American Proto-Prog

^Fair enough.   Goodnight to you too, Sventonio.

Edited by SteveG - February 27 2015 at 11:28

Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: I don't find any of the songs on Spirit 's s/t full-blown prog, sections of them perhaps. (Revision: not even sections are full-blown prog.) Straight Arrow is perhaps best described as country music (with a jazzy section), Girl In Your Eye is a silly UK psyche thing, Gramophone Man is pop/R&B (with a jazzy section) and so is Topanga Windows, Water Woman is folk. This alone constitutes about half of the album. And then I'm not even mentioning the rest individually song by song which at best is 50 % prog per song. It's that early, 60s prog. The same thing is with e.g. English prog band Family. However, If you search for "full-prog" 60s albums on that ridiculously wrong way then you will hardly find even In the Court of the Crimson King as an "full-prog" album because I Talk To The Wind is a pop song (a great pop, though). And also, following that pretzel logic, one can say that 21 Century Schizoid Man is "heavy psych, not prog".

Well done Sventonio!

earlyprog wrote: I don't find any of the songs on Spirit 's s/t full-blown prog, sections of them perhaps. (Revision: not even sections are full-blown prog.) Straight Arrow is perhaps best described as country music (with a jazzy section), Girl In Your Eye is a silly UK psyche thing, Gramophone Man is pop/R&B (with a jazzy section) and so is Topanga Windows, Water Woman is folk. This alone constitutes about half of the album. And then I'm not even mentioning the rest individually song by song which at best is 50 % prog per song.

It's that early, 60s prog. The same thing is with e.g. English prog band Family. However, If you search for "full-prog" 60s albums on that ridiculously wrong way then you will hardly find even In the Court of the Crimson King as an "full-prog" album because I Talk To The Wind is a pop song (a great pop, though). And also, following that pretzel logic, one can say that 21 Century Schizoid Man is "heavy psych, not prog".


Edited by Svetonio - February 27 2015 at 11:19

Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: Although I am more familiar with Jimi' s or The Doors' catalogue, I voted Spirit just as my personal little protest against a wrong decision that the Sprit should be listed in PA as a "proto" (i.e. not prog) act, i.e. Spirit would be in a full-prog category of PA. And that genre would be....? I think that the genre would be Eclectic, Psych/Space or Crossover. If the genre is not obvious and the music covers a wide range of genres this would indicate proto-prog. But it could indicate Eclectic prog too. Would you describe any of their 60s' (or later for that matter) albums as full-blown prog? The first four. This would make their s/t debut the first prog album I suppose. Never heard that before. Nope. Freak Out! comes first.

Satirical rock is not Prog to me. For Zappa, that came later with his fusion experiments like Hot Rats.

earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: Although I am more familiar with Jimi' s or The Doors' catalogue, I voted Spirit just as my personal little protest against a wrong decision that the Sprit should be listed in PA as a "proto" (i.e. not prog) act, i.e. Spirit would be in a full-prog category of PA. And that genre would be....? I think that the genre would be Eclectic, Psych/Space or Crossover. If the genre is not obvious and the music covers a wide range of genres this would indicate proto-prog. But it could indicate Eclectic prog too. Would you describe any of their 60s' (or later for that matter) albums as full-blown prog? The first four. This would make their s/t debut the first prog album I suppose. Never heard that before.

Nope. Freak Out! comes first.

^No, some fan of The Nice would probably dispute that!

earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: Although I am more familiar with Jimi' s or The Doors' catalogue, I voted Spirit just as my personal little protest against a wrong decision that the Sprit should be listed in PA as a "proto" (i.e. not prog) act, i.e. Spirit would be in a full-prog category of PA. And that genre would be....? I think that the genre would be Eclectic, Psych/Space or Crossover. If the genre is not obvious and the music covers a wide range of genres this would indicate proto-prog.

But it could indicate Eclectic prog too.

Svetonio wrote: earlyprog wrote: Svetonio wrote: Although I am more familiar with Jimi' s or The Doors' catalogue, I voted Spirit just as my personal little protest against a wrong decision that the Sprit should be listed in PA as a "proto" (i.e. not prog) act, i.e. Spirit would be in a full-prog category of PA. And that genre would be....? I think that the genre would be Eclectic, Psych/Space or Crossover.

Edited by earlyprog - February 27 2015 at 09:32

And that 'full-prog category' would be....?

Edited by earlyprog - February 27 2015 at 08:57

There's a lot of bands listed here that I ain't heard of (yeah I'm a Brit, it's clearly my loss) but as much as I adore the Doors and admire the Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow album and acknowledge that Hendrix was routinely cited as a massive influence by subsequent proggers far and wide, (together with the United States of America's sole album being a 'shoo in belter' and covered by the Fall dammit)....
I can't really hear any extant residue of their inspiration on the so called stalwarts of early 70's Prog i.e. Crimson. ELP, Yes, Genesis, Tull, Gentle Giant, VDGG (That's not the stated aim of the poll so it's just an observation, not a criticism - i.e  US proto clearly diverged from its European counterpart in manifesting itself in subsequent developments that were closer to Krautrock/RIO Avant in spirit rather than eclectic/symph )