Cover by Roger Dean

Lots of synths

Enigmatic lyrics

Huge diversity of tempos & moods

Melodic yet complex

Divides opinions among afficionados & connoisseurs

Tough to argue against that which can not be named, but for me it would be Pawn Hearts.

you do realize that you described, perfectly, that the truly enlightened and wizened consider THE quintessential prog album

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=83286

ELP's Brain Salad Surgery. It may not be best prog album but it's the quintessential prog album in my book.

Going For The One

not my favourite by a long chalk but just has everything

I'm cheating a bit, because it is my favorite album, but apart from that, it has defined for me what a true prog album epitomises, and was also a personal gateway for me into collecting progressive rock and motivated me to take prog seriously.

Breathtaking vocals, a "stick you finger to The Man" lyrical outlook, astonishing symphonic technique, and raw, gutsy, "real" emotion in every breath of things.

Close To The Edge meets all of these criteria for me.  Few bands have mastered that formula, particularly the vocal harmonization.  

I agree with the above entirely; certainly Yes and most likely 'Close to the edge' is the most quintessential 'Prig' lp. 

Yep. Can't wait for the rest of the world to catch up to the brilliance of that album. 3.90 average rating. (spit icon)

 Well, SOME Yes! 

Tony Kaye didn't use Mellotron, it was Rick who brought that sound to the band.  Moraz didn't seem to use Mellotron as much as Wakeman, inventing his own version (using laser discs instead of magnetic tapes). It was called the "Orchestron."  

Real Mellotron is a groaning, unpredictable mess that lends a great deal of drama to prog music.  Since the tapes were recordings of humans playing notes on real instruments, one can hear bow inflections, breath and other subtle sounds that give the 'tron a very organic, human sound vs. the synths used by guys like Geoff Downes (ugh!).  

Also, Bruf brought a real jazz-swing to the drumming of CTTE, it remains one of his best works.  The entire band was "on" for that recording, and Eddie Offord did a fine job of bringing it all together. 

Man, some typos are just.. well weird, ironic, a bit spooky... you see my inner self just didn't really believe what I was trying to say.. and as is often said, the truth will out!

Mortte wrote: Wigwam Fairyport for me. Not just prog, it includes everything I need from the music!

 

I LOVE Fairyport!!!! But they are asking for the quintessential 'Prog' (got it right this time!) lp not 'Progressive' lp (ok ok lets not start up that old chestnut again I hear you cry!)

SEBTP, TLLDOB and TAAB wold also be good selections. 

I had to look up the meaning of "prig," it is a rather hilarious mistake!  Well done!!

Sorry I hope you didn't think I was being patronising, I certainly wasn't meaning to be.. I meant to put a winky face after but am not allowed it seems! Your reply is spot on and exactly what I meant (in a light hearted way). As Nogbad said 'its not in his top 30 but still has the all the hallmarks of THE Quintessential 'Prog' lp' and I think that's what the OP was looking for, not our personal favourites.

I disagree with pickles and ice cream!

So a band without keyboards (let's say Guru Guru) can't be progressive.

A band without a drummer (several folks bands!) can not be progressive!

A band without a bass guitar ... can't be progressive! All those folks musicians are playing sheep dip'age!

A band without a singer can not be progressive! That means we have to listen to inane lyrics and stupid ideas, that are not anywhere near literary quality and have no weight or value in them whatsoever. Try Stairway to Nowhere for a bit!

This, should be about the whole thing, the whole piece of music, not that it has to have all 4 or 5 of those things.

I'm really tired of this "racist" comment about "progressive" music, and how it can not be this or that without having the right color (always funny and weird), the long hair (no curls or braids or _____), or some other idiotic comments that have nothing to do with the composition of the work itself.

So, it can't be a "symphony" without 12 violins, 4 bassoons, 3 piccolos, 2 cellos, 2 flutes, 2 of those large drum things that never get played, several chairs of course, a few women in the orchestra ... women in progressive music ... oh, my gawd, those folks at PA will poo their pants! And a conductor at the front, since RW is too busy playing another synth instead! Maybe the ghost of Mr. Lord will come buy to conduct the thing, but he prefers to play!

The whole definition has become such a joke that it has gotten sick, not musically intelligent at all, and on top of it you get a goon saying that some instruments make "progressive music" ... and it's like saying that the folks behind it are just a bunch of mannequins showing off the new fashions.

 

C'mon folks ... get better and smarter than that! You've been at this a long time and still stick to the same silly definition that is not about music at all ... it's about a couple of bands ONLY!

Wooooooooo,  Mr. Mister is lecturing us...again !

C'mon Pedro, put a smile on your face, go out and enjoy life while you can - it's just music

Of course there are still lots of subjective, but is it really possible find the objective quintessential prog album that everybody all over the world can accept? Of course I can admit Yes CttE sounds something most of the people think prog sounding, but is that really the purpose of this thread?

Excellent!  "How do you tune a Mellotron?"  "You can't." 

Yeah, the effects of tape stretching, temperature, voltage oscillations, mechanical variations etc. made for an amazingly difficult instrument on the road for guys like Fripp, Wakeman etc.  Still, I love the sound!  Tony Banks once compared the sound of the 'Tron to that of an old movie soundtrack when it comes out of television speakers, and I really get that analogy.  

SteveG wrote: cstack3 wrote: Real Mellotron is a groaning, unpredictable mess that lends a great deal of drama to prog music.  Since the tapes were recordings of humans playing notes on real instruments, one can hear bow inflections, breath and other subtle sounds that give the 'tron a very organic, human sound vs. the synths used by guys like Geoff Downes (ugh!). Great description of the mellotron sound Charles

It is a wonderful description.

Thank you all!  I love the 'tron, from the moment I first played one (1975) to present (I use the same iPad Mellotron app used by King Crimson). 

Anything that could be done to a Mellotron, Mike Pinder has done.  Spilled drinks into them, had them fall apart onstage etc. 

http://lancasteronline.com/features/entertainment/the-moody-blues-and-the-mellotron/article_e85af842-0736-5c53-96a4-cdb5ee21916a.html" rel="nofollow - https://lancasteronline.com/features/entertainment/the-moody-blues-and-the-mellotron/article_e85af842-0736-5c53-96a4-cdb5ee21916a.html

moshkito wrote: I'm really tired of this "racist" comment about "progressive" music, and how it can not be this or that without having the right color (always funny and weird), the long hair (no curls or braids or _____), or some other idiotic comments that have nothing to do with the composition of the work itself.

Nobody making "racist" comments about "progressive" music - you're just jumping to that conclusion and getting offended by something nobody actually said.

Nobody is saying that you can't be prog without certain aspects, but the plain truth is, if you listen to the albums most commonly associated with prog rock (e.g., the top 50 on PA), you will notice a lot of similarities beyond the compositions itself. Things like Mini-Moogs, Mellotrons, Hammond organs, Rickenbacker basses, extended songs, classical/jazz influences, etc.

You have to realize that prog and "progressive" are not used synonymously. Yes, prog obviously comes from the word "progressive", but there are also stylistic connotations with the genre of prog. And of course, there are always exceptions to the rules; bands without keyboards, bands without long songs, etc, but I don't think anyone's claiming otherwise.

you lost me at pickles and ice cream. I haven't had a wiff of a joint in weeks and damn your posts man are like contact highs. I suddenly got the munchies.
 

seriously Ken.. he makes me look downright normal..  once I retire and start doing drugs again perhaps his post will make more sense.  The funny thing is.. I'd bet my paycheck Pedro ain't even touched a drug in his life

and that is both awe inspiring. and yet truly some scary sh*t man...

 

the mother of all concept album is also the mother of prog rock album.

 

Unless you're Thick As A Brick, this makes total sense

Ohhhhh, I get it ... music is not a part of life for you!

How do you know it's progressive, then?

Micky ... I'm a veteran and I quit a long time ago.

I pretty much started with the Beatles idea and comments that there was much more to the drug than just getting stoned, and never stopped, that thought, which made sense for me, coming from a highly literary family (house with 40K+ books of literature ... wanna go to Lisbon to see it?).

My biggest concern, is trying to put it all into a sort of theory of relativity, where/when, things add up. They usually don't but some of the stuff in rock music is downright poor and just simple bar-room fun crap that is not any more prog or progressive than your co__ or mine!

To me, from day one, there was music that made sense, and its lyrics were valuable and important ... the lyrics for "Paint It Black" and "Between the Buttons" albums, for example, were highly valuable to a 14/15 year old kid ... and then the continuation to Sgt P or Their SM's ... kinda helped take things a bit further. When taking these in context and reading Hesse, Huxley, Kesey, Sartre, Genet and many others in school ... your look at the music and its lyrics tends to pale and many of them are downright stupid, but many won't admit it because they like the song.

The saddest thing here is how everyone is a Warhol fan ... go look at the Campbell's soup can ... and see how "progressive" it is in the art. All it does is confuse your idea of what art is supposed to be ... and too much rock music does the same thing with its publicity and fame status.

All you gotta do is take a look at its history, and I don't mean a look at the top ten listings each and every year!

Yes! or may be Greenslade??

I digress. The ultimate Prog LP has to be ITCOTCK.

I like to consider the quintessential prog album this way:  If a person not familiar with prog asked me for a sample track, what would I play for them? For me it would have to be Relayer. Gates of Delirium, in particular, is one of the proggiest tracks according to my tastes and definitions... Lots of drama and energy. A roller coaster of emotion (angst, fear, elation). Many different movements all seamlessly sculpted into a single piece. Expert muscianship. And the vocals! And while I might also consider KC Red, or some other album, I think Relayer is more accessible to the non-practitioner. And once Jon breaks into "Soon...", many non-prog people would say "Oh, I remember hearing that back in the day". They just never heard the whole masterpiece which it is part of. And I would say "Welcome to prog, my friend".

 

Not sure whether it's one for prog newbies though - it's not exactly a gentle introduction to prog

 

I remember when I first listened to Relayer as a teenager, and it blew my head off!  I was already familiar with prog by that time though.

 

I like your argument, but I would need to see experiments carried out on prog newbies to test the impact of Relayer versus a softer album, like maybe Genesis SEPTP. 

Well the big six are not that for nothing. Everyone else is just as good but getting a newbie into prog rock means something accessible and brilliant. CTTE, Dark Side, would be the two in that order largely because everyone probably knows Dark Side. Just wish CTTE had been a 2 record set. Of course Eddie Offord wouldn't...

Add in Trick, ELP, Songs From The Wood and... um, ITCOTCK or Discipline.

Live albums are fun. Ummagumma, Yessongs, Seconds Out, WBMFTTSTNE, USA and that brilliantly produced Bursting Out. And slipping in Camel double live version of Snow Goose might be a good hidden bonus.

Otherwise you could go - which album is brilliant but bound to put off the newbie...

miamiscot wrote: The ultimate Prog LP has to be ITCOTCK.

It seems quite ironic to me that [one of the] the first prog album[s] would be the ultimate; considering that ultimate often means final, or the point at which no further progress can be made.

Doesn't look very good for the genre if the peak was the [one of the] very first album[s], and then it all went downhill from there!

I think ITCotCK has some wonderful songs, it for sure has historical important, but the quintessential prog album? I could not agree with that. A lot of what I consider the "prog rock sound" was developed and refined after that album by both King Crimson and other bands. I think of it as more of an appetizer rather than the main course.

seems sort of ironic that intelligent music fans are .. not educated
 

Interesting points. You're making me think twice about this. Maybe Close To The Edge is the pinnacle and thus the "quintessential" prog album...

Well, ITCOTCK is not remotely the first Prog album-

This is one sh*t hot lp there is no doubt about it; definitely the first fully formed progressive rock lp long before Mr Fripp and co.. 

Well I was going to be really pedantic and say something like "the album considered by many to be one of the first, if not the first" instead of "the first", but I felt like the intelligent readers here could just read past that and focus on the point I was trying to make. Granted, there is a fine line between what's proto-prog and what's prog; I don't know if I'd really consider something like Stand Up to be a full-fledged prog album in the way ITCotCK is... if JT didn't take things to the next level like Thick As A Brick, I'm sure they would have been lumped in the proto-prog category.

But of course, you have to be super specific and accurate on the internet or people will just try to prove one little detail wrong without trying to read the rest of the post! Or maybe you all agree that prog just went downhill from 1969, in which case I respect your opinion, but I also think you're missing out.

I really don't think Red is that inaccessible; sure they use some odd whole-tone/diminished scales here and there, but anyone who has listened to modern rock/metal wouldn't be too fazed by it. Maybe there's a few unconventional tempo/time changes, but they usually stick with a groove long enough to get used to it. I'd agree that Providence is pretty inaccessible, though. Maybe the middle of Starless would get on someone's nerves if they don't have the patience for long build-ups. Of course this all depends on whether you're playing it to a headbanger or someone who only listens to Top 40 hits.

I think Relayer might be a bit tougher because all of the songs are longer and don't necessarily come back to a catchy chorus, but rather continue into different sections.

Sorry, but I can't help not to think of it as a bad reputation for Progressive Rock.