Were the Moody Blues ever a true prog band?

iluvmarillion wrote: Tom Ozric wrote: Concerning the album 'On The Threshold Of A Dream' - one should only listen to the last section - the suite of 'The Dream/Have You Heard/The Voyage/Have You Heard II' - if anyone does NOT believe that it is Progressive composition, please leave the room. Bob Fripp may have been in awe of the Moodies when he envisioned Crimso........."I'm going to purchase a Mellotron and show them what it's all abowt" My absolute fave Moodies album, 'To Our Children's Children's Children' is a beautifully crafted Prog album start to finish.  It was never about how many notes they could play per bar, it was the placement of fewer notes within a bar that created undisputable magic. Very creative and cutting edge for the time. The use of Mellotron by Bob Fripp is light years ahead of anything the Moodies every did.

Why indeed !!! But the use of Mellotron by Thomas Johnson is in the same league of Bob Fripp ........

Concerning the album 'On The Threshold Of A Dream' - one should only listen to the last section - the suite of 'The Dream/Have You Heard/The Voyage/Have You Heard II' - if anyone does NOT believe that it is Progressive composition, please leave the room. Bob Fripp may have been in awe of the Moodies when he envisioned Crimso........."I'm going to purchase a Mellotron and show them what it's all abowt"

Multiple votes so you can vote for art rock or only in early days. There's times when it might apply just don't contradict yourself. :)

They were prog before there was prog......... maybe?........

Without question, yes.  The fourth option makes what I consider a false assertion, that King Crimson is the beginning of Prog.  ItCotCK was certainly a milestone, but it existed, and continues to exist within a continuum of releases.  KC moved beyond what the Moodies had done earlier, but then the Moodies themselves moved beyond what they did earlier.  That is a characteristic of progression.  DoFP did things no one had done before, as did In Search of the Lost Chord.  Even if they became a mostly pop band later on, they were still a true prog band at one time, so the answer again has to be "yes."

Slartibartfast wrote: Oh they can't possibly be prog if they don't have metal in the music.  I think you can pretty much predict where people will come down on this based on how much they like metal...

It only takes one idiot.

lazland wrote: ole-the-first wrote: Were the Moody Blues ever a true prog band? Not really. King Crimson's innovation was distinguishing prog from psychedelic/pop roots, while 'Days of Future Passed' was generally a psychedelic album, but with complex symphonic arrangements (and their following albums were even closer to psychedelic pop). Thus The Moody Blues' early stuff falls straightly into proto-prog category. Sorry, you are utterly wrong. The Moodies were considered to be an archetypal prog rock band, simple as. They considered themselves to be very much so, and I fail to see the Crimson point really. Why do people insist on these categorisations which fly in the face of musical history?

Well, there are many ways to percept and interpret music. I believe that The Moody Blues were too psychedelic-influenced for being archetypical prog (whilst Crimson's influence was taken also from jazz, folk and modern classical music, and that fusion of everything with everything became a kind of attribute for almost all 70's prog bands). Though it's just my own opinion, I would always like to hear a different pointof view.

ole-the-first wrote: Were the Moody Blues ever a true prog band? Not really. King Crimson's innovation was distinguishing prog from psychedelic/pop roots, while 'Days of Future Passed' was generally a psychedelic album, but with complex symphonic arrangements (and their following albums were even closer to psychedelic pop). Thus The Moody Blues' early stuff falls straightly into proto-prog category.

Dean wrote: Hercules wrote: If you were alive and listening to music in the late 60s (and I was) you would know that the Moodies were one of the bands that defined the genre.   So - yes, uneqivocally. Absolutely.       You guys can't keep trying to re-write history just because it doesn't fit with your modern interpretations of what is and what isn't Prog Rock. You can't make stuff up either. What happened, happened; what was, was.