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Witchwoodhermit View Drop Down
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Points: 871 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 22 2006 at 01:10

S.F.Sorrow by the Pretty Things is one the best and most overlooked early concept albums. This album inspired Pete to create Tommy. Sorrow is a far better effort. IMHO.(no offense Pete and co.)
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Points: 1455 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 28 2006 at 04:49
    "Pretentious" is a harsh assessment. If anything, prog concept songs/albums are a breath of fresh air from the Top 40 fare that is spoonfed to the normal music afficionado, via MTV or whatever vehicle (live-stream rradio, etc.) is being used. Similar to classical music, in which most composers had an idea or 'concept' that would thread throughout the whole (normally quite long) piece, prog concept music adopts this same frame of mind. If classic music is 'pretentious' for the same reason, there is little to argue against that thinking.
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Points: 3089 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 28 2006 at 05:08
"pretention" and "pretentiousness" are spoken of not when someone wants to do something extremely out of the ordinary, but when someone wanting to and believing he/she can achieve that something out of the ordinary (and publicly stating this), but in the end failing to deliver. THAT's being pretentious.
in music, one is pretentious when wanting to be complex and only becoming non-musical, when wanting to be in the avantguarde and only getting cacophonic, when wanting to be "true" and only being "pseudo". there is pretentious classical, jazz, rock, etc. music, and it's normal to be so.
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Points: 62 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 28 2006 at 06:37
Personnaly I thing that many Prog listener could be considered "pretentious" but not the truly good prog artist.
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Points: 1678 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 28 2006 at 06:43

i think "Tales..." by Yes is the perfect example of prog pretentiousness... even though i kinda like it...
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Points: 6336 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 28 2006 at 13:12
Originally posted by toolsofthetrade toolsofthetrade wrote:

Originally posted by el böthy el böthy wrote:

Originally posted by enteredwinter enteredwinter wrote:

Originally posted by Prometheus Prometheus wrote:

oh, as for a failed concept album one might consider "Ghost Reveries" by Opeth


Ghost Reveries is not a concept album. There was some good insight on this in the documentary on the re-released version's DVD.

Mikael wanted it to be a concept album at first, but then he wrote Isolation Years, realized it didn't fit the concept, and included it anyway. By the time the album was released, the song-order and lyrics were jumbled up to the point where there was no unifying concept that could be logically followed throughout.

Sure, there are some repeating ideas, but it can't be called a "failed concept album", because it isn't a concept album.

Yes, but did you noticed the title in the booklet? "Ghost reveries an observation by Opeth"...doesnt that ring any bells? jejejej Just like KC did with their first 4 albums and also Power to belive, they are not concept albums but most songs have a certain lyrical conection and a main theme might be all over the album, even though it might not be as strong as to call it a concept. Generally, I love this albums, as they are not concept albums (which sometimes can have amazing storys...but really, if you are just going to talk about a murdered woman and a man who has flashbacks about here...save it jajaja), while this albums are not as "pretentious" as the actual concept albums, they are equally ambitious. And for one, if the theme is not strong enough it doesnt ruin the result...while I think a bad concept ruins the album, big time, and I can´t not pay atention to what the song is about, know its crap and move on...no lord...no I can not, God knows I cant...jejeje


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Points: 147 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 28 2006 at 20:29
 Concept albums rock the house. Yes they are pretentious, so what? You know what's really pretentious, the "Eroica Symphony" by Beethoven. No one gives him any hassle though.
 What upsets me about concept albums is this: everyone has their own ideas about what albums are concept albums. Even though people seem to agree on what a concept album is, they don't agree about what albums actually are true concept albums. Sometimes it seems that a lot of people just list their favorite albums as concept albums because it makes them feel sophisticated. I'm convinced this is why Dark Side of the Moon and Moving Pictures are frequently cited.LOL
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Points: 3089 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 29 2006 at 04:36
Originally posted by Goldenavatar Goldenavatar wrote:

I'm convinced this is why Dark Side of the Moon and Moving Pictures are frequently cited.LOL
 
i don't know what about Moving Pictures, but i can tell you that DSOTM is quoted as a concept album because an album is not a "concept album" only when the songs have a narrative (musical and/or lyrical) line of continuity which is interrupted only for having "songs" instead of "suites" (and sometimes not even interrupted), but also when behind all the songs there is a main concept which is followed musically and/or lyrically regardless of the way songs relate to each other. in the case of DSOTM the concept is alienation and it's forms ("I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us...very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad...", remember?): emotional blocking ("Don't be afraid to care"), lack of trust, fear ("Run, rabbit run"), akedia (i don't know how to translate this term, but "You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way"), the feeling of unacomplishment ("you're older,/Shorter of breath and one day closer to death"), and the feeling of spiritual entropy ("The time is gone, the song is over"), despair ("quiet desperation is the English way" - one of the greatest lines of all time), social alienation through conformism ("Get a good job with good pay and you're okay") and greed ("Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash"), the anxiety of getting the pure feel of alterity ("who knows which is which and who is who"), madness ("There's someone in my head but it's not me"), which gets a great anxious feel in "Brain Damage" because of the dialogued roleplaying and of the story getting personal: And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes/I'll see you on the dark side of the moon, and, finally, because of the climatic hopeless ending: everything under the sun is in tune/but the sun is eclipsed by the moon. "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark." --> what an optimist conclusion, isn't it Smile? all this achieved through floyd's trademark and almost painfully melancholic sound that gives unity to the whole.
 
i would say this is pretty decent concept album and i quote it as so. not my favourite at all though, way behind Animals and Wish... .
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Points: 147 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 00:35
Originally posted by andu andu wrote:

Originally posted by Goldenavatar Goldenavatar wrote:

I'm convinced this is why Dark Side of the Moon and Moving Pictures are frequently cited.LOL
 
i don't know what about Moving Pictures, but i can tell you that DSOTM is quoted as a concept album because an album is not a "concept album" only when the songs have a narrative (musical and/or lyrical) line of continuity which is interrupted only for having "songs" instead of "suites" (and sometimes not even interrupted), but also when behind all the songs there is a main concept which is followed musically and/or lyrically regardless of the way songs relate to each other. in the case of DSOTM the concept is alienation and it's forms ("I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us...very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad...", remember?): emotional blocking ("Don't be afraid to care"), lack of trust, fear ("Run, rabbit run"), akedia (i don't know how to translate this term, but "You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way"), the feeling of unacomplishment ("you're older,/Shorter of breath and one day closer to death"), and the feeling of spiritual entropy ("The time is gone, the song is over"), despair ("quiet desperation is the English way" - one of the greatest lines of all time), social alienation through conformism ("Get a good job with good pay and you're okay") and greed ("Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash"), the anxiety of getting the pure feel of alterity ("who knows which is which and who is who"), madness ("There's someone in my head but it's not me"), which gets a great anxious feel in "Brain Damage" because of the dialogued roleplaying and of the story getting personal: And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes/I'll see you on the dark side of the moon, and, finally, because of the climatic hopeless ending: everything under the sun is in tune/but the sun is eclipsed by the moon. "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark." --> what an optimist conclusion, isn't it Smile? all this achieved through floyd's trademark and almost painfully melancholic sound that gives unity to the whole.
 
i would say this is pretty decent concept album and i quote it as so. not my favourite at all though, way behind Animals and Wish... .
 
I do not disagree that lyrical thematic unity can define a concept album. It just seems like this is shakey ground. I mean, someone somehwhere will be able to find some obscure connection between any group of 8-12 songs on an album. Does that make it a concept album. Honestly I think any Roger Waters album is going to have melancholy and alienation as themes. I guess the ultimate decider should be the intent of the artist. Except even that doesn't put the status of some albums to rest. Recall Thick as a Brick!
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Points: 12818 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 09:21
When did Dark Side become a concept album??? Not when it was released. What's the story? That is a pretense of hindsight. Don't think desparate tunes that segue into each other makes the whole (well in the day's of LPs, a side) a concept. Regardless of whether Floyd didn't use chemical enhancement or otherwise, they appreciated that their customers preferred the interconnectivity to maintain or enhance the mental state. However, this was not isolated to Floyd. Other masters of interconnectivity, Soft Machine, would interlink various tunes into fairly seemless pieces lasting various up to an hour (e.g. Pop Prom performance, Moon In June, etc) - without making any Soft Machine album a concept! In deed the oft used reference point, the Who's a A Quick One (Whilst He's Away), was created from scraps of incomplete tunes Kit Lambert pressurised Townshend into cobbling together as an LP end -filler. BTW Keith West's (Tomorrow's vocalist) Teenage Opera, that got stuck in the can in the archives for two decades, probably predates A Quick One.
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Evans View Drop Down
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Points: 3004 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 09:32
Originally posted by Dick Heath Dick Heath wrote:

When did Dark Side become a concept album??? Not when it was released. What's the story? That is a pretense of hindsight. Don't think desparate tunes that segue into each other makes the whole (well in the day's of LPs, a side) a concept. Regardless of whether Floyd didn't use chemical enhancement or otherwise, they appreciated that their customers preferred the interconnectivity to maintain or enhance the mental state. However, this was not isolated to Floyd. Other masters of interconnectivity, Soft Machine, would interlink various tunes into fairly seemless pieces lasting various up to an hour (e.g. Pop Prom performance, Moon In June, etc) - without making any Soft Machine album a concept! In deed the oft used reference point, the Who's a A Quick One (Whilst He's Away), was created from scraps of incomplete tunes Kit Lambert pressurised Townshend into cobbling together as an LP end -filler. BTW Keith West's (Tomorrow's vocalist) Teenage Opera, that got stuck in the can in the archives for two decades, probably predates A Quick One.
It's a concept album about lunatics. And the title itseld also is a reference to lunatics (moon=luna and all that).  Waters wrote a bunch of lyrics about all the things he thought of as "anti-life", and that could make crazy people out of normal people. It's not as coherent a concept as The Wall or Tommy, but it's a concept album nontheless :)

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Points: 15535 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 09:34
Originally posted by Evans Evans wrote:


Originally posted by Dick Heath Dick Heath wrote:

When did Dark Side become a concept album??? Not when it was released. What's the story? That is a pretense of hindsight. Don't think desparate tunes that segue into each other makes the whole (well in the day's of LPs, a side) a concept. Regardless of whether Floyd didn't use chemical enhancement or otherwise, they appreciated that their customers preferred the interconnectivity to maintain or enhance the mental state. However, this was not isolated to Floyd. Other masters of interconnectivity, Soft Machine, would interlink various tunes into fairly seemless pieces lasting various up to an hour (e.g. Pop Prom performance, Moon In June, etc) - without making any Soft Machine album a concept! In deed the oft used reference point, the Who's a A Quick One (Whilst He's Away), was created from scraps of incomplete tunes Kit Lambert pressurised Townshend into cobbling together as an LP end -filler. BTW Keith West's (Tomorrow's vocalist) Teenage Opera, that got stuck in the can in the archives for two decades, probably predates A Quick One.
It's a concept album about lunatics. And the title itseld also is a reference to lunatics (moon=luna and all that).  Waters wrote a bunch of lyrics about all the things he thought of as "anti-life", and that could make crazy people out of normal people. It's not as coherent a concept as The Wall or Tommy, but it's a concept album nontheless :)

    But what about The Great Gig In The Sky or On The Run or Any Colour You Like? THose don't fit in with the "concept" of the album.
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Points: 3004 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 09:38
Originally posted by progismylife progismylife wrote:

Originally posted by Evans Evans wrote:


Originally posted by Dick Heath Dick Heath wrote:

When did Dark Side become a concept album??? Not when it was released. What's the story? That is a pretense of hindsight. Don't think desparate tunes that segue into each other makes the whole (well in the day's of LPs, a side) a concept. Regardless of whether Floyd didn't use chemical enhancement or otherwise, they appreciated that their customers preferred the interconnectivity to maintain or enhance the mental state. However, this was not isolated to Floyd. Other masters of interconnectivity, Soft Machine, would interlink various tunes into fairly seemless pieces lasting various up to an hour (e.g. Pop Prom performance, Moon In June, etc) - without making any Soft Machine album a concept! In deed the oft used reference point, the Who's a A Quick One (Whilst He's Away), was created from scraps of incomplete tunes Kit Lambert pressurised Townshend into cobbling together as an LP end -filler. BTW Keith West's (Tomorrow's vocalist) Teenage Opera, that got stuck in the can in the archives for two decades, probably predates A Quick One.
It's a concept album about lunatics. And the title itseld also is a reference to lunatics (moon=luna and all that).  Waters wrote a bunch of lyrics about all the things he thought of as "anti-life", and that could make crazy people out of normal people. It's not as coherent a concept as The Wall or Tommy, but it's a concept album nontheless :)

    But what about The Great Gig In The Sky or On The Run or Any Colour You Like? THose don't fit in with the "concept" of the album.
On the run fits in perfectly, it is a song about paranoia, if you can say that about an instrumental. In the same way, the great gig in the sky is a song about [fear of?] death and any color you like... well, i just know that it's supposed to be a reference to some quote by henry ford (you can have it any color you like as long as it's black), and i guess waters thought it fit in there somehow, a song of freedom of choice, or rather, lack thereof.

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Points: 15535 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 09:43
Originally posted by Evans Evans wrote:


Originally posted by progismylife progismylife wrote:

[QUOTE=Evans]

    But what about The Great Gig In The Sky or On The Run or Any Colour You Like? THose don't fit in with the "concept" of the album.


On the run fits in perfectly, it is a song about paranoia, if you can say that about an instrumental. In the same way, the great gig in the sky is a song about [fear of?] death and any color you like... well, i just know that it's supposed to be a reference to some quote by henry ford (you can have it any color you like as long as it's black), and i guess waters thought it fit in there somehow, a song of freedom of choice, or rather, lack thereof.


I agree with On The Run, but the others don't fit with the conceptual idea. They work with the rest of the songs musically, but they interrupt the "theme" that is found in the album. THe concept idea you are trying to present is too open to anything.    
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Points: 3089 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 10:06
well, you should know about the concept of an "open concept". Smile i also agree DSOTM is not the most cohesive concept album. floyd's animals and wall work better in this matter. the songs don't have a great overall cohesion. but if compared to WYWH, whose songs fit perfectly, i think DSOTM's ideas get together better as an essay on alienation.
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Points: 15535 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 10:08
I concur.
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Points: 12818 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 12:28
MY advantage/disadvantage was being around the the album was originally released. Please give me a reference from that period that states DSOTFM is a concept album - I simply can't recall anything/anybody of the period saying such? Otherwise, 'concept' is a tag of hindsight.
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Points: 3004 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 12:40
The best i can do is a few quotes from pinkfloyd-co.com.

"The album was intially about the pressures of real life-travel, money, madness-and then it broadened out a bit." Nick

"It was not a deliberate attempt to make a commercial album. It just happened that way. We knew it had a lot more melody than previous Floyd albums and there was a concept that ran through it all. The music was easier to absorb." Rick

"We thought we could do a whole thing about the pressures we personally feel that drive one over the top...the pressures of earning a lot of money; the time thing, time flying by very fast; organized power structures like the church or politics; violence, aggression." Roger

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Points: 3928 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 12:46
^ Well even that could be in hindsight. It's interesting to ponder on contemporary reactions to these albums because as I was not even born when DSOTM came out.

One thing I don't understand is the rather wanton labelling of albums as 'concept albums'. Like, I don't see how CTTE or 2112 or concept albums as its only the one track/side that is in any way linked, but I've seen things like CTTE labelled as the 'ultimate concept album'.

A term that seems to have bandied about instead of concept album is 'rock opera'- not sure whether that was used more frequently in 60s and 70s.
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Points: 15535 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: December 30 2006 at 12:47
Yeah 2112 has the great 2112 song, but the rest of the album is not connected to anything else.
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