  - Mais on ne peut pas rêver tout le temps

Embryo - Embryo's Reise

Art Zoyd - Musique pour l'Odyssee

Art Bears - Winter Songs

Ma Banlieue Flasque - Ma Banlieue Flasque

there are many MANY more highly complex prog albums from that year and all throughout the 80s

I understand what  you're going for with this thread but prog never really simplified, it just went underground while the more popular acts went more commercial but you need to be more specific about what you mean here.

Last great albums before the great simplification for me would imply the albums around 1975 or 76 before punk and disco really took control. There have always been outliers of prog even in the so-called desert 80s.

Not really sure how to answer this one. There are examples of prog albums that were BOTH simple and complex like Kansas - Leftoverture

Polls are conversation starters - and I am discussing the more popular prog acts.  That UZ album, for instance, is fantastic, but on release it's impact was limited.  In the UK for instance, I don't think I ever saw any UZ or Art Zoyd albums on the shelves.  I also agree that many of these acts you mention remained 'underground' and remained genuine innovators.

I was expecting to see relayer since GFTO was mostly shorter songs. 

'Awaken' swung it for me...although I realise that this is a moot point...

UK are a funny one - I always considered their two albums as 'projects' - the sudden shift in personnel between albums reinforced that view.  

I was always under the impression that Henry Cow was quite unpopular during the day and only in the following decades became the classic prog champions of avant-prog.

someone_else wrote: The last great album before the great simplification would be UK's Danger Money, which is not on this list.

 

agreed

They were. I remember someone bringing Western Culture into my room shortly after its release when I had some friends round and we stuck it on. The general opinion was "what the hell is this sh*te?".

They're a band you either get, or don't get. I don't.

someone_else wrote: The last great album before the great simplification would be UK's Danger Money, which is not on this list.

YEAH!! 

Jethro Tull's Stormwatch isn't on the list, either...

That's a hardline stance if I've ever seen one. Not a fan of Red, I take it?

No, there were some after that imo such as:

Camel -nude (81)

Yes - Drama (80)

Happy the Man- Crafty Hands (78)(their first proper album was in 77)

Rush-Permanent Waves(80), Moving Pictures(81)

UK- same (78), Danger Money(79)

Genesis- Duke(80)(well, it's about half prog anyway)

Kansas - Monolith(79) (about the same as above)

Those are just some of the more well known ones. 

Camel was past their prime at that point (and I like Stationary Traveler better).

Monolith was the first Kansas album to disappoint. It's definitely a step down when you compare it to what came before.

If we can't include Tull's A (which I wouldn't, and it was meant to be Ian solo), I wouldn't include Duke.

Scorpius wrote: If only my copy of Red on vinyl wasn't a misprint with the A side printed on both sides!

You can replace that. 

Well, you could say anything after Moonmadness was past Camel's prime just like you can say anything after CTTE was past Yes's prime. For Genesis it's a bit more hazy but maybe anything after PG left.

Sounds like the kind of thing that could bring a pretty penny from a collector. Like vintage baseball card misprints. 

Dear old Henry Cow - as prog fell about our ears, I was a huge Henry Cow fan along with ELP, Genesis, etc.  Their problem was being disowned by their record label (familiar story).  Apart from the Lindsay Cooper tribute concerts in 2014 they have never had a reunion.  Total respect for that.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: Well, you could say anything after Moonmadness was past Camel's prime just like you can say anything after CTTE was past Yes's prime. For Genesis it's a bit more hazy but maybe anything after PG left.

 

Camel's Rain Dances is fantastic. I far prefer it to Moonmadness, just like I prefer Relayer to CTTE.

Maybe our concept of prime is a little different, i.e. highest rated albums vs. a band firing on all cylinders.

This is no doubt heresy to some or many, but I like Genesis' albums immediately following PG's departure the best.

I actually did a little bit of digging around on discogs after I saw your comment, and I was able to confirm that the pressing I have is an official KC re-release from 2013 that was miss-pressed to have two A sides. No chance I could return this to the store I bought it from originally but are there places online where people would be interested in such a thing? Might be a stupid question but I've never looked into selling vinyl online, especially when it's a copy of an album that can't even be listened to all the way through. 

Rick1 wrote: Interesting to see your contributions and I thank you.  I have documented my non-inclusion of both Tull and UK on earlier posts.

 

Not considering Tull a prog act is very odd. I'm not a massive fan but they were hardcore prog for a longer time than many more so called prog acts.

UK as a 'project'? Well that excludes King Crimson as well imo.

In the end I voted for Animals because PF were unusual in that they became more complex at a time when the opposite was happening. Animals is the most important late entry but UK were still flying the prog banner when most had given up and gone home. There just aren't enough albums in the world with Eddie Jobson playing on them. 

Yeah it was a bummer what began to happen, and then an even worse dumb-down in the '80s when aberrations like Grace Under Pressure were considered "progressive rock".   Some progressive forms survived and thrived like Electronic and small pockets of Fusion, but it was some cold freakin' water in those dark days.

Last great prog album?   I'd say Drama .

Me too. ATTOT is my favorite then W&W then SEBTP although to be honest I might prefer SE to W&W(it's almost a toss up). I probably like the post Hackett stuff more than most prog fans do also(but still probably not more than the PG era).

ExittheLemming wrote: The brilliant first UK album from 1978 with Wetton, Bruford, Holdsworth and Jobson represented for me, the last remnants of the original Prog impetus pushing forward into a rapidly changing musical landscape and marketplace at the tail end of the 70's.

Good call.

I had considered that album (as others have), but I didn't want to create too many choices that would dissipate the poll.  

Ah, it is not a conflation of simple with 'bad' - how about commercialisation to offset changing social attitudes towards music?

1. My interpretation of simplify was to commercialise in line with popular musical culture in the late 70s

2. UK's first album should have been included (I did think about it but at the time, it's impact was limited although I had a massive poster of it)

3. In 1977, two bands arguably continued to transcend the genre: ELP and Yes (Genesis exited the genre - more or less - with Hackett's departure - another moot point)

4. Henry Cow's 'Western Culture' (possibly along with 'Softs') did not compromise at all (note that by then they had been abandoned by their record label, Virgin, in 1977 and their last album was released independently)

5. The timeline is not neat and tidy - the dissolution of King Crimson in 74 presaged what was to come over the next few years.  Someone mentioned 'Drama' but for me the release of 'Western Culture' in 1979 closed the era - possibly along with Hackett's 'Spectral Mornings' (by then, a solo artist so outside this poll...)

I also like Nat Health, Yes, ,,,,etc

so going back to one of my many unpopular opinions..

Soft Machine III...  never was the same.. or as good afterward. Just became yet another generic meandering fusion band which plagued the mid to late 70's...

I would suggest That Tull's Songs from the Wood (1977) and Heavy Horses (1978) surpassed what ELP (Works and Love Beach) and Yes (Going for the One and Tormato) did in the same time-frame. Your list is incomplete and doesn't do justice to the era.

UK certainly belongs here.

When considering transcending the genre, during this period I still contend that both ELP and Yes continued to do so (ELP had a UK hit written by a modern classical composer with a modal jazz solo in it...)  I repeat, I am a huge Tull fan but never considered them prog; rather a sophisticated rock band and those albums were brilliant (and yes, surpassed both Tormato and Love Beach if you want to throw those albums into the mix).  I also mentioned that over-populated polls tend to get dissipated - apologies if my little conversation starter appears to lack the substance you crave.

I am wondering how anyone would think Yes or ELP were "transcendent" in 1977 and 1978; if anything, the opposite would be the case. Yes actually devolved from the progressivity of Tales From Topographic Oceans and Relayer to a more stripped down commercial sound on Going for the One. Nothing incredibly "transcendent" there -- it was more, "hey, we have to sell more albums". As far as ELP, there is nothing incredibly progressive or "transcendent" about going back to the old well and rehashing an Aaron Copeland composition. Even the name of the album "Works" is as bloated and pretentious as a double album that would have served the band better edited down to a single record -- but one can't edit egos, it would seem.

As far as Songs from the Wood, again, I am wondering how one wouldn't consider it "progressive" or "transcendent", when you consider that Tull married classical music and English folkloric motifs and made a thoroughly progressive British folk rock album -- a defining moment for the movement itself -- going beyond the folk electrification of previous efforts by Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. And classical motifs run through out the album as much as folk -- the antithesis of the "simplification" your poll allegedly sought. At least one song on the album leaves the rock genre altogether....

Could points by Dark Elf.......

Tull's finest hour. 

Forsooth!  I am a Tull fan: Songs From The Wood was the first album I bought by them and thus it has a special place for me and I accept, totally, its complexity and invention.  Tull are also in my top 10 of bands I have seen live- starting with the 'Stormwatch' tour of 1980.  So....until the music press started labelling Tull as 'prog' in the early 2000s, it never occurred to me they were part of the genre (as the label was retrospective anyway).  Old habits die hard.  I always considered 'Under Wraps' as their most 'out there' album anyway (which they got lambasted for).  Anyway...to my mind ELP and Yes were still pushing out the boundaries with those albums but ELP more so.  The live material from the Work tours showed they were still a force to be reckoned with.  'Bloated and pretentious' sounds like something from the high priests of punk...good.

Ah, a discussion for another day.  Wyatt's book (Different Every Time) is revelatory on this and arguably it was Wyatt's marginalisation and subsequent departure that precipitated the decline after 'Fourth'.  What happened next depends on your taste for jazz fusion but after 'Bundles' (and the reinstatement of a guitar player: Holdsworth then Etheridge) moved them back into prog rock territory, hence the inclusion of 'Softs'.  Afterwards, they famously caught some flak for the disco influenced 'Soft Space', but I like that as much as Can's 'I Want More' and Oldfield's 'Guilty'!

Animals and Going for the One are fantastic and definitely fill the bill.

But if I were to pick one band who rolled up the tent and turned off the light, it would be Jethro Tull with its "folk trilogy", 1977-79.

I really toyed with putting Wind and Wuthering up instead...in retrospect I should have done.  

There is a satisfying symmetry to giving that gong to 'Animals', as it was also marketed and packaged as a response to punk (I won't say it was written as one, since the songs were essentially 18-24 months old by the time it was recorded).

But I'm not voting for it, if only because I haven't had long to think about it. Nor have I read all the responses. First thing that came to mind was that Van Der Graaf didn't give up a lot to punk, other than tapping into its rawness to deliver some of the most crushing live performances of the era.