"Prog's crowning achievement" — Which LP is it?

Pawn Hearts
Brain Salad Surgery
Red
A Passion Play
The Power & The Glory
Relayer

... not bad, though I do say so myself!

 

How come one's favorite not be prog's crowning achievement. Is it even possible to be objective about it ? What if I posted it's Rick Wakeman's ¨6 Wives¨. It is to me !! So go ask the only reviewer I respect, Ed Rivadavia. Whatever he said, it'll be OK with me, whether I like it or not.

 

Relayer

 

LP's: Tales From Topographic Oceans

Ha.

 

Rush 2112

 

No, we just got over talking about how they are not prog.

Pink Floyd are, or they were a Psych band plain and simple. Look at album covers from the first album on. There is your clue.

 

Someone called Chris Squire's "Fish Out of Water" the Mona Lisa of prog! That was a good one.

 

Not necessarily my fav (I hate 'favourite this and that-stuff'), but I think Tales From Topographic Oceans covers all the necessary bases to bear the title.

 

I have been thinking recently that for my money it is The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

 

Well, I think there are two different questions here: One would be what is your personal favorite, as opposed to what do you think the consensus favorite is among fans more broadly? I just looked over on ProgArchives and they listed the top 5 most highly rated albums thusly:

1. Close to the Edge
2. Selling England By The Pound
3. Thick As A Brick
4. Wish You Were Here
5. In the Court of the Crimson King

These seem like pretty solid choices for the consensus favorites, though my own personal preferences don't necessarily align. I prefer The Lamb by Genesis and Larks' Tongues by KC, for example. It's hard to settle on just one. . .

 

For me, impossible to pick just one - so much great music, and I do love the genre (punk) that came to slay this genre (with some justification) just as much. Realizing that the category "Prog Rock" is more than a little slippery - here are my picks (in no particular order - just all great music);

Yessongs
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Brain Salad Surgery
In the Land of Grey and Pink
Leftoverture
Crime of the Century
2112
Larks Tongues in Aspic
Red
Future Days
Selling England by the Pound
Thick as a Brick
Fragile

 

In the Court of the Crimson King

 

My vote, too.

 

HA HA HA!! "WE" that's rich.

 

Since I think "Godbluff" is the greatest record ever done by anyone ever, that would be my choice if I thought of them as "prog", even then. But I didn't and since I always thought these guys were I'm gonna throw a left-field vote for Strawbs's "Grave New World".

 

Another vote for Tales From Topographic Oceans.

Honorable mentions to Dark Side of the Moon (and yes, by God, Pink Floyd is "prog"!) and Thick As A Brick.

 

Yeah, it's pretty hard to pick just one album from *any* subgenre of rock/pop (metal, funk, prog soul, punk) and come up with the answer. No matter what you pick, you can't really encompass the terrain that any given genre covers. But it's hard to argue with most of the choices given thus far. Except for the bozo who selected Love Beach. I hope he was just kidding.

 

I'll go with Yes' final album

Heaven and Earth

The whole of Yes' career built toward that album so logically it's their crowning achievement.

 

This is the first time I've had this thought but most Pink Floyd has too much roots soul in it for me to consider them in the prog pantheon. I'm quite sure I don't know what I'm talking about but listening to CTTE as I write, sure there is some soul there; just not of the same variety. I tend to need a bit more analytical artifice I suppose when considering this question.

 

It ultimately becomes the old "Symphonic Prog" argument.
I don't think of Floyd as prog myself because it tends to lack the classical foundation/virtuosity generally expected from (Symphonic) Prog. But what the heck do I know?

 

One needs to go back to the UFO club in '66. It all becomes so clear and well clearly acid psychedelic.

 

I'd vote for Close to the Edge. Complex yet accessible.

 

Selling England By The Pound is quintessential prog, IMO.

 

Clearly more than I do!

 

Progressive rock, to me, can't be overly dependant upon the blues. The key words are overly dependant. It's hard to get away from it completely in rock, and even in Yes there are traces of those elements. Much of Steve Howe's guitar is straight-up rockabilly, and there was undoubtedly a soul element in some of the Bruford/Squire grooves ("Siberian Khatru" springs to mind immediately). In Floyd you hear it in Gilmour's guitar and in some of their cadences.

But both Floyd and Yes were pretty clearly doing the whole rock thing in a way that is pretty radically removed from the roots of rock music. They are using rock instrumentation and conventions to make music that is harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically far removed from traditional rock. And that's progressive rock in my book.

One of the interesting things about the whole movement is the variety of ways in which bands did this. You would never confuse Yes for Pink Floyd for Van der Graaf Generator for Genesis etc. I'm listening to Radiohead's new album right now, and they fit right in with this tradition.

I suppose I've always understood the term to be broader in scope than the way some people use it (interestingly, in my experience people who aren't into this kind of music tend to have the narrower definition, and those who are into it have the broader). YMMV