20 of your great UK Prog Rock classics?

always amuses me that the great Cal Jam festival of 1974 was headlined by ELP, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. USA put forward erm Black Oak Arkansas. Who the where what lol?!

And a lot of very fine Jazz-Rock/Fusion. 

1. Arena - The Visitor

2. Galahad - Following Ghosts

3. Genesis - Foxtrot

4. King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King

5. Marillion - Brave

6. Pendragon - Not of This World

7. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

8. Yes - Going for the One

9. Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts

10. Gentle Giant - Octopus

11. Pallas - The Dreams of Men

12. IQ - Dark Matter

13. Jethro Tull - A Passion Play

14. Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Brain Salad Surgery

15. Electric Light Orchestra - Eldorado

16. Arena - Contagion

17. Galahad - Empires Never Last

18. Genesis - Selling England By the Pound

19. Marillion - Marbles

But how about an apology, ExittheLemming? I might think more positive about you in the future.

Or tell me at least more exactly what was bothering you.

What I mean is that those albums are the highest rated but what does that exactly tell 

about the raters' view of them? 

Those albums are most liked?

They are most appreciated?

They are considered to be the best ones?

They have got the highest status?

They are maybe just those albums which were highest rated in the beginning, 

and the following raters just followed this high rating?

Or what can be told about them in general? 

In principle, I agree with with you, a "great classic" should be highly rated by as many people as possible, not only professional music critics, and this appreciation must stand the test of time (whether it's 20, 30 or 50 years I don't know). The problem in practice is who speaks for the people? You have mentioned RYM and I do find that's a pretty good indicator because albums there tend to have a higher number of ratings than on other music web sites that I am aware of. However, it's still an infinitely small number of people who are actually rating these albums. Dark Side of the Moon probably has the highest number of ratings among prog albums with 61,469 ratings, but that's a tiny fraction of the people who have listened to it. Can we take it as a sufficiently representative sample? it's hard to be definite because most people do not engage into rating albums, but they would still have an opinion if asked - and if these silent masses did rate albums, maybe top-selling albums like Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard, the Bee Gees' Saturday Night Fever and Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill would rate higher than many of the classic prog albums that currently have more and higher ratings on RYM. So in the end, at the risk of sounding elitist, I would say it's not just a very high rating by "really many people" that would determine a great classic, but a very high rating by many people who are relatively musically critical and discerning. In that sense, I do think that the average rating person on RYM is probably more critical and discerning than the average public, but there are certain limits. I suspect that there are many more male raters and cult band followers, which would create some bias in the ratings. I find it interesting, for instance, that an album like King Crimson's Red, which most people have never heard of, currently has over 24,000 ratings on RYM and an average rating of 4.22, while Jagged Little Pill, one of the best-selling albums of all times, winner of the Best Album of the Year and several Grammy awards, has just over 6,000 ratings and a rating of 3.47. Of course, personally I prefer King Crimson, but I do think Red's rating is, in part, a result of the fact that there are many more KC fans who rate albums on RYM than fans of Morrissette. Just to finish, I'm not saying I disagree with the approach, but pointing out that it has limitations, as I'm sure you're aware.                                  

At first, I'd like to excuse for the mess in this thread, Phil, but that is what can happen on PA, even I think there are some extraordinary circumstances in this case.

Anyway, about other sources first, I can only refer to Larkin Colin and his book All time Top 1000 Albums (1994) which is a very good example of a critic's approach to the question, but it concerns all the "main" genres except from Classical, and thus not specific Progressive Rock. In fact, it includes only very little of Prog albums.

My own is somehow an opposite, "from the bottom", approach and as I write in my OP "by "great classics" I mean albums that are very high rated by really many people". That concerns of course only the "great" part of it, and as I view it, it's a kind of objective criteria as it's based on really many people's opinion. Further, it says that "a great" must be very highly appreciated, and to add the last part of it, to become "a classic" must be deserved by (really) many years appreciation, which I personally think of as at least 30-40 years.