How Our Top 25 Studio Albums Change Day After Day

hmmmm....  how many people have you seen run screaming and cussing you for suggesting those albums to people. Like you I've spent a good many years kicking around prog forums and seeing how these new cats react to these albums as they discover them. Never really heard the kinds of reactions with those to those I can tell you.. I have seen many do so with YS.. that is why good reviewers.. the really good ones put a warning label on YS.  Never heard any particular need for that with those.  Heavy, dark? Sure they are.. but I think YS is considered and rightfully so to be the king of that.. by a good country mile... said best by myself.. it is 40 minutes of being beat over the head by a 2x4.. then having your head ripped completely off as a parting gift. It isn't just dark and heavy.. the intensity of it. It never really lets up for the whole album which is why I consider it a bit too monochromatic to be considered the best prog album ever made as some of the old school progheads have done.

and yeah man.. tastes are tastes.. nothing to be done about that.  It is why I waged a long and bitter campaign, one of the few I actually lost, to not just have that list on the main page removed but also get rid of those stupid rating.. and in it's place and a more formal reasoned list of important and influential albums. A list to be done by the people who know more than just the groups they like. My thought was to have the genre teams and the collabs do it.  That job meant you had to listen to all kinds of stuff, not just what you like, and to be a collab... at least back in the day... you had to know your sh*t about prog, and music in general.

Part of why I wanted to remove ratings was the inconsistency of it. Some like myself.. rated albums based on a objective scale. Most throw 5 stars at an album they like and that is that.  No problem with that.. but it isn't exactly what the whole ratings system was intended to do..... or specifically worded to convey. Thus you go reviews like my infamous DT review that was voted the single greatest PA's review ever done.. god almighty did I stir up a sh*t storm. Went all the way to the admin team to decide whether to delete it but at least they were smart enough to see what I was doing... a poke in the eye at the system and its failings.

I think itìs not easy to separate the music you like from the music you consider great. In some cases, I love listening to certain records while considering them not great, because they give me relax or emotions that I am looking for at that moment. Often they are records that I listen to with ease, which do not require me a great intellectual commitment. Yes, for example, I listen to them often and easily, and I talk about their three golden albums: Yes Album - Fragile - Close to the Edge. I can say that I like to listen to them, and it relaxes me, it intrigues me the sound and their virtuosity, but I consider them an easy music, almost easy listening within prog, basically the matrix of their sound is pop. So they dont reach five stars in my personal ranking. 

Instead I give 5 stars to Buckely's Starsailor but I don't listen often to it: I have to be in the mood to do it. It seems to me more difficult music. Pawn Hearts is equally difficult, while The Least We Can Do is easier because it has more linear songs... and yet both make me always want to listen to them and make me literally enjoy, I feel pleasure listening to them, an enjoyment both emotional strong (which I do not have with Yes, apart from feeling serenity and cheerfulness) and if I have to evaluate them, as I have done these days, my rating is 10, because I have convinced myself that they put together greatness of composition and arrangement and execution with emotional and intellectual involvement. All this in a word I call beauty. 

An artwork is beautiful or ugly, with all the nuances in between. An aesthetic judgment of an artwork must be based on beauty. Now, you say an objective judgment instead. What is objective judgment? I dont know... but if I think, the only one I can consider objective is beauty. If you judge the quality of an artwork  which is perhaps what you call greatnessm maybe you judge the beauty. Or you judge the historical importance of a work, and this does not always go hand in hand with beauty, you can see it in architecture, in painting, literature, in cinema: some works that have represented fundamental steps in those arts and that are remembered by many, they are historically imploded but not beautiful, while some that are considered beautiful, often only by connoisseurs, or by the minority of people, are not so important historically. 

micky wrote: Thus you go reviews like my infamous DT review that was voted the single greatest PA's review ever done.. god almighty did I stir up a sh*t storm. Went all the way to the admin team to decide whether to delete it but at least they were smart enough to see what I was doing... a poke in the eye at the system and its failings. Objectively. Sure. That is what me and my guys were doing on another prog site before I got drafted to come work over here. Guess we were doing good work haha.

Guess you are talking about your review on Dream Theater, this one:

http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=117496

My question is: in your opinion, from an objective point of view, what should be the rating of that album? 

Bacamarte - Depois Do Fim

Camel - Mirage

Dream Theater - Images and Words

Echolyn - As the World

Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Fates Warning - Parallels

Genesis - Foxtrot

Gentle Giant - Three Friends

Steve Hackett - Voyage of the Acolyte

Haken - Affinity

Allan Holdsworth - Metal Fatigue

Itoiz - Ezekiel

Jethro Tull - Aqualung 

Kansas - Leftoverture

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic

Lord Only - Fear and Trembling

Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed

Rush - Moving Pictures

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

Premiata Forneria Marconi - Per Un Amico

Soft Machine - Third

Spock's Beard - The Light

Transatlantic - Bridge Across Forever

U.K. - U.K.

Yes - Close to the Edge

I got it down to 26 fairly easily, but had a really rough time making that last cut.  The last cut was Steve Hillage - Fish Rising.  

This is really hard for me ... and I won't even try it ... basically, it would not be in my collection if I did not love it, and that means my numbers would be 1500 LP's and 2500 CD's ... and I started with "imports" in 1971 and 1972 to give you an idea how far, and was into the TD/KS schools before just about anyone else ... with everything that was put out ... some of which are still in my top list, if I had one ... 

I just don't see choosing one Popol Vuh album over another. Or a KS album over another. Or a TD album over another ... not to mention that the CD's I can't get from KS (Works)  1 and 2), also has some of the prettiest stuff that will NEVER GET RELEASED ... and make some albums seem "overdone" and "over cooked", by comparison!

There's just too much ... and I can not choose, although I can easily tell you that the band I come back to the most is ... yeah, you know it ... Amon Duul 2. Yeah, that's right ... the one that only a handful of folks considered ... in this thread. 

IF, you count the number of "famous" bands, and their commerciality and selling appeal through the media, everyone's list here would look miserable and sad. It's just too much fame and fortune for this thread for me to enjoy properly!