A look at the best prog albums through the years

A very routine album has Rush going by the numbers with poor production values and badly mixed sounds. The guitars are repetitive and commercial sounding. The drums sound like Peart is banging the pots and pans in his kitchen. Lee sounds bored and his bass is nothing special here. Apart from one or two shining lights "Roll the Bones" fades into obscurity and is perhaps as bad as "Presto", though this is perhaps their worst album. Unlike the disappointing "Presto", "Roll the Bones" does have a few excellent tracks.

Dreamline is a great rocker with some innovative guitar work and is well structured. Bravado sounds good overall, and has a nice litle riff driving it. Roll The Bones is perhaps the best song on the album with a cool memorable lyric; "why are we here, because we're here, roll the bones..." or better still, "why does it happen, because it happens, roll the bones..." It has a groovy hook and sounds great live. The film clip promo was rather fun and it showed that the band could still enjoy their music, even if they shed their prog traits during this era. Where's My Thing (Part IV of the "Gangster Of Boats Trilogy") is the first instrumental for years from the power trio, and it genuinely stands out as a highlight with the band letting loose and doing what they do best, rocking the roof off. After this we are inundated with mediocrity fillers such as the dismal The Big Wheel, Heresy and Ghost Of A Chance. Neurotica is better with a moderate tempo and some melodic hooks, and the album ends on the rather traditional You Bet Your Life, that is forgettable but sounds good while it plays.

The problem with the album is the lack of passion, the band sound tired and the songs for the most part are ruined by poor production, as though they were not using a sound engineer at all. It is so badly mixed that it would do well to re release this album as a remaster with remixes of the original masters. It certainly would not hurt because honestly this album is a slog to get through with only the aforementioned tracks to recommend it to anyone but the diehard Rush collector.

"Ok Computer" caught my attention as one of the top ten albums on a best album's TV show, and I had not known really what to expect. I always viewed Radiohead as depressing laid back stoner alt rock. They were never truly progressive in style but there is enough on here to satiate any listener into experimental and alternative rock. The vocal style never settled well with me, but I was very surprised with this album. It is full of innovation and ambition. A sprawling project from beginning to end, every song screams of techno paranoia suburbia and drug fuelled insecurity.

Of course this album boasts two of the quintessential singles, namely the powerful 'Paranoid Android', a title derived from Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"'s metal depressed ton of bolts, a classic character that is unforgettable. The song here is equally unforgettable with a terrific ending with the very familiar "Rain down, rain down, Come on rain down on me, From a great height". Yorke sings about being haunted by the "unborn chicken noises" in his head and then explains cryptically "When I am king, you will be first against the wall, With your opinion which is of no consequence at all." Interestingly the line "first against the wall" refers to the line in Adams' novel that states the androids were a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came, rather than their ad campaign 'your plastic pal who is fun to be with'. It is interesting too that this song sounds upbeat, though lyrically is despairing.

The other treasure on this is of course 'Karma Police' and when Thom Yorke bemoans, "this is what you get when you mess with us", we believe him. He always sound appropriately downbeat on this album as always, and injects a real sense of hopelessness that resonates with many listeners no doubt. The imagery is downright hypnotically conveyed with Yorke's slow measured delivery, "he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge", and "her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill". Eventually Yorke cries out "I lost myself" and there is a real atmosphere of isolation and alienation in a faceless violent society of control. The song has a lot to say about the fear of police control, and the rise of power in techno society.

The opening songs drip down the speakers like honey, very slow and crawling patiently and inexorably to the images of airbag's, homesick aliens, and exit music. The creepy feeling of what it is like to be trapped is conveyed in 'Let Down', with tantalising visions of utter frailty; "crushed like a bug in the ground, shell smashed, juices flowing, wings twitch legs are going". The song evokes the emptiness inside the protagonist and his coke fuelled excesses, bleak to be sure but so powerfully executed.

The lyrics are pervasive and unsettling throughout the album. The space rock of 'Subterranean Homesick Alien', a title mimicking Dylan's blues classic, screams out anxiety nausea, "Of all these weird creatures, Who lock up their spirits, Drill holes in themselves, And live for their secrets." The song is about the desire to escape the world and all it's hardships, to figuratively allow an alien to abduct him in to the ship to be taken away forever. Those great lyrics are an incredible stab at fractured society and the lack of belonging "I wish that they'd swoop down in a country lane, Late at night when I'm driving, Take me on board their beautiful ship, Show me the world as I'd love to see it." There is even a ray of hope in these lyrics, that there is a way out of the turmoil, even if it means alien abduction. This hard line of cynicism threads throughout the whole album.

Yorke attacks everything from bogus business deals, 'Electioneering', to the cupboard monster 'Climbing Up The Walls'. The monster within the cupboard is of course the childhood nightmare, that impacts adult life in the form of paranoia and fractured personalities. The verses are desperate and a cry from the very heart of a damaged life, "I am the key to the lock in your house, That keeps your toys in the basement. And if you get too far inside, You'll only see my reflection."

The music is dynamic and sprinkled with ambience and hard blasts of heavy atmospheres. Glockenspiel blocks on blocks are heard on 'No Surprises', Pink Floyd's spacy nuances are featured on the final two tracks, and throughout, an almost subliminal droning guitar sound that is at times unearthly and sonically ethereal is heard. White noise competes with beauty and delicate embellishments of keyboard. The music is never allowed to drown out the vocals which are perhaps the best that Yorke has performed.

The booklet is a real master touch, totally cryptic and compelling; it seems to convey the dark shadows of madness and the blurry undefined decay of social corruption, and is totally open to interpretation. The album rightfully is heralded as the pinnacle of Radiohead, it will be found at the top of all time album lists, and will forever be etched into 1997 as one of the albums of the year.

"In the Court of the Crimson King" was the first album by the group "King Crimson". When it first appeared it was quite a shock to many listeners, similar to The Beatles White Album, which defied description and challenged your perception of music and where you stood, or thought you understood these things. Somehow, at the time, not many people thought as much about "pop music", or gave it some credit for literacy, which is usually not associated with popular top ten songs in Billboard or Top of the Pops.

As the years have passed, and it is now 2010, this album gets a lot more reviews and comments than The Beatles' White Album and I think this is well deserved. That is not to say that The Beatles had lost their touch, they had not, and their last album was the next one voted in this particular list of albums. Abbey Road, however, was not the "anti- topofthepops" that "The White Album" had been and indeed, it appears that the fracture in the band had already caused issues and prevented the music from being better, or at least from just being a bunch of songs, and every member on their own trip, which is very clear in both of those albums, and the album "Let It Be".

Like many of the more outlandish rock bands in those days, this King Crimson album featured a lot of things ... and the small list added above is a very good example of some of the things found in the album ... however, one should appreciate the fact that many of these had been happening for some time in many other artist's repertoire ... with one exception ... you did not see them all in the same album!

So, in this album you will find a lot of weird things, jagged guitar licks, weird drum time signatures, massive keyboard sounds, and specially with a mellotron. As for influences, this would be a bit harder to define ... one could say that this piece appears to be towards jazz, this one towards rock, but how do you define this other piece and that other piece?

But there are some things that tell you that this whole album is done by people that have a conscience and an attitude. It may not be quite as visible or as important today (2010) since we have nothing to fight for anymore, but let's start with the very first piece on the album.

21st Century Schizoid Man

It doesn't take any smarts to realize the socio-political commentary of this whole thing. From VietNam (Napalm fire reference) to Oil to politician's funeral pyre (IRA conflict) ... and the guitar attack right out front.

I've always thought that the guitar licks were almost the same thing as the images that you saw on the TV, and the brutal violence of it all, and the point, TO ME, was ... what are you going to do about it? It was not about it being "progressive" or anything else. It was about your own conscience and your ability and desire to take action and help change the insanity in this world ... the 21st Century Schizoid Man was the maniac that you saw with guns in their hand ... because he wanted the oil and the money it could bring ... ohh, by the way, have things changed much? ... and you can see the importance of something like this is likely to last out a lot more than ... a lot of other music out there.

Greg Lake's voice, is as important here as the album itself ... why? There is a screaming/shouting/and cynical/satirical edge that helps make the point, where a regular singer would not sound as important or create such a strong impact. It's hard to think of this song as just guitar, saxophone and breaks and time changes ... without the lyrics spoken in the right spot, the ability to accentuate a meaning dries up ... and that is not something that happens in this whole album. More on this later.

I Talk to the Wind

... I'm on the outside looking inside

It's actually a very sad song, because it KNOWS that it has a voice and an opinion and wants to help create change ... but no one listens or cares? ... actually one could say that the wind is at fault since it carries your words and does not bring the meaning in to you ... or you would hear it! And, know it! I'm particular to that thought and feeling ... because too much that is said is often ignored and not appreciated or (as is the case here in the board) understood, and quite often you get a group of people that are ... quite simply ... not interested at all.

Epitath

The wall on which the prophets wrote

... Confusion will be my epitaph.

There is no such emotion, and amazing imagery, in most lyrics and music anywhere.

Most of the rock lyrics hope to tell you a story with insipid lyrics and ideas that are trying to make any band come off as relevant, and in the end, it is vacuous and not important ... it's just trying to make sense and sound important ... but it rarely can reach the heights and level that these lyrics and poetry can.

The larger special point to be made here is how it is sung. Greg Lake is NOT an average singer, and in fact, I like to joke that he can't sing at all. But when it comes to "acting" and "accentuating" words and moments, there are not many in the music business that are any better than what his work examples have done. In a business where we worry about tenor, baritone and rock singer and whatever else description we can give it, in the end, we can see why so many people that love rock music do not enjoy a lot of classical materials, like Opera ... can you imagine a Greg Lake singing in Turandot? ... oh my gawd ... she would die after the first set of words. Can you imagine Greg Lake as Siegfried challenging the Gods? ... yeah ... it's very different from a song about some bitch or some girl that left you behind!

With one of the prettiest sounding mixes of keyboards, mellotron this song stands out as an anthem for the ages, and the kind that will be remembered for a long time to come. It is the ultimate conscientious objector Anthem, and stands out like Jimi's American Anthem at Woodstock or Toni McPhee's endearing version of Amazing Grace prior to that. If there is a God, or a theme, or a heart ... you won't find many out there that even come close.

Lyrics, regardless of where they come from can make or break something. Poems can kill, or lead people to war. But pure heart and soul, is hard to ignore. And it has been with us for hundreds of years in many forms and idioms, and this is one of the finest examples of what poetry and music can do ... it's not just the lyrics ... it's everything else wrapped up in one.

Moonchild

Like the soft piece before it (I Talk To The Wind), this one comes and goes, and you don't know what to make of it. Sometimes, when I hear this, I think of the "hippie" thing and ideal that led to many communes and pictures of women dressed up as angels and other rather insulting images for the male ego. But the image sticks. The song lingers. The loveliness of the woman lingers. Your experience lingers. But sadly what could be considered one of the inspirations for those days got lost in the abuse of drugs, sex, and many other indulgences. We lost sight of the vision and everything that it meant ...

Not all improvisations are just meanderings into nothing and back. Theater and film actoing schools (the advanced ones not the rest) use a lot more exercises that help you develop that "inner" character in order for the performance to get stronger. All the major groups across the world live by similar processes and that is the main reason why they are so well known. There is no reason to believe that musicians are not intelligent enough to not want to experiment and learn something else about what they do ... with the exception of the rock music ego, that thinks that the world can not experiment or try different things that are not "music". Actually the same thing happens in academic circles.

The results in these things vary. In general, for most acting exercises, it is the directors' calls and changes and little things thrown here and there that cause the process to change and each character (in this case instrument) have to update itself and adjust to the feeling at hand, and this is something that most "prog" drummers can not do when all they are concerned with is "time" ... and in the picture that you are "coloring" the time changes ... and you are not changing it? ... or adjusting?

The Court of the Crimson King

It's hard not to appreciate the cynic here and the view from the "Fool's" eyes. In essence the whole thing is like saying that in the end we're nothing but puppets on a string in a much bigger court ... it's a wonderful analogy for the state of affairs politically and philosophically and what the 20th century had become ... ideas don't matter any more and no one cares any more and business interests run a muck and do what they want and convince you along the way they are funny and witty ... and you cry and scream fighting for these ideals and die for them sometimes.

Someone had a thread on one board on how evil this was. It is not evil. It is just like any other story about the King and the Fool and everything else around them ... and how one manipulates the others, and in the end, all that is left is a song, a few words, a poem ... and even them it doesn't mean much ... specially when today, we're talking 2010, this album is discussed as a major work in "progressive rock" and the rest of the artistic concept and design is totally left behind.

This is much more than a "progressive rock" album and that concept is nothing compared to the importance of the album itself, not only to the time and day when it came out, but today, in September 2010 and any time after today ... it's still important. And it stands up because both the mucis and the lyrics are so direct and such a strong screen shot of a day and age and time that we want to remember the music, but not what it created, including the hurt, the anger, the wars, the bombings, nameless acts ... that were all shown on your television in that day and age.

Few albums have that much importance! And this album deserves the credit for one of the most intelligent and defining moment of my generation, people that I am proud to stand up for because they meant a lot more than some other ideas and concepts that were simply defined by advertising and social belief!

But you must choose ... if you like to have your strings pulled, or if you want to be the player. I side with the artist and the player.

... The yellow jester does not play

Lastly, is the discussion into what became known as "progressive music" many years later.

I, personally, do not think that when you have your center in the right place and you know what you believe in and what you want to try and what you want to accomplish with your art ... that a whole new world reaches out to you. That world is one that is unknown to many folks and even scary for 95% of all the musicians out there. Why? ... how do you keep track of everything and stay together ... the answer my friend, lies in the wind ... and not the drum beat ... and what that tells you is that the musician and person that is asking the question is not listening to that wind! ... and that is what "I talk in the Wind" and "Moonchild" are so important to this album ... trying to help you see ... but sadly all we can think of is some kind of improvisational this or that which makes it some kind of fusion that we can't define, and it takes away from the music itself, the moment and ... most importantly its very soul.

Music, is about "expression" ... and very few musicians are talented enough to know the difference between notes and scales and art. One you can listen and call "progressive" or "prog". The other you live and die with and love every minute of it.

The opening song itself is about "megalomania" if you will with a political edge ... but in other ways it was also an attack on a lot of music at the time that was noisy, loud and did not have a whole lot of strength behind it. To me, that is also an important edge in this album ... that "noise" and "loud" can also be good and important, not just a Rolling Stones concert, which was usually too loud ... and often out of tune too! And it's hard to separate that megalomania and "star" think in the history of rock music ... even if the progressive contingent wants to separate itself from the over blown "stars" of rock music ... and in the end create another group of stars .... progressive is a lot less about the individual than it is about the music, and this is one thing that we tend to forget, and must understand first of all.

It is important for us to realize that a lot of "progressive" music came out of a lot of experimentation and improvisation and that a lot of the music was cleaned up and then lyrics added. It might be said that sometimes the lyrics were there and then the music was added and that is definitly a possibility when you are looking at lyrics in this album by Pete Sinfield. Although not a major poet at the time, what he did write was solid enough to give him some credit for his work, and all it took was one group of musicians that had enough respect for some wonderful words ... to be able to find some music that fit the whole thing beautifully ... and you can't say that about The Beatles or anyone else! At least you will have a hard time listing these in one finger.

This album is not, for me, the best of them all, in terms of the top of the progressive list, but it certainly is one of the top ten albums and a definite must listen. However, this is not a good listen, in general, for today's (2010) audience of metal and prog and some other genre's that are quite meaningless when placed next to something like this. You either appreciate a time and a place and its music ... or you simply are not someone that enjoys music ... for music, in the end, is not about jagged pills or mellotrons or synthesizers ... it's about the very heart that created what it did ... and this album is by far one of the very best ever in that area. Few albums can stand up to that kind of strength, unity, design and above all .. BEAUTY!