I know what I like: Trollheart's History of Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal

Unknown Soldier · 01-04-2015, 04:52 AM

Good luck with this and I'm sure you'll make this list as in-depth as possible. Any starting list should start with the Moody Blues (very important) Procul Harum, The Nice, Family, Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, United States of America and anything with Frank Zappa. All of these were either putting out psychedelic. concept, space rock or experimental and weird recordings that a lot of other prog artists built their sound around.

People normally qualify albums by people like the Beatles or the Beach Boys as well, when these two were heavily into their psychedelic phase, but to my mind they're not really essential listening to any prog list like the above are, I mean you can't listen to everybody.

Trollheart · 01-04-2015, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Good luck with this and I'm sure you'll make this list as in-depth as possible. Any starting list should start with the Moody Blues (very important) Procul Harum, The Nice, Family, Pink Floyd, Captain Beefheart, United States of America and anything with Frank Zappa. All of these were either putting out psychedelic. concept, space rock or experimental and weird recordings that a lot of other prog artists built their sound around.

People normally qualify albums by people like the Beatles or the Beach Boys as well, when these two were heavily into their psychedelic phase, but to my mind they're not really essential listening to any prog list like the above are, I mean you can't listen to everybody.

Yeah you've kind of put your finger on it there. I mean, you could argue a case for Elvis being progressive probably: anyone who moved on from the strictures of the music that was being played at the time could be said to be progressive in one form or another, but as you say then you'd end up listening to so much more than you need to.

For me, it's going to be bands who started the movement, influenced later bands or recorded important albums, as well as any perhaps forgotten ones that should be mentioned. Like your endeavour, you couldn't possibly cover all the bands that contributed, unless you were a vampire and immortal like me (oops! Forget you heard that!) or had an army of clones, so as I say I'll be guided by those books and stay pretty within the boundaries of what they consider to be the bands and artistes I should be concentrating on. Probably start around the mid/late sixties and move on from there.

The Batlord · 01-04-2015, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trollheart

Yeah you've kind of put your finger on it there. I mean, you could argue a case for Elvis being progressive probably: anyone who moved on from the strictures of the music that was being played at the time could be said to be progressive in one form or another, but as you say then you'd end up listening to so much more than you need to.

For me, it's going to be bands who started the movement, influenced later bands or recorded important albums, as well as any perhaps forgotten ones that should be mentioned. Like your endeavour, you couldn't possibly cover all the bands that contributed, unless you were a vampire and immortal like me (oops! Forget you heard that!) or had an army of clones, so as I say I'll be guided by those books and stay pretty within the boundaries of what they consider to be the bands and artistes I should be concentrating on. Probably start around the mid/late sixties and move on from there.

So you're going to be delving into more Captain Beefheart, then?

Anteater · 01-04-2015, 02:27 PM

I'll definitely be following this.