Your top most pretentious prog bands?

^Today we are in agreement.

Other labels I see applied that is abundantly arrogant is "soulless". Just because I do not hear something does not mean it isn't there. Different sounds and acts speak to different people.

Sean Trane wrote: ELP & Wakeman were in a class of their own

Agree! But they happen to release some good albums though.

It's a tough call there are a number of my faves  Jethro Tull, Yes, & Pink Floyd. Would you also include Marillion i guess so and yet another one i am trying to get my head around and to think it must be one of the longest tracks i have ever heard, overblown, contentious over the top, Transatlantic Whirlwind just on 80 minutes long.
I'll be honest with you still trying to come to grips with the song. In regards to Jethro Tull they are one of my faves i have a number of their albums and a glutton for punishment, their recent remastering/remixing 4 disc box sets Passion Play, War Child, Minstrel In The Gallery, Too Old To Rock and Roll and the 2 disc 5.1 surround sound set of Thick As A Brick. On the way too most likely in the same format will be Songs From The Wood. For better of for worse, a similar path to some of Yes's classics. The anniversary edition of The Yes Album in which you get 7 different versions of the one album! Fragile, Relayer, Close To The Edge, The Yes album & the recent Tales From Topographic Oceans, if i could use a Yes pun, talk about overblown, over the top too much to handle what were they thinking at the time? Who knows but the biggest surprise although there are only 4 tracks on the album totalling just on 80 minutes, the bluray edition although they are the same, with an odd live edit and singles talk about too much 4 songs a total 0f 12 and a half hours on bluray! In other words
36 tracks! It takes a lot of time to get through, Alan Parsons hmmm

Evidently there are very different understandings of what constitutes pretentiousness being employed by different posters. My own personal one is that pretentiousness is about pretence - specifically, pretending to operate on some kind of artistic or intellectual level that is not actually earned or achieved. e.g. Jon Anderson's Yes lyrics were frequently pretentious as they aspired to the status of poetry / philosophy without having any actual substance. Peter Hamill's lyrics with VdGG weren't pretentious because, although they had obvious literary and intellectual aspirations, Hamill had the substance to back it up - an actual poet not a pretend one.

Hate the word "pretentious" in this thread because it seemed to be the main operative word that hack Robert Hilburn (former L.A. Times music critic) used from time to time to describe acts such as Yes and ELP back in the '70s and '80s. I mean, find some other word in a thesaurus already, pal. The guy was a real hose bag, and reading his reviews proved that continually.

Does Trans-Siberian Orchestra count as a prog rock/metal band?

SteveG wrote: All of them.

CPicard wrote: Pretentious? As in, let's say: "Dude, we're going to make the most amazing music ever and none shall try to do music after us"? Or as in: "No, seriously, we're an important band in the history of music, our music should be taken seriously, stop making fun of us" ? In the first case: 1) Yes was pretentious in 1974, at the time of Tales From Topographic Oceans (they get better after the tour) 2) ELP when releasing Works or even their triple-LP live album 3) Magma's first album which was a double LP (bold and audacious or simply goddamn megalomaniac?!) 4) Robert Fripp / King Crimson, who takes himself a bit too seriously for a while now (not that I won't listen to King Crimson's new material, if there's any plan to release it) 5) Rick Wakeman, which Hollywood-friendly take on Romanticism had always been a bit too much for my palate (on the other hand, he's a keyboard player...) 6) Triumvirat - see above. 7) Even Pink Floyd had their moments of pretentiousness (hey, let's face it, they did have, didn't they?) I'm trying to add 3 other acts to make a Top Ten (looking towards some Prog-Metal bands...), but that will be for later.

the gigantic Pink Floyd live shows with flying pigs and whatnots definitely justify the attribute "pretentious"

Top band - YesMost pretentious top band - ELP

1) ELP
2) Pink Floyd
3) Eloy
4) Barclay James Harmless
5) The Nice
6) Yes
7) Genesis
8) Tangerine Dream
9) Hawkwind
10) Triumvirat