So I'll go with Grand Funk Railroad:  I'm Your Captain/Closer to Home (not sure if that's the correct name) strikes me as "proggy", and then of course Alice Cooper: been pounding away on Alice as of late...but I'll do it again - Unfinished Sweet is a great prog rock track, plus Hello Hurray, etc.

 

Todd Rundgren did a few albums which I think would have great appeal to open-minded prog fans. Not just the Utopia stuff, but 'A Wizard A True Star', which is an hour long trip (being the operative word) through various styles. There's heavy rock, psychedelia, soul, torch ballads and electronic experimentation. Prog fans would be satiated by 'Zen Archer', the whacked-out instrumental 'Flamingo' and 'International Feel'. The double album 'Todd' goes even further with the musical cross-breeding. 'Initiation' was a step too far for me when I last heard it, with its 36 minute synth-fest 'A Treatise On Cosmic Fire', but again, I dare say some prog fans would love it. His work on Meat Loaf's 'Bat Out Of Hell' was exceptional too, IMHO- the title track has some proggy moments, IMHO.

 

Phil Collins' album 'Face Value' has two very nice pieces of Weather Report-style ('Black Market'/'Heavy Weather' era) jazz rock, IMHO, in 'Droned'/'Hand In Hand'. His lengthy song 'Colours' from 'But Seriously' was pretty good too, I seem to recall, culminating in a terrific drum duet between him and Chester Thompson.

 

Check out Budgie's album 'Never Turn Your Back On A Friend'. A classic heavy rock album with a Roger Dean cover, and the epic 'Parents' is quite proggy, IMHO.

 

Paul McCartney's latest album 'Memory Almost Full' has its moments. Sure, we're not talking 'Close To The Edge'-style symphonic splendour, BUT the second half of the album was intended as a conceptual piece with several interlinking songs. The dramatic 'House Of Wax' in particular is one of his best tracks ever, IMHO, and its atmosphere has a certain proggy feel to it. A few reviews I saw picked up on this. The off-kilter art pop of 'Mr Bellamy' and 'Vintage Clothes' might be of interest, too.

 

I'll namedrop two albums by bands generally considered 'indie', Spiritualised and Mansun. Spiritualised's 'Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space' and Mansun's 'Six' are very ambitious, detailed and complex albums which did very well sales-wise too. Although the bands (like Radiohead) might well say otherwise (haven't read interviews with them though) might argue otherwise, I hear strong prog/psych influences in both albums. Nowadays, far too many British indie acts seem to have no more ambition than to go from copying The Libertines to copying Gang Of Four instead, but these albums might surprise you. I think 'Ladies And Gentlemen...' might appeal to fans of 'OK Computer' and 'Six' might be of some appeal to Coheed And Cambria/Mars Volta fans, IMHO of course.

 

Anyone ever played Van Morrison's 'Almost Independence Day' against Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here'? There is a definite similarity, and though IMHO it's perhaps an unconscious one, Van's song was a few years earlier. Van's gorgeous epic 'When Heart Is Open' from his maligned (but I think it has some of his best work ever and certainly was a heck of a lot more ambitious than most of his work over the last ten years or so) 'Common One' album reminds me very much of Miles Davis' 'In A Silent Way'. And there's a very nice New Age-style instrumental called 'Scandinavia' from his album 'Beautiful Vision'.

 

As for Toto, I was told that 'Hydra' was quite proggy but all I heard was a very bland, watered down Steely Dan type album. However, their latest effort 'Falling In Between' has some proggy moments, such as the twisty-turny title track and 'Hooked', which features none other than Ian Anderson on flute.

 

As for Elton John, I very much agree on 'Funeral For A Friend'. I would also nominate the doomy 'Sixty Years On' and maybe even 'Grey Seal', one version of which has Rick Wakeman on mellotron, I believe.

 

The Grateful Dead's album 'Blues For Allah' might be relevant here too. I'm not really that big a Dead fan, BUT the 2nd side of this album is quite progressive in overall sound, IMHO. There's a very nice jazzy instrumental called 'King Solomon's Marbles' on the first side, too.

 

Oh, and it's nice to see Elton John come up...Funeral/Love Lies Bleedin is stunning compared to what Elton was usually doing at the time and begs the question - what else was he capable of?  A bit of trivia, the synth on that track was played by David Hentschel, who would go on to produce for Genesis not long after...and as to the mellotron on Grey Seal, it was actually Elton himself playing it, not Rick Wakeman iirc, and there's also some tron featured on This Song Has No Title and more clearly, his top 40 hits Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me and Daniel (I'd always assumed those were 'real' flutes).

 

 Whats the difference between Tommy and the movie soundtrack i own the album and film and it's to much endurance to watch the movie again to find out lol I'm guess its the actors singing?

1)1969 - "Tommy" as an original album by The Who (Track Records)

 

2) 1972 -  "Tommy (The Who)"  the album performed by LSO Chamber Choir & Guest Soloists (A&M Records)

 

3) 1975 - Polydor Records issued "Tommy" the movie soundtrack, performed by The Who and  various musicians as Tony Newman, Chris Stainton, Nicky Hopkins, Alan Ross,  Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood, Elton John.....etc. btw, Pete Townshend play ARP Synthesizer and keyboards (as some of guitars as well).

 

EDIT: imho, some songs ( for example, "Amazing Journey", "Sparks", or  "Cousin Kevin") from the movie soundtrack are better  than on original album, and 100% Prog.

 

 

David Bowie's Cygnet Committee - a very vocal oriented song, so not a lot of room over the 9 1/2 minutes for a lot of instrumental fireworks (think Battle of Epping Forest) but enough interesting changes and some great lyrics make it a very proggy 9 1/2 moments.  While on the topic of Bowie, he also had some very nice symphonic sounding arrangements to songs like Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud, Life on Mars? and of course there were his ambient electronic excursions in the Berlin trilogy.

 

Blue Oyster Cult's album Imaginos - Their proggiest and heaviest effort.

 

Many of Queen's early albums had a lot of proggy moments - All of Queen II, most of Queen, The Prophet's Song, Bohemian Rhapsody, etc. 

 

Some Fleetwood Mac stuff like Future Games, Woman of 1000 Years, some of the stuff off of Tusk and their last album Say You Will, as well as the Lindsay Buckingham solo album Go Insane.

 

For some reason the Eagles' song The Last Resort always struck me as kind of proggy. 

 

The Talking Heads had an 80's Crimson feel to them without the instrumental noodling, before the 80's version of Crimson ever existed.  Maybe because Belew played with them early on.

 

And a lot of early 80's new wave had a lot in common with Roxy Music.   

The follow-up, Six, is described on Wiki as "The album was a suite of connected song segments, ranging from the musically intricate to the plain weird". This review from 1998 gives some indication of Six's prog credentials: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/keith.dumble/hopper/mansun_six.html - http://web.ukonline.co.uk/keith.dumble/hopper/mansun_six.html

 

i agree, i prefer that version of Sally Simpson, with Eric Clapton on guitar. Eyesight to The Blind the soundtrack version too - great track! 

also, his "Lifehouse Chronicles", 6 CDs set, should be mentioned. 

 

I heard about this album first in a Classic Rock article with Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree picking his 20 favourite British albums. This one cropped up and I was suitably intrigued by his description of it (and the fact the legendary Tom Baker is on it too!).