Your Prog Rock Hot Takes

Gentle Giant is a 'prog badge' thing. Pay homage or hand in the badge. Yep not a very 'enjoyable' band, ultimate prog nerd band if ever there was!

VDGG are a totally off the scale band. Probably the best composed crafted prog of the lot but you have to get past Hammill's vocals! 

That's true, but I've only listened to the album twice so far. 

Genesis - you can compare early Genesis to Supertramp , that's my point. Even Banks wasn't happy that Genesis were lumped in with the likes of ELP and Yes. Essentially Genesis were skilled song writers who knew how to extend songs. ELP and Yes were more 'technical'. I realise just how subjective this may be but my opinion is that SEBTP is not that far removed from Crime Of The Century, just a bit quirkier perhaps. Yes I would compare ATTWT with Breakfast In America. (love both)

Probably true on Canterbury. I was 'fishing' a bit. My favourite album of the year is Zopp's Dominion and apparently they are Caravan 'clones'. Obviously I wouldn't know!

Camel - I actually like The Snow Goose but if honestly they hadn't done that then I wouldn't care about them . I see them as a second generation prog band that added very little to what had come before.

Don't see a lot of discussion about Gong and Soft Machine and I've been here a long time.

Tull - it's the other way round. Aqualung and TAAB are exceptional albums, I just can't see any other period being better.  Overall a great seventies band that didn't have any major peaks or troughs.

Rush - back in the day (75-77) I really didn't like them and wasn't alone. Tom Sawyer literally changed my mind about them totally although I did get a bit bored with their late 80's very early 90's synth pop period when the seemingly wanted to be The Police. Came back to them in the 90's when they started developing a harder edge again and were writing songs that actually meant something to me at the time (no other bands were doing that for me) . I don't remember them ever being called 'Prog metal' and in general no one sees them that way I think. There have been a lot of discussions about even when 'Metal' started although I suspect that Rainbow are more important in that regards. Rush were essentially a band for nerds to enjoy especially in the late seventies when punk was happening.

Marillion - bigging them up at the moment because themes they explored seem very relevant now and more than ever. I still like early Genesis but they get more and more dated by the minute. 

IMO.

Oh 'A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers' is amazing, that's why I didn't recommend it. Sadly, not everyone wants to listen to a track that long. I just recommended those other ones b/c they're shorter. 

 

As I see it, the only reason for not recommending "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" is its length (which is likely to be too long from her perspective). I think "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" has everything a Hammill fan would want, whereas no other tracks seem to have quite the range of expressiveness, as great as they are.

 

 

I actually don't agree. To me, the only justification for saying that Jazz fusion/jazz rock is not prog is that Jazz fusion/jazz rock is its own thing, with the view that prog is a small umbrella. Listening to something like "Imaginary Voyage", I hear the same sorts of things that I love that I do when listening to "Close to the Edge". In other words, I don't think there is a huge difference between Jazz fusion/jazz rock and Symphonic prog.

 

 

VDGG's album "Pawn Hearts" is a masterpiece, but their other recordings are not in the same league as this great album.

 

FIXED.