Prog based on books?

Soul Dreamer wrote: A very recent album: Gazpacho's Tick Tock is based on the book "Wind, Sand and Stars" of Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Since it's not mentioned in the list above, I'm going to post it again because it's a great album...

Italian band Minstrel has 2 albums, first Faust based on the famous book by Goethe and Ahab based on the Moby Dick classic by Melville. The Box has recently released Le Horla , a famous de Maupassant masterpiece . Eidolon's dreamland based on Edgar Allan Poe (many other bands chose EAP). Oldfield's Songs from Distant Earth (Arthur C Clarke) , Gazpacho's Tick Tock on Antoine de St-Exupery . Inquire's Melancholia (JP Sartre)  and Latte e Miele with Passio Secundum Mattheum from that ole Bible .

A summary + some additions

Tolkien:
Marillion
Camel (Nimrodel, The Procession, The White Rider)
Bo Hansson
Rick Wakeman
Rush (Rivendell)
Jon Anderson (In Elven Lands: The Fellowship)
Ainur
Glass Hammer
Nazgul
Archangel (The Akallabeth)
Ainur

Asimov:
Alan Parsons (I Robot)
Hawkwind (Robot)
Frameshift (An Absence of Empathy)

Ayn Rand:
Rush (2112, Anthem, The Trees)

Paul Gallico:
Camel (The Snow Goose)

Frank Herbert:
Dun (Arrakis, Acoustic Fremen)
Toto (Dune)

Leon Tolstoi:
Yes (Gates of Delirium)

Herman Hesse:
Yes (Close to The Edge)
Kansas (Journey from Mariabronn)
Marillion (Misplaced Childhood)

Mark Twain:
Rush (Tom Sawyer)

The Bible:
Genesis
Aphrodite's Child (666)
Jesus Christ Superstar
Various Artists (La Biblia)

George Orwell:
Pink Floyd (Animals)
Rick Wakeman (1984)
Metamorfosi (Then All Was Silent)
Hugh Hopper (1984)
Anthony Phillips (1984)
David Bowie (Diamond Dogs)

Mao Zedong:
Matching Mole (Little Red Record)

Paramahansa Yogananda:
Yes (Tales from Topographic Oceans)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke:
Pink Floyd (Childhood's End)
Tempano (Childhood's End)

Edgar Alan Poe:
Alan Parsons (Tales of Mistery and Imagination)

Jonathon Coes:
Hatfield & the North (The Rotters Club)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:
Nolan & Wakeman (The Hound of the Baskervilles)

Dante Alighieri:
Metamorfosi (Inferno)
Tangerine Dream (Purgatorio (Dante Alighieri - La Divina Commedia))
Lacrimosa (Inferno)
Brassè (Dante's Inferno)
Dante
Fondeira (Dante, at last)
Il Castello Di Atlante (Malebolge)
Various Artists Concept Albums (Inferno the Divine Comedy, Purgatorio The Divine Comedy)
Echolyn (Mei)

Richard Dawkins:
Frameshift (Unweaving the Rainbow)

Jules Verne:
Rick Wakeman (Jurney To The Center of The Earth)
Nemo

Bram Stoker:
PFM (Dracula)

Alexandre Dumas:
Vanden Plas (Christ 0)

Lewis Carrol:
Neuschwantein (Alice in Wonderland)
The Amorphous Androgynous (Alice in Ultraland)
Chick Corea (The Mad Hatter)
Shadowland (Mad as a Hatter)
The Incredible String Band (The Mad Hatter's Song)
Touchstone (Mad Hatters)
Bill Bruford (Fainting in Coils)
Annie Haslam (Annie in Wonderland)
Yes (We Have Heaven)
Peter Hammill (This side of the looking glass)
Nolan & Wakeman (Jabberwocky)

Thomas Eliot:
King Crimson (The Deception of the Thrush)

Goethe:
Faust
Aton's (Dr. Faust)
Art Zoyd (Faust)

H. G. Wells:
Jeff Wayne (The War of the Worlds)
Eloy
Robert Fripp (H. G. Wells)
Ammon Duul II (HG Well's take off)
Rick Wakeman (Time Machine)

Pablo Neruda:
Los Jaivas (Alturas De Macchu Picchu)

Nietzsche:
Museo Rosenbach (Zarathustra)

Ray Bradbury:
Solaris (Marsbeli Kronikak)
Hawkwind (Fahrenheit 451)

William Shakespeare:
Steve Hackett (Midsummer Night's Dream)
Genesis (Cinema Show)
Il Volo (Essere o non essere? Essere, essere, essere!)
Lana Lane (Lady Macbeth)
Henry Cow (some music for a performance of The Tempest recycled in some of their early albums)

Richard Bach:
Transatlantic (Bridge across forever)

Jorge Luis Borges:
Montefeltro (Nel Laberinto)
Genesis (Squonk)

Homer:
Genesis (The Cinema Show)
King Crimson (Islands)
Eloy (End of an Odyssey)
Vangelis (Odissey)
XII Alfonso (Odyssees)
Symphony X (The Odyssey)

Plato:
Eloy (Ocean)
Pallas (Rise and fall, Atlantis)

Claude Vorilohn (AKA Rael):
Genesis (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway)

John Steinbeck:
Gentle Giant (The moon is down)
Camel (Dust and Dreams)

Oscar Wilde:
Dorian Gray
Il Ritratto Di Dorian Gray
Cherry Five (The Picture of Dorian Grey)

Andy Tillison :
The Tangent (Not As Good as the Book)

No mention so far of  that  'Brain Salad Surgery' was largely based on the book 'Colossus' by Dennis Feltham Jones. A book that heavily influenced Lake and Sinfield. 

So I meant to put a picture of Ulver's Themes From William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven and Hell.

Now, could someone please explain the relationship between Alan Parson's "I robot" and Asimov's book, apart from the title. I have read the book and I own the album, and paid attention to the lirics, but I just can't find the connection. I think I read there is another earlier book with the same title "I robot", from another author, perhaps the album is based on that other book.

Several Gentle Giant songs mention characters from Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. Tales from Topographic Oceans wins the award for most music based on the least words, as it was based on a footnote in the Autobiograhpy of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yoganada. Roncevaux by Van der Graaf Generator is based on the epic Franch poem La Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland). A Whiter Shade of Pale is loosely based on The Miller's Tale from The Canterbury Tales. Salad Days (Are Here Again)  comes from Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare. Rick Wakeman has albums based on The Lord of the Rings and Journey to the Center of the Earth. I am the Walrus makes reference to the work of Lewis Carrol.

Hercules wrote: Snow Dog wrote: Hercules wrote: TGM: Orb wrote: The Snow Goose seems most obvious (I haven't read it).  Yet you've reviewed the album! How can you possibly give an informed appraisal if you haven't read the book on which it's based??? Quite easily. he listened to the album. Brilliant! So you would review the film of Lord of the Rings without reading the trilogy first, would you, thus having no idea whatsoever how well the film interpreted the book?? You could do it, but noone in their right mind would regard your review very seriously. "I enjoyed/didn't enjoy (delete as appropriate) this film even though I had absolutely no idea what it was about and whether the characters were accurately portrayed!" Or Bridehead Revisited. Or Skellig. Or any other great book that has been filmed. You just can't do it credibly. Without reading Gallico's novella, you can't have a clue about the structure, moods and images Camel portray in their music, which is why many of the reviews of The Snow Goose are frankly so laughable.

Now, I appreciate that my review is not absolutely valuable. I appreciate that the album will be doing things I don't understand. However, I think the majority of people reading the reviews will be interested in the perceived musical quality of the album rather than its relationship to the book it's based on. In the same way that there are a score of folks around here who've given reviews to Italian albums they know and love musically without understanding the lyrical content and certainly without the sort of familiarity with the language required to appreciate poetry in it. Now, their reviews are almost certainly missing out on one aspect of the album (which presumably wouldn't be hugely important to them anyway), but they're still able to appreciate the quality of the music and that makes their reviews somewhat valuable.

The Snow Goose is something of a unique case in that the album is making a precise effort to match itself to the book, so I can understand the principle here and admittedly I perhaps would, now, have waited to read the book first. On the other hand, the general principle is pretty awkward - can you review Obscured By Clouds as an album without having seen La Vallée? You might say no on principle, but in the context of this being a music site and the overwhelming majority of readers wanting to hear it as an album by Pink Floyd, it'd seem reasonable. Would it be alright to review Selling England By The Pound without an awareness of The Cinema Show's roots in The Waste Land, World Record without a familiarity with the work of Burne-Jones, Blake and Edgar Allen Poe? Reviewing Ulver's Perdition City without knowing that there's a quote in the title track from Kerouac's On The Road? Gentle Giant's Free Hand without visiting Talybont (which I've done, and it added to my appreciation of the song, but still, I wouldn't expect any reviewer to have done it).

In this particular case, I acknowledge it's worth reading the book, and it's on my reading list, but I still don't think that everything in my original review would change because of it.

I think the Lord Of The Rings analogy isn't quite accurate, because the film is condensed at times, altered in terms of its plot (sometimes understandably, at others not so understandably) and therefore isn't aiming to convey the book's character's precisely. It's not exactly the same story, and thus it doesn't need to achieve the same things or reflect characters in the exact same way as the book does. Still, your point concerning The Snow Goose is valid.

'The Rotters Club' by Hatfield & the North, based on Jonathon Coes' book of the same name..

'I Robot' by Alan Parson Project, based on the Asimov novel.

I have to mention Kate Bush and numerous songs based on books from the obvious "Wuthering Heights" through "Cloudbusting" and "The Ninth Wave" (sort of).

Edited by chopper - July 08 2009 at 06:55