Listenin' to Proto-Prog and Conversation

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Svetonio, Oct 28, 2019.

  1. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    Proto-Prog is a tag originated by the record dealers in the mid-Seventies. They put on their mailing lists once again the heavy-rock albums from the late 60s /early 70s, that were "proggy" & Hammond organ driven, and tagged them as *Proto-Prog*; thus, the term implies the heavy-rock albums like In Rock by Deep Purple, ...Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble... by Uriah Heep, As Your Mind Flies by Rare Bird and so on.

    Proto-Prog is a heavy-rock that features Hammond organ as a general rule, i.e. if an album doesn't feature Hammond organ and / or feature a synthesizer, it's not Proto-Prog.

    I'd like to start with this





    This thread is inspired by Listenin' to Prog and Conversation the thread.
     
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  2. hugo.polo

    hugo.polo Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY
    Hmm I thought of proto-prog was stuff like Procol Harum, The Moody Blues and The Nice?
     
  3. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    So... Deep Purple were a prog rock band who became a proto-prog band. Hmmm.
     
  4. jeddy

    jeddy Forum Resident

    [​IMG]

    side two. "WHAT LOVE" suite

    1968
     
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  5. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    Alike the other English heavy-rock giants, Deep Purple were "progressive" at the time when they were a part of the undeground scene that in general was considered as "progressive" by the then audience and rock journlists.
     
  6. Michel_LeGrisbi

    Michel_LeGrisbi Far-Gone Accumulator ™

    "Proggy" as a sound, not "Progressive" in terms of songwriting then.
     
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  7. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    The Nice were Progressive rock band par excellance, not a heavy-rock band that featured "greasy" Hammond organ and therefore The Nice couldn't being tagged "proto-prog" by the records dealers in the mid-Seventies. On the contrary, they were regarded as the pioneers of Prog Rock (i.e."Symphonic rock" as it was called back then).
    Procol Harum were crossover (though, never being heavy-rock and hence they had nothing to do with "proto-prog" tag), but they released that massively successful Bach-influenced #1 single Whiter Shade Of Pale that was regarded as an important "progressive rock" song back in the day. Almost the same story is with The Moody Blues and their single Nights in White Satin (1967, Deram), a "classic" progressive rock ballad-like song that influenced many progressive artists at the end of the Sixties / early Seventies. However, none of The Moody Blues albums had that impact on the "progressive" movement as Nights in White Satin the song had.
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2019
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  8. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Serbia
    Rare Bird Beautiful Scarlet (live 1970)

     
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  9. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Uriah Heep Look At Yourself (Live at Budokan, 1973)

     
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  10. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Atomic Rooster Broken Wings (1970)

     
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  11. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Uriah Heep July Morning (from Live, 1973)

     
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  12. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Although "prot-prog" sound was actually British, some great stuff from Europe can be detected.

    Lucifer's Friend Ride In The Sky (1970)

     
  13. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    A guitar-less, heavy organ and awesome Soul-like singing on this "proto-prog" song by Pelevic from Opus from Belgrade.

    Opus Dolina Bisera (from Opus 1, 1975)

     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2019
  14. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    Iron Butterfly In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda (1968)

     
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  15. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Serbia
    Rare Earth Ma (1973)

     
  16. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    Collosseum Lost Angeles (from Live, 1971)

     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2019
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  17. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Indexi Hej ti (from s/t debut cassette, 1972, Bosnia and Herzegovina, former Yugoslavia)

     
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  18. Michel_LeGrisbi

    Michel_LeGrisbi Far-Gone Accumulator ™

    I've been getting more into Greenslade lately.....no guitars!

     
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  19. jay.dee

    jay.dee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Barcelona, Spain
    Ray Conniff Singers providing a blueprint in 1962 for future Renaissance albums. :)

     
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  20. Bassist

    Bassist Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Lone Star, initially a kind of Prog take on the Bad Company sound and then later more in the Rush / Zep pocket. One of the many bands lost in the a&r insanity of 1977. By all means ring in the new but this lot got dropped and the same label signed The Vibrators. If the label had hung on and developed them for another couple of years they could have cleaned up especially in America and Germany. I bet they kicked themselves when they saw what happened with the first couple of Foreigner records.

     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2019
  21. gja586

    gja586 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gogledd Cymru
    Not to derail the thread, but these are the types of groups I've always thought of as proto-prog, ie the late 60s predecessors of full-blown prog.

    FWIW, this is what Wikipedia says:

    Proto-prog - Wikipedia
     
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  22. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Deep Purple Exposition (from The Book Of Taliesyn, 1968)



     
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  23. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

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    Serbia
    Yu Grupa Nona (recorded live at 1971 Radio Belgrade session, released on 7-inch single, 1971)

     
  24. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    From that Wiki article:
    "(...) At the time, critics generally assumed King Crimson's album In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) to be the logical extension and development of late 1960s proto-progressive rock exemplified by the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles.[9] According to Macan, the album may be the most influential to progressive rock for crystallizing the music of earlier "proto-progressive bands ... into a distinctive, immediately recognizable style".[10] He distinguishes 1970s "classic" prog from late 1960s proto-prog by the conscious rejection of psychedelic rock elements, which proto-progressive bands continued to support.[1] (...)"

    Let's put aside the fact that the term "proto-progressive" didn't exist before the mid-1970s when the records dealers coined the term for their mailing lists just to mark the heavy-rock albums that feature Hammond organ, but what Mr Macan wrote is a nonsense due to the fact that at least five "full-blown prog" albums were already released before In the Court of the Crimson King was released in October 1969 - Family's Music In A Doll's House (1968) and Family Entertainment (released in March 1969), The Nice's Ars Longa Vita Brevis (1968), Nice (released in September 1969) and the Soft Machine's Volume Two (released in September 1969).
    Also, Pink Floyd couldn't have been regarded as "proto-prog" because they were regarded as a Psychedelic rock band back in the day.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2019
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  25. Svetonio

    Svetonio Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Serbia
    p.s. All that concept of Mr Macay' "proto-prog" thing is wrong because it's based on a myth that In the Court of the Crimson King is "the first prog album ever recorded", which isn't. The similar untrue story about "proto-prog", you can find at Progarchives' "proto-prog explanation" page. Very similar to Macan's indeed, although they listed the Family as "Eclectic Prog" band, what for their standards is "full-blown prog" nothing less than their "Symphonic prog" category (and with that, they by themselves confirmed that they are were wrong when they wrote that ItCotCK is "the first prog album ever"). Both versions, Mr Macan and the Progarchives' 'influential members' made a big mess, and they know it, but some people never want to accept that everybody can make a mistake.
    "Progressive music", as people were called it back then, was occured in psychedelic zeitgeist of the Swinging London and its underground scene. It's 1967. And as the then new genre, "progressive music" was born in full of its lushness as the music from the undergound scene - it wouldn't have to wait to become a part of the then mainstream that being lush enough to be called "full-blown"; not many albums were released yet, what is perfectly normal, but our beloved genre was developed, defined and being self-conscious before In The Court of the Crimson King was released in October 1969; i.e. nothing is literaly "proto-prog" - a song is prog or it is not.



    It doesn't matter that the Moody Blues never released an album that is "full-blown prog" (they were an Art Rock band actually), because Nights In White Satin (1967) is just an ingenious, ballad-like, melancholic, haunting and dreamy i.e. not "psychedelic" but the "progressive" genre-defining, full-blown PROG song - nothing less "progressive" than similar ballad-like prog songs recorded later, like Epitaph and such. Actually, there weren't only the important full-length albums in the 60s but there also were some very important singles.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2019
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