Top 5 epics and why?

a new one from me:

#1 A Passion Play(Both Parts) - Jethro Tull/ Echoes - Pink Floyd
#2 The Revealing Science of God - Yes
#3 Supper's Ready - Genesis
#4 I Am the Sun(Pt 1) - The Flower Kings
#5 Thick as a Brick(Pt 1) - Jethro Tull

#6 Dogs - Pink Floyd
#7 SOYCD(Both Pts) - Pink Floyd
#8 All of the Above - Transatlantic
#9 Lizard - KC
#10 The Necromancer/2112/Fountain of Lamneth - Rush
#11 Octavarium - DT
#12 The Gates of Delirium/CTTE/Nous Sommes Du Soleil - Yes
#13 Lady Fantasy - Camel
#14 Karn Evil 9(1st Impression) - ELP
#15 The World that We Drive Through - The Tangent
#16 Abbey Road(Side 2) - The Beatles
#17 Xanadu/Cygnus X-1 - Rush
#18 Brother Where You Bound - Supertramp
#19 Try Again - Supertramp
#20 Nine Feet Underground - Caravan

Emoticon rating: #1
                               #2 and
                               #3

Edited by cacho - November 29 2008 at 09:06

Facelift (Live)

This has become some way very difficult, but I´m gonna try:

Still Life is excellent

Far too difficult to narrow down to 5 at the moment, but here are some doodlings where I lay down some tracks that could potentially fit the bill:

Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness - Green Carnation
Hinterland - Wobbler
Harvest Of Souls - IQ
Suppers Ready - Genesis
Echoes - Pink Floyd
A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers - VDGG
Nine Feet Underground - Caravan
The Gates Of Delirium - Yes
Into The Dream - Discipline
Zarathustra - Museo Rosenbach
Chupacabras - Phideaux
2112 - Rush
Mumps - Hatfield And The North
Apprentis Sorciers - Nemo
The Narrow Margin - IQ
Hamburger Concerto - Focus
Close To The Edge - Yes
The Sky Moves Sideways - Porcupine Tree
Awaken - Yes
Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd
Histoires Sans Paroles - Harmonium
Dogs - Pink Floyd
9-29-045 - Green Carnation
Lady Fantasy - Camel
The Light From Deep Darkness - Eloy
Jordrok - Anglagard

Understandably....might take a while to sort through those fellas!

AustinPrince14 wrote: Hmm.. Close to the Edge - Yes just wins. No question Tales from Topographic Oceans - See "Close to the Edge"

Pink Floyd - Echoes

micky wrote: for me...  probably in stages.. 1. Close to the Edge  - the perfect '18 minute long song'... not a hodgepodge of song fragments tied together, however well,  like Tarkus and Supper's Ready for example.  Again.. as I've posted in the past... if don't don't like a part of Supper's Ready.. wait for the next one....  here..  wait..... I"ll let  John McFerrin say it ...he's a pro at  ...I'm not... ' ELP had had Tarkus, Genesis had had Supper's Ready, King Crimson had had, er, Lizard, not to mention Jethro Tull with Thick as a Brick and so on. . Thing is, though, none of these tracks had really been "20-minute songs" in the truest sense. ALL of them essentially were several "conventional" pop and rock songs strung together with instrumental breaks instead of pauses, with a couple of reprises here and there to provide a proper feeling of "completion" at the end. Now, one may argue that that is actually the preferred way to approach a side-long track, and I of course love all of these to death (er, except Lizard. Lizard annoys me). But still, all of these tracks could easily be split into different songs and listened to separately (er, if you had that capability with your listening device). So Yes took a different route, a route that was both simpler and more complicated than what had previously been attempted. And what was that route? Well, first of all, examine the basic structure of a pop-song, as mentioned in a comment below: Intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro. To this point, the general idea had been to make the basic verse and chorus melodies as compact as possible, with a minimal amount of development and deconstruction. But, smart men they were, Yes realized that this structure could just as well support lengthy, intensely developed and complex verse melodies. And so they went this route, and in essence created the world's first 19-minute pop song. I know there are scores of articles out there on the musical structure of Close to the Edge.  It's at the top of the list by any objective standard..... as it should be. It was unique... and the quality speaks for itself.  2. Tarkus Fabuously subtle lyrically,  depending on how you read it... and musically...  far superior in shear display of talent than any of the other similar 'cut and paste. will finish list later...  my suppers's ready...  hahahha.. Need to think on it as well. Those first two or sort of no-brainers in my book.

when it comes to cohesiveness absolutely nothing beats Peter Hammill's opera "The Fall of the House of Usher". the way he weaves several themes from previous acts together in the final act is unsurpassed. since the tracks flow into each other, except for short pauses between the acts, one might as well see the opera as one big piece of music. "Close to the Edge" is beginner's stuff in comparison when it comes to cohesiveness.

I also don't quite agree with you. you might as well take out the "I Get Up - I Get Down" part and make a separate song of it; musically there is nothing that logically leads to this part. it begins as abrupt as similar parts in, for example, "Supper's Ready". you may be historically correct in that it never originally WAS a separate song; for the result, however, this doesn't change anything

Edited by BaldJean - June 24 2008 at 03:48