Progressive Music - Rate Your Top 5

[sirdilznik]

I'll go ahead and admit it, I'm a HUGE fan of Progressive Music. And that not only entail what most people associate with Progressive; Progressive Rock, but other musical genres as well (Rock, Metal, Trance, Breaks, etc...)

Here are my top 5 Progressive Albums Of All Time:

1) Pink Floyd ~ The Wall - It's hard to argue against this classic. While it isn't quite as concise as some of the others on this list, the abstract , imaginative storyline is nothing short of mind-nimbinng.

2) Queensryche ~ Operation Mindcrime - The most concise and focused Prog record ever. The story enfolds clearly and obviously while still being able to leave you in suspense and to tug at your heartstrings.

3) Genesis ~ Selling England By The Pound - Sadly Genesis seems to be the forgotten great Prog Band. The culmination of their terrific prog skills just before they began to fade away/sell out was the masterpiece known as "Selling England By The Pound".

4) Yes ~ Close To The Edge - Yes's quintessential album, despite the fact that they had several other amazing albums. This album only includes 3 tracks, but they're all quite long, and more importantly, freakin' amazing!

5) Rush ~ 2112 - While the entilre album is not progressive the first track, in all it's glory, is. I hate to put an album up on this list based onb a single song, but when that song has a half-dozen or so parts and happens to be one of the greatest progressive songs ever composed, and then some. Yeah I can't disqualify it from the Top 5 List.


So what are your thoughts? Agree or disagree with my Top 5? Have your own? Post it here. This is where all Prog should be gathered.

[phaedrus]

You want me to pick? I love progressive music. It's my favorite, the more complicated, the better. I'm much more into the hard rock and metal ends of it, but it's all so very good.

Top five, eh? You don't happen to own a store called "Championship Vinyl" do you? So, in no particular order, since I cannot choose, my favorites off of my shelf:

Dream Theater - Anything of theirs, really. I've got Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence on my shelf, but all of their stuff is over-the-top, virtuoso awesomeness. This is a band that I need more of.

Tool ~ Aenima - Technical, heavy, beautiful all the way through and it ends with an epic 13 minute mind-@!#$%!. It's prog.

Queensryche ~ Operation Mindcrime - Seconded.

The Dillinger Escape Plan with Mike Patton ~ irony is a dead scene - 20 minutes of neck-snapping chaos. There are rumors that they use dice to pick their time signatures. This EP makes that seem highly plausible. It also includes an excellent cover of Come to Daddy.

Devin Townsend ~ Ziltoid the Omniscient - If you read the "favorite music thread" you knew this was coming. It's Devin Townsend! It's his signature Wall-of-Sound ambient metal applied to a concept album about a fourth dimensional alien who needs coffee to be able to travel through time, and conquers the earth to get our supply. Did I mention there was a puppet show that accompanied this album? Oh, no? Well, there is. Technical metal? B-theater scifi concept album? This is total nerd-prog. The story gets a little scattered during and after N9 (track 6), and is therefore not focused like Operation Mindcrime, but the sheer silliness of it more than holds the work together. That and Devin's unmatched song-writing ability. I love ZTO. Ok, maybe this one is my favorite. Don't ask me to figure out which one gets the number two slot.

[phaedrus]

Oh, and sirdilznik, definitely a good list, I hadn't known that Genesis had a prog period (I'll have to go check out Selling England By The Pound). No one can argue with Yes or Floyd -- both are excellent, even if they aren't in my top five. (And obviously, I put Operation Mindcrime in my own list...)

[Evnissyen]

Not so sure Pink Floyd should really be considered prog rock. It's sort of like calling Bauhaus or The Cure goth. The very concept of Pink Floyd predates prog and made prog possible, but it was informed by psychedelia and was at it's heart a psychedelic band even if it did go on to become something else... what it became I'm not at all sure I can put a label on, but I wouldn't call it prog.

But... if I had to pick my favorite Pink Floyd records... at the top I guess would be Ummagumma, then I guess Atom Heart Mother & More, then maybe Piper & Saucerful, then the early singles: Relics & Dark Side of the Moo (yes, Moo, not Moon) then Obscured by Clouds & Meddle... I think that goes through all their early records. Then there's a sort of asteroid belt I have to pass through and only then do I get to Animals, then Dark Side of the Moon, and finally Wish You Were Here.

The Wall wouldn't even be on the list, sorry. It's a well-performed record, very carefully played . . . but I don't know, I don't find it extraordinarily moving. I think it was too carefully thought-out. By then: the freedom of letting the music tell you where to go was nearly completely gone from the minds of Gilmour and Waters.

I'll take Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict over Comfortably Numb anyday. Or, for that matter, the Ummagumma version of Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun over the entire record Dark Side of the Moon . . . or, for that matter, Echoes (1971) (especially the Live from Pompeii (1972) version) over everything they did afterward.

Sorry, I just had to say that... I don't like Pink Floyd being camped in with progressive rock.

I'll get out of the way, now.

[Lhoric]

Short on time, as always, but had to post:

Yes - Close to the Edge! I wore out my 8 track player on this back in the day.

Goblin - Profondo Russo and/or Suspiria.

There's some homework for you young'uns. Now git!

[phaedrus]

Not so sure Pink Floyd should really be considered prog rock.

I would argue just the opposite. I may like more contemporary prog metal better, but Pink Floyd is the Ur Prog Rock band. They are definitely part of the rock'n'roll movement, and very much part of (if not the defining band in) the psychedelic rock subgenre. However, prog is kind of a big-tent movement and includes bands from all sorts of rock subgenres. IMO, it just means highly complex music that diverges from traditional pop structure (verse-chorus-verse-bridge stuff). Often, the bands are into complexity for complexity's sake. In that respect, Pink Floyd is one of the original prog bands. Even if they didn't think of themselves in those terms, they touched off a movement, and a lot of other bands have brought the prog label into a lot of different areas of rock. Yes is very grounded in the same 60s rock'n'roll as Pink Floyd, but they take it to its extreme. Dream Theater plays virtuoso 80s metal. The Dillinger Escape Plan brings a highly technical, wilds-of-music-theory edge to metalcore--and they play that music better, faster and louder than any other bands.

But all of this starts in the 60s, and Pink Floyd is one of the original bands pushing the boundaries of rock'n'roll songwriting.

[sirdilznik]

@phaedrus - props for mentioning Devin Townsend - Ziltoid. Amazing stuff. As far as Genesis goes they were one of the premier prog bands of the early to mid 70s while Peter Gabriel was still their front man. Selling England By The Pound in my mind was their masterpiece. Just an amazing album. Also Six Degrees is my second favorite Dream Theater album of all time, terrific stuff. I'm a big fan of Tool and Aenima is definitely their masterpiece it just didn't make my top 5. Great album though with about 4 or 5 ridiculously amazing tracks. Some of the "filler" tracks and interludes didn't do it for me though which is what kept them off my list.

@Evnissyen - Floyd was definitely, most absolutely prog, especially in their early years (mostly following the Syd Barrett days but also during). In many ways Floyd both defined and pushed the boundaries of prog.

I'm also going to throw King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King out there. It just feels wrong to talk about prog without mentioning the almighty King Crimson.