The best prog album of all time? - Progressive Rock Music Forum

Wish You Were Here is my favourite prog album of all time.

Haiku

Writing a poem
With seventeen syllables
Is very diffic....

For your Pleasure and Hero and Heroine rule my waves!

I never post anything anywhere without doing more than basic research, often in depth.

10:There

9:Is

8:No

7:Best

6:Prog

5:Album

4:Of

3:All

2:Time

1: Foxtrot

Atavachron wrote:

Originally posted by I prophesy disaster

I prophesy disaster wrote:

Although Tarkus is high on my list of favourite albums, it is not a perfect album because it has "Are You Ready Eddy?" at the end, which is short enough and positioned not to affect the greatness of the album, but it does prevent it from being perfect (as required by the opening post).

The OP asks for "best" album with no bad tracks. Best is not the same as perfect. In fact best is often imperfect, e.g. the White Album, Led Zeppelin ll, Trespass, Electric Ladyland, The Yes Album, Tarkus, etc.

Actually, I equated no bad tracks with perfect. A best album does not need to be perfect, but a perfect album needs to have no bad tracks. However, I do recognise that imperfection does not necessarily take the form of a bad track, but can be a perceived defect within an otherwise good track.

No, I know how to behave in the restaurant now, I don't tear at the meat with my hands. If I've become a man of the world somehow, that's not necessarily to say I'm a worldly man.

yep it's all too easy to equate consistency with perfection.

essexboyinwales wrote:

Impossible to pick/decide/agree on. But it definitely would NOT be CTTE for me, it's way too messy for my ears.

3 I would nominate:

IQ - Road Of Bones - totally brilliant and not a duff track across the double CD version.

or

Ayreon - The Human Equation - my favourite album of all time, still thrills me whenever I listen to it

or

Dream Theater - Images And Words - a prog metal masterpiece from start to finish

with you to a certain extent on IQ although the second disc is more powerful to my ears.

Ayreon - don't really know enough to have an opinion. I think I have this somewhere in my CD library.

Dream Theater - the electronic drums hurt my ears which is why I prefer Awake from that era although A Change Of Seasons is my favourite DT album.

Impossible to pick/decide/agree on. But it definitely would NOT be CTTE for me, it's way too messy for my ears.

3 I would nominate:

IQ - Road Of Bones - totally brilliant and not a duff track across the double CD version.

or

Ayreon - The Human Equation - my favourite album of all time, still thrills me whenever I listen to it

or

Dream Theater - Images And Words - a prog metal masterpiece from start to finish

BaldFriede wrote:

"And You And I" is a bit too sugarcoated for my taste, which is why "Close to the Edge" is not the masterpiece that most people think it is. I prefer pepper to sugar.

Obviously you have your taste but for me it's just Anderson being Anderson. All about cosmic and spiritual love and not really about 'boring' common of garden human love.

I would also argue that it gives the album a bit of balance and in any case it just wouldn't be Yes without it.

I'm not convinced that anything is really a masterpiece if you let taste get in the way. I mean I hate improvised tracks but I still reckon that Red is one of the best albums ever ( only behind Brain Salad Surgery and CTTE in my list) even if Providence is a hard sell to me personally. Can taste really decide these things? Sometimes applying an intellectual criteria is a better approach.

I have nothing against humorous songs. our own band Bald Angels has a humorous track on the first two albums too; they are even the title tracks. "The Goat and the Donkey" is a track that illustrates how it would sound if a donkey played piano and a goat sang to it (the track is actually based on a joke about a pilot crashing in the desert near an old man who owns a donkey and a goat with these qualities). the second album "It's a Dog's Life" (with a very daring album cover Wink

) has us imitating several dog sounds

Edited by BaldJean - May 20 2019 at 09:04

A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta

Saperlipopette! wrote:

handwrist wrote:

Soft Machine's Third could be perfect, but Facelift is more noise than song, and it seems like filler right at the start.

Its probably not many that would pick Facelift as a personal favorite but for the album experience I certainly wouldn't want Third to be without it.

Good point. It might be because we are in the digital age and the first time I've listened to the album I actually got to Facelift last, instead of being the starter. That may have skewed my perception of it. It does have a slow start, but I might have been too harsh.

I do find TSG exciting though, even though I can understand why you would say the opposite. It is a very specific album with a specific 'world' - but to me that just makes it so iconic of proggery. It's a one off thing. A bit like ELP's version of Jerusalem, only this type of music can take something and turn it into something beautiful, daring and magical.