MACHINE HEAD

Proto-prog...hhmmm....hard to clasify this as ANY kind of prog. Sure, Jon Lord is the king of the Hammond organ, and on the version of the album I own, the Roger Glover side two re-mix of the album gives you a bit of a different take on the track "Lazy" in regards with Lord's keyboard solo, but by this time Deep Purple was definately more a hard rocking boogie band, (I can see where Kansas got a bit of their boogie). Yet, it's hard for me to give this any less then 4 given the strong songs on it. "Highway Star", "Smoke On The Water" and "Space Truckin" are flat out classics of hard rock with "Smoke..." a bit more proggish then the rest. The only song that makes me want to press the forward button is "Never Before", and that song they thought was going to be the big hit! All the guys are on full throttle and at the top of their game. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt whether this is prog or not. I love Jon Lord's Hammond sound and because of that it gets the four stars. But come on, it's boogie blues rock 'n roll and that's all it is. But hot d*mn, its good!