Genesis of Classic Prog : When did it all begin ?

 

Well, let me tell you this ... I was not a prog fan and have never been, because the word means nothing about music!

 

But in 69 I already had Pink Floyd and Soft Machine and Frank Zappa and had already phazed out of the popular music stuff for the most part. But I was also way more aware of other musics out there from Heinemann, Stockhausen, Terry Riley, Carl Orff, Benjamin Britten, Varese and many others ... so when you hear some Zappa having fun and the mix includes 2 sections of Verese, 1 section of rock music, 1 section of who cares, and 1 section of jazz and 1 section of kitchen sink ... you go immediately ... ohh my gawd ... this guy knows music and knows it well! ... sadly, what has become a definition for prog, is not about people experimenting with music ... but some London based fantasy about some dollies and drugs? Or some pseudo Grimm Brothers like story? Or some pseudo variation on a title to make it sound more interesting and people feeling like the cover was magical and mystical and the music was the same? Ohhh , the better one ... costumes! Like they have never been used on a stage!

 

Music was the important part, not the media events!  ... yes, sometimes we have to stand up naked and do something stupid to get attention and get folks to find something in the art itself ... and while it might not be fun to do that all the time, more often than not it does get the attention. Doesn't make it prog, but it gets attention!

 

 

 

I guess that in 2015 this post will still be receiving comments.

 

About Procol Harum, symphonic ir not, they conquered me to prog with "A salty dog".

 

You hit right on the nail head. Almost everything back then that wasn't top 40 was called progressive rock.  I never heard the term prog until this decade.  The development of what we now call prog (which is what we meant by the British groups) evolved over several years.  There are many albums that contained elements of prog many listed in this thread.  So what was first or when did it happen are kind of relevant because there were elements in some of the music we wouldn't place here that eventually went into prog. 1969, 1966 what does it matter.?

 

There were some groups that have some ingredients of what would be latter called prog, one these ingredients is symphonism- wich groups like Procol mixed with rock...but it was 100 % prog. Omonimous album the one i was refering is symphonic pop-rock, no progrock.

"Shine on brightly" is a concept album, the music have contaminations but miss some ingredients like jazz, and hiper fantastic rock riffs, things like that.

I still bet for ITCOCK