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If it isn’t pop or blues it must be progressive

When I went into the record shop on the bridge in Frome with my pocket money they had one rack of records about 6 foot long and 3 foot deep. That one rack encompassed the total world of music, this was Spotify in plywood. Classical was a third and my parents music occupied another third, as in James Last, Glen Miller and Frank Sinatra. The remaining 2 racks one was pop which was dominated by the Beatles, Stones, Lulu, Manfred Man and Tom Jones. The last remaining section was Progressive Music and it held about 30 albums. This was not censorship rather than responding to the local demand which was at best nascent.

At that very moment, 1968, the world of popular music had changed for ever and Lulu and Tom Jones became consigned into musical footnotes. The Beatles had tuned out and turned on, returning from their group sojourn in India they released the White Album without a pop song to be found anywhere. Riots in Paris for most of May took the last shine off the remnants of the feelings of the previous summers of love. The Beatles sang about Revolution, the Stones were singing about Street Fighting Man. Pink Floyd were getting concerned about Syd Barret’s ability to distinguish between reality and his increasingly disturbed visions and invited Dave Gilmour to join them on guitar. The War in Viet Nam was ripping the US apart and the Doors were upsetting people and Zappa and the Mothers were taking the piss out of Sgt Peppers’ Lonely Heartsclub Band and hippiedom in general.

So progressive rock, just what is it? It’s firstly a British thing originally. The bridge between the blues rock of the mid-late 60s’, the pop psychedelia of the Stones, Beatles, Who and punk and new wave. It was a move from 2 minute 30 second pop songs, intended to break an act to the general music audience on the radio. It was serious, sometimes ridiculously pompously serious. It was about musicianship and demonstrating competence and that came out of the blues rock of Cream, Fleetwood Mac and Jethro Tull. It was inspired by the explosion in sci-fi and fantasy. Lord of the Rings had just taken off and wizards were cool. It incorporated longer and developing themes, sometimes orchestral in scope and pretension and at some point included that easy target for ridicule, the rock opera,

Progressive music was to be found in the EMI sub-label Harvest Records, Charisma and Island Records, later it found a home at Virgin Records, which started its role by providing second hand aircraft seats and headphones for the aficionado to sample their albums before purchasing. A much cooler option than standing in sound booths in the more stodgy mainstream record stores. As I was earning 3 shillings an hour back then stacking shelves at the Spar grocery store or cleaning coaches I invested in samplers, Island produced some classics like Bumpers, El-Pea and the one that I to this day know every word to every song “Nice Enough To Eat”. One song per artist and 6 songs a side, the sampler gave the young ingenue a perfect entree into the genre, even the Decca series “World of” including “The World of Progressive Rock-Wowie Zowie” which introduced my 13 year old self to Genesis, but looking back now at the tracklist its heavy on blues rock with Keef Hartley Band, Savoy Brown and John Mayall so not a lot of what we now think of as progressive music.

Prog Rock disappeared up its own ass in a cloud of dry ice in the mid-70’s and stayed there until it died 10 years later. However, in that period of 68-76 there was an explosion of creativity that took music to new places, longer stretch outs, solos, melanges of musical genres in one song. This list is personal and displays clearly my bias and dislike of Yes, ELO and the Gentle Giant/VDGG fringe. It also demonstrates my bias for the guitar over synths, but electronic music did find a place in my heart later so I am not completely anti keyboards, just anti Rick Wakeman I suppose.

There has been in recent years a couple of books addressing our fascination with prog, including one that lists 250 albums. If you are interested the list and details are here.. I tend to agree with their inclusion of lots of Yes, ELP, Caravan, Focus, PFM, Traffic and Nice but I just cannot get too excited about the music and some of it frankly, has not aged well. I like that they include Curved Air, Atomic Rooster, Family, Soft Machine and Faust, maybe I will get around to doing 11-20 as a way of paying tribute to them. I also find it strange to see a Prog list with the #1 album as Sergeant Pepper’s.

The 10 Prog Rock albums you must own on vinyl:

1. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – Genesis
2. Meddle – Pink Floyd
3. In the Wake of Poseidon – King Crimson
4. Here come the Warm Jets – Eno
5. Thick as a Brick – Jethro Tull
6. Electric Ladyland -Jim Hendrix Experience
7. Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
8. Crime of the Century – Super Tramp
9. Quadrophenia – The Who
10. Ege Bamyasi – CAN

There are some newer bands who are making fun progressive rock. In that I mean they are not simply trying to be an updated Rush or Yes but happy to write complex songs with good instrumentation, obviously to qualify you need to have the odd guitar solo and some weird imagery.

I would recommend:

The Osees (formerly The Oh Sees): Orc – see a little bit of Tolkein after all these years….

Post-Animal: Forward Motion Godyssey how prog is that for a name!

Ryley Walker: Course in Fable but check out Golden Sings That Have Been Sung from 2016, which includes the Prog staple, a very long live version of a song – Sullen Mind clocking in at 41 minutes