Most pretentious album?

Mlaen wrote: ELP

Ghost Rider wrote: andu wrote: There has always been an ambiguous placement between pomposity, pretentiousness and great art for many artists in the past. Just think of Shakespeare's fantasies with highly improbable stories and huge amounts of drama and melodrama, pathetic singing, ridiculous situations (but then remember the classical comedy strict conventions to be followed), or of actually most of the whole genre of Opera; or think of Balzac's Human Comedy, filled with huge amounts of crappy romanticist blah-blah and the pretention to be the mirror-image of modern society (which I think he actually deliverd) - but also think of his marvelous dramatic story telling, character development and visions of nature and society; and one last call, think of Michelangelo's dramatic struggle to paint the story of man and god in the Sistine Chapel: he is so close to kitsch (himself was aware that being a sculptor denies him many of a painter's ability), but how powerful his vision is! So in conclusion my guess is that plenty of great art is done at the border between pretention and greatness, pomposity and visionarism; what matters IMO is whether the final product has the needed equilibrum between all sides and is a viable, living creature. The rest is history...   Do I need to tell I love ELP or Tales from Topographic Oceans?... Pure, unadulterated wisdom.... The current fad for minimalism (which has its merits, if done in the right way - otherwise it's just cold and devoid of feeling) would deny artistic value to many masterpieces of the past on the grounds of their being pretentious. As rock derives from rock'n'roll, which is a very simple musical form, it is expected to be simple and straightforward, and any deviation from the norm branded as 'pretentious'  - as if lots of highly regarded classical music wasn't just that...

...and I agree with my two wise forum colleagues.

Probably "Journey.." though I still love it!

andu wrote: There has always been an ambiguous placement between pomposity, pretentiousness and great art for many artists in the past. Just think of Shakespeare's fantasies with highly improbable stories and huge amounts of drama and melodrama, pathetic singing, ridiculous situations (but then remember the classical comedy strict conventions to be followed), or of actually most of the whole genre of Opera; or think of Balzac's Human Comedy, filled with huge amounts of crappy romanticist blah-blah and the pretention to be the mirror-image of modern society (which I think he actually deliverd) - but also think of his marvelous dramatic story telling, character development and visions of nature and society; and one last call, think of Michelangelo's dramatic struggle to paint the story of man and god in the Sistine Chapel: he is so close to kitsch (himself was aware that being a sculptor denies him many of a painter's ability), but how powerful his vision is! So in conclusion my guess is that plenty of great art is done at the border between pretention and greatness, pomposity and visionarism; what matters IMO is whether the final product has the needed equilibrum between all sides and is a viable, living creature. The rest is history...   Do I need to tell I love ELP or Tales from Topographic Oceans?...

Pure, unadulterated wisdom.... The current fad for minimalism (which has its merits, if done in the right way - otherwise it's just cold and devoid of feeling) would deny artistic value to many masterpieces of the past on the grounds of their being pretentious.

As rock derives from rock'n'roll, which is a very simple musical form, it is expected to be simple and straightforward, and any deviation from the norm branded as 'pretentious'  - as if lots of highly regarded classical music wasn't just that...

There has always been an ambiguous placement between pomposity, pretentiousness and great art for many artists in the past. Just think of Shakespeare's fantasies with highly improbable stories and huge amounts of drama and melodrama, pathetic singing, ridiculous situations (but then remember the classical comedy strict conventions to be followed), or of actually most of the whole genre of Opera; or think of Balzac's Human Comedy, filled with huge amounts of crappy romanticist blah-blah and the pretention to be the mirror-image of modern society (which I think he actually deliverd) - but also think of his marvelous dramatic story telling, character development and visions of nature and society; and one last call, think of Michelangelo's dramatic struggle to paint the story of man and god in the Sistine Chapel: he is so close to kitsch (himself was aware that being a sculptor denies him many of a painter's ability), but how powerful his vision is!

Geck0 wrote: I think Lift Your Fatty Toes Like A Satellite Dish to Hell, fits perfectly in this list actually, au contraire! It's a very silly and overrated album.

Uh... No it isn't.

thellama73 wrote: I voted G!YBE, primarily because I am tired of so many Indie kids who haven't heard very much music hailing it as a visionary masterpiece. It isn't.

Then blame the Indie kids for being pretentious, not the album.

I feel the all this "pretentious discussions", really harm the prog genre.
Every time you're stating RW or Yes or ELP or anyone is pretentious, it sounds as "undeserved bullsh*t" for this enormous figures of prog rock....

I am felling a bit sensible today

I was going to say Tales, but I forgot about Scarsick. Gildenlow is kind of the definition of pretentious, he just doesn't always show it. Well with Scarsick we got it full on. Dreafdful album.

Scarsuck, thats why I HATE it.