10cc

maani wrote: Radioactive Toy: Don't listen to all these prog-rock wanna-be know-it-alls... I am usually a strong believer in approaching a new group from earlier to later, since it gives a sense of the "progression" of the group.  Thus, I would normally tell you to get a group's first album first, and go from there. However, if I have to give you a couple or few of each, I would still keep them in chron order.  Thus: Crimson: In the Court, Wake, Larks Tongues, Starless, Red Floyd: Piper, Atom Heart, Meddle, Dark Side, Wish, Animals, Wall Genesis: Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England, The Lamb, Trick, W&W Giant: Gentle Giant, Three Friends, In A Glass House Yes: Time and a Word, Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge Moody Blues: Do them in strict chrono order. ELP: ELP, Tarkus, Trilogy, Brain Salad Tull: Thick as a Brick, Aqualung, Minstrel Those would be my choices.  Happy listening!

Umm, maani.... Aqualung came first.

Prog-Brazil wrote: That's right. But I'm afraid what criterion you should adopt to add other bands? .. how to say "yes" for some bands and "no" to others?

That was the point of my post.  Some of the bands that are already allowed on the site have created a really slippery slope of what "prog" should be defined as.  If you look at someone like The Who, Quadraphenia and Tommy are more prog than tons of stuff on this site.  Even Who's Next is VERY progressive.  Longish songs, extended solos, tempo/keychanges etc...  What about someone like Brian Eno.  Again, he really isn't prog just like The Who aren't prog, but if DT is prog and Symphony X is prog then so are The Who and Eno and Queen.  If you are going to have prog-pop then Todd Rundgren and literally hundreds of other people will qualify.  You could easily double the number of bands on the site.

Although I think the current "rules" are screwy, I'm not sure opening up the system that wide would have a positive impact.  Maybe it would.  It's not my site so I'm good either way. 

I want to talk about 10cc on this 10cc-thread, that's why i dug it up from the past

List - studio-albums from best to least good:

• Sheet music
• The original soundtrack
• How dare you
• Deceptive bends
• 10cc
• Bloody tourists
• Windows in the jungle
• Meanwhile
• Look here
• 10 out of ten
• Mirror mirror

What do you guys think?

All:

My own personal point is close to JM's.  For example, what makes Supertramp - who are included on this site - "progressive," but not 10CC?  They were not only contemporaneous, but were admittedly influenced by each other.  (N.B.  Klaatu was the third of this triumvirate, and they are included here as well).  I have never understood why Supertramp is here.  However, since they are, I cannot understand why 10CC is rejected.  Indeed, The Original Soundtrack (10CC) is as prog or moreso than Crime of the Century, the one album most people point to as "progressive."  And Sheet Music and How Dare You - and even much of Bloody Tourists - (10CC) are equally as "progressive" as Even in the Quietest Moments or Crime of the Century - and far more progressive than anything on Crisis What Crisis or any other Supertramp album.

As for XTC, their absence from this site is all but inexcusable.  If English Settlement and Mummer are not "progressive," I don't know what is.

And no, I do not believe that adding XTC, or even 10CC, would necessarily lead down the road to including every band back to The Beatles.

What I would do (though I am only an assistant here...) is create a new category called "progressive pop," and include some of the groups already on the site - Supertramp, Klaatu, Styx, et al - and some new groups, including 10CC, XTC, Queen, and others that clearly have progressive influences but don't quite make the cut as "truly" progressive.

I think we are all smart enough and mature enough to know how far we could take such a category without going down that "slippery slope" that everyone is worried about.  For example, neither The Who nor Zep would qualify since, although they both had songs with "progressive sensibilities," they clearly did not write their music from a consciously and deliberately "progressive" approach.  A few songs - Kashmir, Achilles Last Stand, No Quarter, and a handful of others (or Baba O'Riley and a few others) - do not a progressive group make.  The Who clearly approached their writing from a rock-and-roll perspective, and Zep approached their writing from a blues-rock perspective.  Neither was "consciously" progressive, and thus would not qualify as such.

These are just some personal thoughts on the matter.

Peace.

kingofbizzare wrote: Also, I just listened to 'Moontan' by Golden Earring, and that is an extremely progressive album, and I would classify them as progressive from just that album (although I have never heard any of their other stuff so I may be wrong).

I've always heard Moontan as a straight rock album - prog rock no. It seems there is a subtle difference  as to where different prog fans put the boundary between the two forms of rock.

I remember a review that described 10cc as "A diamond in the viscous pap of bubble-gum that is contemporary pop music". So true.

I think "Sheet Music", "Original Soundtrack" and "How Dare You?" are excellent albums with lot of prog moments.

I kind of lost my interest after the split in 1977 when Kevin Godley and Lol Creme started their own duo and Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart carried on as 10cc.

Codley & Creme's albums are even more progressive than the original 10cc.

Especially the first three:

• Consequences (1977)
• L (1978)
• Freeze Frame (1979)

I think the hardest part is that most, if not all, of the people that would qualify did music that is all over the musical map.  Take someone like Kate Bush or Jane Sieberry.  Both have done work that is straight up prog, but also straight up pop, straight up rock......Sieberry is doing jazz torch songs now hehehe.  Then you have someone like Todd R who would be the king of pop-prog in my book.  Sure his roots are R&B and Rock, but if you can name anything more progressive rock than the albums Todd and Wizard True Star, plus almost every single album breaks off for a little progism between or around the pop/rock/r&b tunes.

I agree with Maani about bands like Supertramp and Styx being on the site.  Also, I would add Rush and a few of the other rock bands.  I like them, but I still can't see how you classify them as prog.  The metal bands here are a joke.  The only difference between them and the guys not on this site are keyboards and maybe extending the songs a bit in length.

The only argument I would have for Klatuu is that a few songs on the first record and Hope are extremely prog.  Hope is one of my all time favorite records and is total prog in my book.  But, most of the rest of their stuff sucks and is the worst kind of pop rock twaddle.  That brings back the issue of how much prog stuff do you have to do before you are prog.

How about someone like They Might Be Giants?  Does ironic pop parody count as prog? 

I think Maani's idea would work if "progressive pop" genre was added bands like Queen, 10cc could be added then on.

Could even put PHIL COLLINS in as well then, Im kidding!

Sean Trane wrote: still absent: Nucleus and Family Those should be top priority.

Nucleus yes, for virtual of the same reasons Soft Machine are here - although Ian Carr was a free jazzer in the 60's while Soft Machine started in the mid 60's as a pop-soul group, progressing by producing some unique psychedelia, to some of the earliest prog to jazz rock fusion. Then there was a lsignificant amount of  transfusion of players from Nucleus to Soft Machine.

But Family??????? The early Rick Grech period maybe although the label 'post British psychedelia' fits just as well, e.g. Dolls House. But after Grech's departure to Blind Faith and so on, Chapman-Whitney developed Leicester's finest into a great hard nose rock band - and again here is an example of a band who released albums with  a few proggie tunes, but a majority of straight rock numbers - and some of these ended up in single charts. Alas they didn't break the USA - why when so many inferior bands did?

Spot on with your first post on this page Dick (or may I call you DrJazzRock).

So Maani, you have doubts about Supertramp’s prog credentials? You should have said so before!

I can understand why you do so, if you are basing your judgment on their later albums. I would however contend once again that "Crime of the century" is a masterpiece of prog and that their albums before that were of the prog genre. I ask again, have you heard those albums?

On this topic of 10CC in general, I don’t accept the logic that because a band was influenced by another, they are necessarily of the same genre. The Beatles clearly had a major influence on Spock’s Beard, but they are totally different bands. Neither do I accept the weary argument that "if band X is here, then so should band Y be". Each band should be judged on its own merits.

In the case of 10CC, I would argue that they did not make any albums which could be considered to be completely prog (the stated key requirement of the site), nor did they make many individual tracks which might be considered to even be pop-prog. It’s not about whether we like them or not (I like them a lot), it’s only about the type of music they made. They were a very clever group, who made educated pop with strong melodies and well written lyrics. Their albums are however devoid of any notable instrumental work, with even their rare longer tracks such as "One night in Paris" being in reality three pop based vocal songs joined together. The rare instrumentals 10CC have produced (I can only think of "How dare you" off hand) are very basic. I would suggest (and perhaps this is a topic for a new thread) that instrumental passages are core part of what makes a band prog.