Thanks for that. I do like King Crimson. Deep Purple is my favourite band (for reasons that are hard to define) but my listening tastes run through Soft Machine, Yes, Crimson, etc... basically anybody who writes songs with a bit of complexity and virtuosity (dare I say intelligence?).

I'm not a real fan of saxophones, though. Not in any type of music -- it's something about the sound. But maybe I'll get hold of one of the budget-price VDGG CDs and see what I think.

So this must be your nirvana?

Ah, Time and a Word.  The one that had to be hidden in the same place as as Electric Ladyland in case yer mum looked too closely at the artwork.  I remember liking that one, Ron, but that was before The Yes Album, wasn't it?


I wouldn't want to comment on other people's preferences, Ian, but I didn't last to the end of the first clip and I'm pretty confident after 30-odd years that it's not going to grow on me!



No thanks.  While I have an idea of the historical significance of the Pistols I draw the line at listening to them.  I washed it away with a couple of tracks from my latest nostalgia-driven purchase, Argus.  Interesting that the two Wishbone Ash albums commonly found in the shops today (out of 20-odd studio albums by a band that's still going - with, obviously, a different line-up) are the same two I had in my collection 35 years ago (Pilgrimage and Argus).


Not really comparing like with like, though, are you?  Frankly I can't think of anything much more boring than listening to a succession of two-minute rock'n'roll ditties equivalent to the length of Tales from Topographic Oceans (Strauss waltzes maybe?).  But Swan_Knight's point was that prog rock was attempting to extend the scope of the genre and deserves credit for it.  I agree that they deserve credit for the attempt but I feel it was a failure, or at least a dead end.  We know, however, that Berry, Holly etc never attempted anything on that scale and there's not much evidence that I know of that they could have done so had they so wished.

The scope of this thread seems to have broadened, so we're now discussing prog 'toute entiere' - and a good thing, too!

OK, Yes - a lot of people make the point that Anderson's lyrics are bollocks.  True, if your requirements are that song lyrics make sense and follow some kind of structured pattern.  Someone once remarked, though, that J.A. uses words not for their meanings but for their sound....creating a complement to the melody and the instrumentation.  Approach Yes in this way and you'll be less 'thrown' by the lyrical content (for a very good example of what I mean, listen to 'Siberian Khattru' off 1972's 'Close To The Edge').

Gentle Giant - they were a great prog band.  I'm slowly exploring their ouevre at the moment - 'Octopus' (1973) contains some truly gorgeous melodies and mind-blowing playing.  And they could replicate it all live, as the live album 'Playing The Fool' demonstrates.  I've heard that 'In A Glass House' is rated as their best album by many, but I've never heard it and the current CD issue is not supposed to be that good (does Ron know any different?).  Leastways, I think sound quality is tremdously important in prog - I don't buy anything that hasn't been digitally remastered from the original tapes! 

ELP - the first side of 'Tarkus' I'd rate as superb.  Some really stunning melodies on there and some great playing; the second side lets it down somewhat and I think ELP struggled to produce a consistently strong album ('Brain Salad Sugery', probably their strongest, is let down by a a couple of lapses of taste).

I disagree with the view that prog reached a dead end and with the view that punk 'killed' it.  Punk was merely recidivism - returning popular music to the amateurish spirit of its early days, when the philosophy was that 'anyone' could play, regardless of ability.  I find most UK punk unlistenable (the US beast was a different proposition - more intelligent and less into heritage-trashing) and that includes the Sex Pistols and their miserable 39-minute excuse for an album.  Interestingly, VDGG was the only band that got punk approval and John Lydon was a big fan of them and of Peter Hammill's solo work.   

  But.... there are other examples of bands where a dominant vocalist's style permeates the others: it certainly happened with Queen, and to a certain extent with Genesis, too. And Anderson's is a very inviting voice, with just a slight fruity catch underlying the purity.


Ah, but which of the current CD issues, SK? The rights are held jointly, but there are two separate reissue programmes going on, and so parallel releases, one in the States and one here, as the US Amazon site will testify:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=Gentle+giant+glass+house&x=0&y=0

I'm torn between Octopus, Glass House, Free Hand and Interview when it comes to a favourite GG album, though On Reflection, the rock fugue from Free Hand still leaves me open-mouthed. Doing it a the studio with multi tracking is one thing: taking it out on the road, in a slightly different, but none the less complex arrangement would be just foolhardy for most bands....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5nBTvwYEww

My LP copy of Glass House was bought within the first week of issue, SK: my CD is the Terrapin Trucking/Road Goes on Forever first CD release, with the over-printed front replicating the cut-out and inlay of the original sleeve. Most of the rest have come from diverse sources, some of them twice, mainly by design: the original Playing the Fool CD was missing a track, there's a glitch at the start of the title track of the first release of Acquiring the Taste. One duplication was an extremely fortunate mistake: I was on the road solidly from March 1990 for two years, during which time I started losing track of what I'd bought, simply because I was just going home and dumping stuff off whenever the tour took me close enough without being able to play it. GG titles on CD were never easy to find, so I always bought whatever I saw, unless I knew I had it already. At the end of the tour, I found I'd bought Free Hand twice, and although I'd intended to pass one of the copies on to a friend, it never quite happened.

Years later someone alerted me to the Gentle Giant site, and there I learned that there was a rare rogue Canadian release of the album which had mistakenly included alternative takes of a couple of the numbers, but was never authorised. I looked at the copy I'd been playing, and knew that it was exactly as per the LP: the second copy, still sealed, had a 'Made in Canada' sticker on the wrapping. Opening it, checking the disc ident. code and most importantly playing it confirmed that it was indeed one of these different masters.

And Robert Fripp was known to guest on the albums of the famously guitarless VdGG.  I meant to mention this when IRF said he was a King Crimson (was going to be lazy there and type KC, but we don't want the Sunshine Band involved in a prog rock thread, do we?) fan and was thinking of giving VdGG a go.  I'm sure google can help identify the albums with Fripp on them.  I'm pretty sure H to He and Pawn Hearts qualify.