Hrychu wrote: Some albums are considered super mega ultra masterpieces even though they don't really have any good musical content

Then maybe you should rename the thread to "Albums that are considered masterpieces, but you don't like" or something like that. The current name now leads to confusion.

My thoughts exactly.  Thanks for pointing this out. 

More like "ears.cannot.stand", or any SW for that matter, no matter how many listens.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom, and mainly due to Logan's recommendation, I've really tried to like Rock Bottom after listening to the album several times, but it still remains near the bottom of my rockpile,  and on the subject of The Flower Kings, I half-heartedly agree with you. In other words, I like all of The Flower Kings albums but can't for the life of me remember any of their songs - apart from The Flower King, obviously. 

Your topic is not rightly named (as someone suggested), but also, you speak of "songs", about albums that really don't contain any:

"Songs" imply that there are sung vocals - which disqualifies instrumental music pieces (which can be called "tracks", "numbers" or "pieces"). 

Hi,

Hmmmm ... what if the album is NOT about songs? I have never, once in 50 years, thought of TD or Klaus Schulze as "songs".

Sad to see a thread like this ... I'm not sure that the responses will make much sense. 

In many ways, the "song" thing is what is going to hurt "progressive music" and "progressive rock", or "prog rock". It makes it look like all music that is made and created has to conform to the conventional/commercial standard of "song" and "format".

I hope that never happens, and would love to see PA do a bit more on that concept. What started the thing that helped create PA was the progressive elements, not the regressive, and form/style ideas.

Oh yeah, Beethoven's 5th has no good songs at all! Neither does Mahler's 3rd!

I think it was pretty clear that the thread's author meant tracks, compositions or whatever-word-makes you-happy when he wrote "songs". He even wrote "any musical content". So I don't understand the need to be pedantic, when it is pretty clear what he meant..

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Fripp & Eno - No Pussyfooting

Mike Oldfield - Incantations (and maybe his other 70s works)

Don't agree, but "ears.cannot.stand" made me laugh...thanks...

Thanks 🛐

Well, I have a long list:

- Soft Machine - Third

- Spock's Beard - V

Same as with Soft Machine. Their highest-ranked album here is V, but I never liked it much. It's extremely pleasant, and I don't like that at all.

- Laurent Thibaut (the only album he released, I don't remember the name).

It's a highly ranked album but I find it super boring. At least it's short.

Grumpyprogfan wrote: Also, any Flower Kings album.

I feel exactly the same... I have quite controversial opinions about TFK. I think it's absolutely EVERYTHING that's wrong with prog. It's a band without originality. Why would I listen to a two and a half hour album? Truly, I find them unbearable. That they have a couple of good songs is different. Circus Brimstone is one of them.

((Note)) 

Don't get confused. What bothers me a lot is the band. I have absolutely nothing against Roine Stolt, I think he's a great guy and an excellent musician (I love his work as a guitarist in Transatlantic).

I'm tired of hearing this argument. First, this band has a LOT of originality (by this, I mean their sound is unique and they bring fresh ideas to their music). Second, their compositions are top-notch, some of the best in the genre. Third, they are excellent musicians. The only downside is their latest albums (since 2019), which haven't lived up to their earlier work.

Well, as you guessed, I'm a big TFK fan... 

Yes, they're really good musicians. I love Thomas Bodin, he's a sensational keyboardist.

Anyway I got very bored with TFK until they came back with Banks Of Eden. Roine had suddenly discovered the 'edit button' bless him. 

I bought The Flower Kings Stardust We Are in 2005 or 2004 based on recommendations, and found it very tedious. Considering that that was considered  a great album with no songs that I found that good, thjat could be my choice for this topic.  I could also add Spocks Beard's Snow and early Transatlantic as I also bought albums by those at that time based on recommendations that did not appeal to me at all.  I was pretty careless with purchases then.

 

This is not on-topic in that it is not what the OP intended, but The Shaggs' Philosophy of the World could be considered a great album with no good songs.  It is considered to be a great album of the so-good it's bad variety (and it is said that Zappa called The Shaggs better than the Beatles) and they are all bad songs in terms of competence.  But I love every song and love the album unironically.  They were young and very new to playing, but had a big impact with this greatly bad and badly great album.  There's  a certain naive earnestness to it that makes it charming, and it does sound rather avant-garde in its primitivist incompetent way.  The lyrics are a treasure.  It's the album I consider greatest with the worst songs that comes to my mind.

It has movements, not songs.  

p.s. I'm a real prog connie sewer. 

Hi,

I would think that folks that are not used to the free form styles of 50 years ago, TODAY, would not exactly enjoy a whole lot of the things that helped define, and make "progressive" so important at the time.

One  must also remember that the "controls" of synthesizers were very bad, and difficult ... if you ever read Edgar Froese's book on TD, you will find how they struggled to create an echo chamber ... until such a time when a synth could do it, which was still a few years to go. Also, how Christopher Franke at times had a really hard time getting to a certain point, to get his MANUAL abilities to make things come out like a sequencer, properly, and if the bootlegs are any truth, how they succeeded, even without the various modern things. But the different temperatures and locations always made his ability a serious challenge. It's a shame that he does not get any recognition for the work he did ... he deserves a lot of credit for it all.

I like to suggest to "suspend" the ideas that we have about music, when looking at things that are 50 years old ... it is a different time and place, and therefore the music would be vastly different to what we hear today.

I don't know if Tales is the most controversial prog album of all time but it must be in the top five.

richardh wrote: Most psyche prog that is highly rated probably. Some bands need great songs some don't. For instance The Moody Blues are all about the songs, then something like Tales From Topographic Oceans or Amarok is anything but. No need to have rules about this. Camel's The Snow Goose and Rick Wakeman's Six Wives Of Henry VIII have no songs but they sort of actually do compared to say Tangerine Dream's seventies albums up to and inc Ricochet. Yes I'm waffling bit basically asking just what is a 'song' anyway?

I was being a bit rhetorical but then what about Mike Oldfield's Ommadawn and Incantations albums? There are vocal elements in both but mostly they are intrumental based music. Tales From Topographic Oceans subverts the song structure to such am extent that calling this stuff 4 songs doesn't do it justice. It then falls between the cracks. I've no doubt that Yes wanted it this way!

At some point I've tried pretty much all of the albums in PA's top say... 150. And I have yet to enjoy ONE Neo Prog song. So there's all of those...

Also for me personally:

Dream Theater - Images and Words. Knowing this is supposed to be their masterpiece and a highly influential album for the whole Progressive Metal genre, it is strange to me that I only find it patience tasting and completely forgettable. But maybe it's not so strange. Every time I'm actually enjoying some Prog-Metal, PA has placed the band in the Tech/Extreme section (or perhaps that third metal sub-genre here. I don't know).

Return to Forever - Romantic Warrior. If I'm an "expert" in any kind of musical field, it's got to be Jazz including Jazz Fusion. But Prog entusiasts' favorite fusion albums - are rarely/never my favorite ones*. Sterile, ugly sounding, show-offy and unmemorable. Blah! Everything about it rubs me the wrong way here.

*None of these works for me: Spectrum, Elegant Gipsy, Birds of Fire/Inner Mounting Flame, Unorthodox Behaviour, One of a Kind, that Modry Effect or whatever they are named, band...

Hi,

It's hard to fault them for the notes you make. This was one of the very first "supergroups" and ... c'mon ... they played like it, but at the very least they gave us ... live ... an incredible performance that you would not buy a ticket for individually. I saw them in Eugene, some 5 or 6 maybe 7 years ago, and they made ZpZaapa look like a garage band, complete with that turkey ignoring a violin player that was in several Zappa albums in favor of a keyboard player ... for King Kong, on a toy piano! In the end, RTF made ZpZ look very bad and stupid by comparison.

For me, it was the one chance I got to see these folks ... and they were very good.

As for calling it "fusion" or anything else, I really don't care. What they did was phenomenal on stage, and they were tight and clean. I would even say that those folks that did not bother with these shows, was simply not enjoying an evening of great music, specially when they had that violin with them! Well, there were moments that it seemed like he was not interested, specially when he was not playing! That was a bit sad ... and I think he should have joined his mates with a least a nice humming along or tapping his foot! But I guess classical folks don't tap their feet EVER.

moshkito wrote: As for calling it "fusion" or anything else, I really don't care.

Depends what you mean by "care". I don't care about genres as such, and there's NO music I'm not willing to give a listen or a chance. But I care about making myself understood. Sometimes I use "Fusion", "Prog", "Folk" or... "Rococo". In the right context with the right people, it provides an association or whatever so taht "everyone" can have an idea what I'm talking about. But it's not like I care about these labels in the way that I care about the music and the arts.

Grumpyprogfan wrote: An album that I find ugly sounding and sterile is "Bitches Brew". A complete mess for me. Yet praised as a masterpiece.

I'm not surprised even the slightest (except for maybe that you find BB both a complete mess and sterile) - different strokes for different folks and all that jazz etc...

Also

Grumpyprogfan wrote: As for the Bruford; Dave Stewart shines and makes it a brilliant album for me. "Hell's Bells" cowritten by Alan Gowen is a very catchy memorable song.

I didn't mean that those other albums fails to resonate with me in the exact same way as Romantic Warrior. And for me, sometimes (or perhaps often) catchy doesn't equal memorable. Hell's Bells has hooks and all and it's sort of memorable as it does stick with me after the song is over. But even songs I find annoying can do that to me. I suppose if I heard it played someplace outside my house I might even had enjoyed it. But it's very far from my preferred "soundspace" - and I very rarely appreciate Holdsworth's approach to I don't know jazzrock? - or just playing a guitar.   

Miles Davis' Bitches Brew was the first of his electric Miles period albums that I heard (many years ago) and it did not appeal much.  It was with In a Silent Way, then Big Fun and Get Up With It that I fell hard for Davis.  Now I really like Bitches Brew, but my tastes matured over the years, interests shifted, and I needed to be exposed to the right gateway music to appreciate it.  Hearing Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi trilogy is something that was mind-altering and changed my course and opened up the doors to lost more jazz fusion for me.  There's lot of music where I feel like the attitude that comes through is alien to me and/or the expression feels cringe-y to me.  I'd be really interested in considering more on the psychology of music (and other arts) appreciation. Sounds kind of stupid perhaps, but that is something I had hoped to glean more insight into through observing myself and others at PA, and how we interact, but I need to find a clear methodology (and I'm not a psychologist).

I don't disagree it's a spectacular line up*

-but as I haven't enjoyed (at all) what I've heard, I'm indifferent to Tommy Bolin - and great as Leland Sklar undoublty is, I have other favorite bassists. They are both skilled of course. So many musicians are. I prefer loads of other highly skilled guys over both of them.

*I know you added a "one off", but that's really quite common as well.

-Looking over my favorites, there's really no doubt I tend to prefer jazz rock-fusion with keyboards, electric bass but without a everpresent electric guitarist. Luckily for me there's a lot of it.

Hi,

If we take the WHEN the album was made, and how much jazz Miles had already done (lists over 15/20 albums by that time), and what the whole thing was about ... the freedom to be able to do what the player felt at that moment, is one of the most prized moments in ALL OF MUSIC, and sometimes it might not exactly sound perfect, but them Debussy (for example) was booed badly ... and his material is pretty ... even if some might think it was a bit over the top, towards the SONG mentality, which at the time was not exactly taken very seriously. The album stands up, because the idea of "song" was taken out of the equation ... and him not just trying to copy himself, or fall into the trickery that many solo performers tend to do ... this being a lot more visible many years later, is so many "prog" rock bands ... when after a while, can you say? .... right ... I'm leaving, this is high school stuff! 

I think ... I THINK ... that one of the most difficult things for many music fans, is to look at music through its history, rather than the more simplistic "favorites" which disregard music history altogether, in general! Jazz, in 1970 had some freedom and there was a lot of improvisation and free form, but a lot of it was still taken into the context of one piece of music, a sort of format, though not strictly defined. Miles, at that point, decided to just give it a go ... how long could he make it ... and I don't think that many folks, in any kind of music, can do that. In India, he would be considered a "master" for his ability to go for 15 to 20 minutes and not repeat himself. But here, sadly, many folks dislike the "show" when someone simply goes all out ... though I don't think that 99.9% of all the lead guitarists can make it past the 5/10 minute mark, without repeating their chords on a different note, for example. Miles, I think, was extremely aware of that possibility and I think that he wanted to see how far he could take it, without boring himself.

AND, just so you know, jazz per se is not exactly my favorite stuff, although I tend to love a lot of the folks from the ECM group, but I think many of them "transcend" the ability to define a piece of music as this or that ... and then you have things like Keith Jarrett doing LP side long pieces, even of some of them, sometimes, seem to be somewhat mechanic (repeating on a different note/scale/chord) ... but the freedom that others undertook and played, was exception, which is vastly different from what is  "American Jazz" ... but there were folks in ECM that could very well solo for a long time, because their music learning and talent was not based on what was "known" already as a sort of "commercial" style of music, since the new/unknown stuff was not as well defined yet, but became more so with ECM and some other jazz inclined labels.

To me, his freedom in that piece and other albums, make so many guitarist in prog and progressive music sound positively boring ... and while I do not dislike Steve Howe (for example), now you know why I do not discuss lead guitarists ... lest a say something that will get folks upset. In fact the smoothest and best guitarist I ever saw and heard was a guy that was a technician for the LA based PBS station, and he had quit the music scene, because no one wanted him ... he was black, had the  best singing voice you ever heard, and he could play and then some ... and no guitarist I have ever seen ever came close to that beauty ... there used to be some video clips of him, as the station once did a 30 minute special on him, but it has been removed, forgotten and dumped ... and I got to see him with another great Chic Street Man.

I look at all music, not just rock, or jazz, for example.