Most Overrated Band of the 'Big Six'

Preach it, Jean - so long as we've got our personal favourites the whole idea of a single, canonical "Big 6" is nowt more than a popularity contest.

It looks like everyone has their own assessment of what "overrated" means, so for my vote I interpreted as "the group which least merits its place in the Big 6". That doesn't mean the most overrated band is bad or worthless necessarily, just that they're taking up a spot in the Big 6 and enjoyed more commercial success which other groups surely deserve more.

I eventually decided to assess it on the basis of how much top-notch material each band had put out - all of them have produced stuff I like, all of them have had fallow patches where I wasn't so keen on their output, so really what I feel counts is how much material each of them released which truly qualifies as a "keeper". I only counted studio albums (except when considering live albums with a substantial amount of material that didn't get a studio release), on the basis that any band could conceivably crank out a lot of high-quality live albums if they just recorded the same limited set list over and over, whereas the demands of studio albums mean that groups need to keep adding new material to their repertoire, so once the studio albums start to get tepid that's a good sign that a band's creative well has run dry.

So, taking them in reverse order of votes received:

YES: Didn't like their first couple albums, but the run of 6 albums from The Yes Album to Going For the One is absolutely superb, and I'm one of those guys who thinks Drama deserves more love too. So 7 really solid studio albums, a high benchmark indeed.

KING CRIMSON: Had one of the patchier careers out there, with a lot of flailing around looking for creative directions at times, but when they're hot, they're HOT. Debut album is a legitimate classic, the mid-70s Fripp/Bruford/Wetton/(Cross)/(Muir) run turned out a great trilogy of albums, and the 80s triptych is great too. 7 great albums puts King Crimson on a par with Yes.

JETHRO TULL: Started out a bit reliant on the "woah, he's playing a flute" gimmick and, like Crimson, a bit variable when it came to quality control, but when they're good, they're good. Aqualung and Thick as a Brick are classics for a reason, Minstrel In the Gallery deserves more love, and Songs From the Wood/Heavy Horses are decent too. I also quite appreciate the bits of Passion Play which aren't The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles, though that dang Hare kind of ruins it for me and I dislike editions of the album which don't let me skip him. Say 5 and a half top-rank albums.

PINK FLOYD: Debut was excellent, flailed around a bit in the wake of Syd but some good bits here and there, about half of Meddle is really good, then you have the run from Dark Side of the Moon to Animals. Say 4.75 great albums' worth.

GENESIS: Here's the only bit where I really disagree with the general balance of the voting - the run from Trespass to Wind and Wuthering is truly magical, and the Duke Suite on Duke is pretty decent too. Say 7 and a half great albums - no surprise that they're my favourite of the Big 6.

So it'll come as no surprise that I voted for:

ELP: First album was great, side 1 of Tarkus was great, it kind of fell off a cliff after that. Can't stand the novelty tracks, and I find Emerson's particular schtick wears really thin after a while. One and a half decent albums.

Also, you could probably make a case that ELP's adaptations of classical music were, whilst technically proficient, not so much an innovation of ELP themselves so much as a continuation of Keith Emerson's work in The Nice. I can see why people may want to honour Emerson for his whole "rockin' the classics" schtick, but surely just as much credit needs to be given to The Nice as ELP - if not more so, since when he did it with ELP his previous work had already admirably proved that there was a market for that stuff, whereas when he did it with The Nice it was much more of a creative and commercial risk. So I'd actually say that ELP are given a bit too much critical credit and too much importance in prog history compared to The Nice, in addition to being more popular than their recorded output really merited.

As for bands which I think deserved Big 6 status more than ELP, there's loads I can think of just from the 1970s with a better track record - Camel, Caravan, pretty much anyone on Jean's list for that matter...

I hate overrating.