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Speaker 2move on to a category that you've called Progressosaurus Rex, UK division. In many ways, 1972 is also the high watermark for everything that we come to know of as progressive rock. Now, we might have also said that about 1973, but I think 1972, I think the evidence here will bear this out. Yeah. Because we are going to have to talk about at least one canonality. We're going to have to talk about an album here, because it is, I think it stands as the greatest example, the archetype of progressive rock, what we think of as progressive rock. I'm talking about Close to the Edge by Yes. And what I think is brilliant, another album I've had the honor and the pleasure to remix. In fact, just recently, I've done an Atmos mix of it as well. What is so incredible about this album for me, and maybe you'll agree with me, is that there are three. There are three very long pieces on this record, which are ridiculously eclectic. Yeah. A dissonance, melodic, experimental, accessible. And yet the architecture of the way these long pieces are structured is phenomenal. Close to the Edge, the title track, 18 Minutes, is a beautifully constructed piece of music, which has a logical flow. It has a series of themes, which really. It will reoccur in different ways throughout the piece, to the point that the end of the piece is a recapitulation of a theme from earlier in the piece, but in a very different context. And that's true of the whole piece. The whole piece is essentially drawn from two or three basic melodic musical ideas, but always reoccurring in a different way, in a different context. The rhythm will be different. The bass part will be different. It'll be shifted to another key. It'll be. It'll be. It'll be. It'll be an extra harmony vocal. The vocal line will be shifted slightly. And that's why I think the side one of Close to the Edge, for me, is, probably along with Echoes by Pink Floyd, the perfect progressive rock, side long, epic, because of its architecture, because of its structure. It's structured like a beautifully constructed piece of pop music. It just happens to be 18 Minutes long. Would you agree with me on that, Tim?
Speaker 3Yeah. And I agree that it might actually be, if we can use such. The apotheosis of progressive rock. Good word. And it is. But what I think is curious about Close to the Edge, because it's, again, it's a very passionate, messy, intense record, but it pulls together. As you said, there are certain themes that come up. And once more, it's incredibly experimental. In case you know, some of the stuff Wakeman's doing, you know, I don't think I've ever heard Wakeman being so imaginative as well as, you know, such a good player. You know, some of his synth work is fabulous on this. It's just the, almost the bell-like sounds on occasion. And there's a kind of a rush of energy. You know, Howe has always been this phenomenal player. And I always kind of think of Howe in some ways as being greedy, like John Coltrane or John McLaughlin, that he's gobbling up notes, and not in a showy way. You know, really kind of almost, you're on the edge of your seat throughout this.
Speaker 2Well, the album opens up with that. Phrenetic, I think is the word, yeah. The album opens with an ambient texture, but once the band come in, it's furious, isn't it? It's like they've been. I mean, maybe they have been listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra or something. And it's very dissonant. It's very dissonant. And it's essentially a trio. It's a bass, drums, and guitar. The album opens up with two or three minutes of furious instrumental interplay between this power trio, essentially.
Speaker 3Well, I think the thing is that there's a great use of dynamics on this album as well. So it does do the whisper to a scream, and it does do, you know, the phrenetic and the dissonant to the absolutely beautiful. There's still a kind of soulful, post-Beatles accessibility to everything. And the one thing that, you know, I'd say this about the Genesis album, we'll probably end up discussing as well, is that every member of the band is a crucial key to the brilliance of this. That, you know, when Anderson isn't crafting these incredible melodies with his totally unmistakable voice, or Howe isn't eating up the space, or, you know, Wakeman isn't doing some magnificent stuff, you've got the great Squire, the great Bruford doing some amazing.
Speaker 2Great harmony vocals. The vocal parts are always brilliant, you know. Again, that sort of, you can tell they've come from that background of listening to the Byrds.
Speaker 3Well, also Crosby, Stills and Nash, I think, are quite a big influence on quite a lot of progressive music and other music of 1972. But what I was going to say about this album, you know, yeah, it works perfectly. And it is, you know, Siberian Cattery, the end of this. Well, I was going to say,
Speaker 2I think the side two has two other extraordinary tracks, you know.
Speaker 3It's that bit where there's the vocal harmonies. Colliding the stop-start section near the end. Yes, yeah. Which is stunning. And it still surprises me. And the thing about this album is that it is so, it's almost like organised chaos, that it's still surprising now. You're still shocked by how brazen and ambitious some of these ideas are. And they pull it off. And I do know, you know, some of the recording process, apparently, wasn't Eddie Offord, a bit like Tia Macero with Miles Davis, editing sections together. So part of this. Part of this architecture must be Eddie Offord related as well. The multi-track take would not suggest that.
Speaker 2But, you know, I. Okay. I think maybe more in the terms of the rehearsal period, before they started recording, he maybe was saying he was involved in structuring the piece.
Speaker 3You know, none of this is indulgent. There are long instrumental pieces. But because themes come back, or because it sounds so demented, as you say, maybe that kind of post-Mahavishnu, Tony Williams lifetime. energy, none of this is lazy, indulgent. But the other thing I'd say about this, for what might be the definitive progressive rock album, whereas Echoes has produced dozens of imitators and continues to be dozens of imitators, very, very few things come in the wake of close to.
Speaker 2Well, now, this is interesting, because we are going to talk about the Genesis album. The problem I have with Genesis, and it's not fair, and I know that, is because I've heard so many. What I consider. I consider to be second-rate progressive rock albums that, to me, are using Genesis as the archetype. And yet, I've heard very little of the Yes influence. And I think you're right. It's because it's harder to distill what Yes do. In some ways, it's so far beyond. Musically, it's so far beyond. Whereas I think Genesis is easier to imitate. And unfortunately, a lot of second- and third-rate progressive rock, for me. Ends up sounding like a pastiche of Genesis. So, in some ways, it's kind of soured me a little bit towards Genesis. I've never been the biggest fan anyway. I like the records, but we'll come on to that in a minute.
Speaker 3In terms of the influence, the only people I can sort of. You know, Todd Rundgren, I think, with The Wizard of Truth style, there's an element of the madness of close to the agenda.
Speaker 2Yes, but interesting, when Todd tries to do progressive rock in a more obvious homage to Yes, as we've discussed, it just doesn't come off. The Utopia. I mean, for me, the Utopia albums are not Todd's at his best. Yeah. I'd agree with that. There are some bands that
Speaker 3kind of tried to copy the sound later on. I mean, Starcastle. But again, Starcastle, they take it from a new and I, or the Yes album, or Bits of Fragile, which I guess are easier to mimic in some ways. I mean, this album is impossible to mimic.
Speaker 2It is. I think. It is. It's just an extraordinary. It is, for me, it is the peak of what we come to think of.
Speaker 3Well, we're going to give A.I. the challenge. Come on, A.I. Come up with Close to the Edge 2. But it couldn't do it. It couldn't do it.
Speaker 2I don't think it could. So let's talk about the Genesis record. Now, I do like these Genesis records. They've never been as close to my heart as, I'm going to be very transparent here, as the Yes, Van de Graaff, Generator, Crimson, Floyd albums. They've never been in that league for me. Supper's Ready, to me, epitomizes the idea of creating an epic by just basically taking lots of bits and stringing them together without any real sense of structural. This is what differentiates, for me, a brilliant piece of progressive rock, like Close to the Edge, the title track, or Saber and Kutru, from something like Supper's Ready, which, again, I like. You know, don't get me wrong. I like it. It's a very beautiful piece of music. But it's just a bunch of bits strung together, isn't it?
Speaker 3Well, I really like it. I think it was the second Genesis album I got, because I kind of got into Genesis via the top of the pop roots of Follow You, Follow Me. Love it. As a young teenager. What a great song. It was a great, beautiful song. And then the enigmatic cover of Then There Were Three bought that. And I bought Foxtrot because it was probably cheap around the same time. And I fell in love with that as well. It was a very different sound, much more gothic, much more intense. And although there are similarities in Collins and Gabriel's delivery, a certain kind of soulfulness, for sure, Gabriel has, again, a kind of an older, gruffer, more old man, Otis Redding voice. And I can understand. what you said about Genesis earlier, that part of the problem i think when you listen to foxtrot now is that so many bands have ripped off that phenomenal opening to watch for the skies you know that intense melatron barrage with that kind of militaristic dotted note rhythm that you hear in almost every yes and the progressive
Speaker 2rock band
Speaker 3since and neo-prog and the apocalypse
Speaker 2thing that marillion copied that lots of other the apocalypse in 98 apocalypse in 98 yeah yeah those things for me when i i think that's part of the problem for me is when i hear that music i just hear all the bad imitations and it and again it's unfair i know it's unfair i i understand
Speaker 3that you know first time i ever heard uh stavinsky's right of spring i wasn't as blown away by it as i thought it was going to be because i heard its influence on film music subsequently in other bands you know it's like oh okay i've heard this in 70s soundtrack so it holds the planets it's been so influential absolutely yeah but i was lucky that i kind of heard this when i'd not heard the imitators and i'd not heard what was to come in the neo-prog movement and i loved it you know it was powerful it's emotional again i think every single band member is operating at a peak banks has quite a rare sense of harmony rutherford is a surprisingly dexterous bass player and gabriel i think from the you know pretty much from trespass onwards has a voice to die for i
Speaker 2love gabriel's voice but for me gabriel's voice is it's it's it's three it's four it's you know
Speaker 3yeah but you know the interesting thing about this is that going on age yes we're probably in their mid-20s which is probably crucial because i know how i was in my late teens and then suddenly what happened in early 20s there's a certain kind of maturity in terms of your writing genesis at this point yes they're only 21 and 22 i think what i
Speaker 2mean is that when i hear yes close to the edge it's a band that are completely matured completely have arrived have arrived when i hear things like foxtrot and i did re-listen to to a little bit of it the other day in preparation for this it sounds a little bit still a little bit gauche a little bit clumsy and i know that's part of the charm and good god knows i love you know there's some records i love that that is inherent you know the gaucheness and the clumsiness is part of what i love about them but i think compared you know i i do love the the later genesis records much more than i love this
Speaker 3this isn't my favorite you know and of the gabriel genesis albums lamb lies down and trespass are actually my favorite see i don't
Speaker 2feel particularly about any of the guys i love gabriel solo i love i really love the the collins uh the late 70s collins era much more than i love
Speaker 3this i love well yeah trigger the tail wind and weathering and then there were three and even duke i think is a fabulous album
Speaker 2for me that's when genesis kind of mature and and i think the band might agree with me yeah but the thing is controversially the band might agree with although
Speaker 3they were seen as old troopers at this stage again they were 29 and 30 they were still very very young but i've got a soft spot for foxtrot and i do think it's kind of sonically and compositionally a step up in terms of professionalism above nursery crime which again i love and trespass which i prefer you know i love that shambling
Speaker 2nursery crime is my favorite i love
Speaker 3that i love
Speaker 2that track musical box
Speaker 3well nursery crime has got a kind of a gothic intensity that times reminds me of vandergrift and of course they were talking with yes vandergrift around that time yeah but i don't know what it was like i don't know what it was like but i don't know what it was like it was beautiful melodies and again what i love about genesis is it's the melody whether it's instrumental whether it's vocal and there are gorgeous long passages of kind of 12 string and crosby stills and nash i like that harmonies and they do draw on that kind of crimson vandergrift-esque time signature intensity on occasion you know i don't think there's any kind of lazy soloing on this i
Speaker 2know absolutely not don't get me wrong i think these records are really strong records i like nursery crime but i like the end of uh is it return the giant hogweed the very uh vandergrift the end of that one but then it's not the end of white hammer
Speaker 3off no i mean white hammer is astonishing eco apocalypse extraordinaire yeah that's on
Speaker 2another level for me yeah um
Speaker 3so no i think it's a really solid album and i can completely see how again gabriel did what bowie and alice cooper were doing at that point he completely transformed his music and his music and his music and his music and his music and his image they became a popular live band and once more you could argue that genesis were that kind of progressive underground rock band that partly because of gabriel's canny use of image and his live performance got in on glam to a certain extent because he was wearing makeup wearing costumes yeah i find
Speaker 2performing in character all kind of amdram to be honest it was never of interest
Speaker 3to me but i'm sure that that was one of the reasons why suddenly they went from being you know a progressive band to a progressive band to a progressive band to a progressive band to a progressive band to suddenly getting on the front page of melody maker so once more i think that you know gabriel had a vision he saw what was going on yeah elsewhere much like
Speaker 2bowie did with yeah exactly adopting and so bowie
Speaker 3and gabriel adopt a guys without compromising their art and managed to get
Speaker 2on the front pages there's one other album this year tim that would that would be very strong evidence to suggest that this was the pinnacle of of progressive rock yeah in the uk thick as a it's brilliant isn't it it's it's absolutely brilliant um i do like and again and again i think you know this is where i think toll i would put them more in the yes category in the sense they sound like they're a progressive rock group yeah until he was being told they're a progressive rock group yeah until he was being told they're a progressive rock group they sound like they've completely arrived they're completely mature it's very hard to think of these guys as still in their early 20s uh again you know mid-20s at least because it sounds so mature and so advanced and so sophisticated and the confidence the confidence the balls to make this album and also i think the thing with with toll the sense of humor i don't i don't feel that with yes but i do feel it with tell there's always that sense well there is a lot i think
Speaker 3you know there's always a lot of sense of humor in prog that always gets lost you know not yes no i agree but genesis certainly had it you know there is playful voices and genesis also had a kind of you know going back onto this one of the reasons why i think it works is that gabriel is such an emotional vocalist even when he's hiding behind a character and things like get him out by friday where it's almost like a guardian headline become a song he's clearly socially conscious as well they're drawing from the world of the 1970s as well as fantasy um and i think ian anderson did that i think prior to this the interesting thing for me with thick as a brick is i don't think they're aggressive rock prior to this you know i think they are a sort of really interesting post blues folk rock band with aspects of hard rock aspects of sing songwriter on
Speaker 2aqualung than yeah um yeah and i
Speaker 3think you know benefit aqualung stand up they are astonishing records and you're right then they're like a slightly more rock oriented harper you know i don't hear prog this is the album where all of a sudden they've not lost that quality i think this is the last album where you've got this really kind of treacly double track to ian anderson vocal you know we had a particular vocal sound i think from stand up benefit aqualung and this album where it's quite intense quite grubby quite treacly quite troubled tracked and it's on this album and i really like i think the songs you know the songs on this are moments of melody but then it's full of quite clever instrumental digressions which weirdly harmonically because i did re-listen to this for the podcast the only band i could slightly link it to and i wonder if anderson was aware of them or not but actually there are slight tony banks isms in the organ playing and some of the melodic sequences some of the organ playing again they're not doing this kind of mindless soloing for the sake of solo there's quite a
Speaker 2lot jamming on thick as a brick though there is some jam yeah there's some jamming sessions i think this is what makes them perhaps different from um from yes is that yes you feel like every note is meticulously planned yeah whereas there are some more loose kind of zeppelin and of course if you go back and listen to some of the tall concerts from 70 71 there are the the rigor of the day you know 10 minute long guitar solos 10 long drum solos and there is still a little bit of that in in this it was soon to to disappear um but i think what's interesting about thick as a brick also to me is the first two minutes is one of the great opening two minutes yeah of any album from the era just the way it starts the way it introduces the band the drama the theater and i think that's another hallmark of course of a lot of progressive rock is the kind of theatrical element of a lot of yeah way the way the tracks unfold and i think ian anderson was always very fond of this i mean for a passion play the album that came after this is kind of presented yeah as almost a theatrical production with actors and actresses and a theater program and everything so there's a kind of theatrical element to it the first line of the album really don't mind if you sit this one out yeah straight away you're like there wow what's this well
Speaker 3he's i think you know certainly in the progressive field he might be the best lyricist the genre ever had you know he's the joni mitchell randy newman paul simon of prog you know incredibly articulate and one of the things i quite liked about aqualung and to a certain extent thick as brick has as well There is a kind of grubby early 70s quality about jethro tull that you don't hear in genesis you don't hear in yes they almost transcend it they've still got
Speaker 2the blues i think maybe you kind of alluded to at the beginning that tull have still got the blues you don't hear i don't think you hear any black music influence at all in yes and i think apart from gabriel's voice you don't really hear gabriel's got the
Speaker 3osis redding nina simone quality and i'd say without from him you
Speaker 2don't really hear it in genesis but you do hear it in tull you you hear the blues element is still there
Speaker 3yeah i mean well you can hear that they've also listened to things like peter green's fleetwood mac well roland kirk
Speaker 2i mean obviously yeah ian anderson's sort of big influence on the flute was roland kirk and you
Speaker 3still hear that too he still sounds like the person who's written the material on stand-up benefit and aqualung but he's completely embraced that progressive rock culture the only thing you know and again the artwork is astonishing for thick as a brick the even though that newspaper
Speaker 2even though it's a complete rip-off of a four seasons album that came out the year before yeah which was also packaged like a newspaper but yeah but done with tull's classic
Speaker 3wit and it is but the one thing i dispute i remember him saying he did this as a kind of slightly monty python-esque take on prog you know because obviously he you know wrote this stuff didn't he was it was gerald bostick they all did that all the band were involved yeah well certainly the newspaper you can see that kind of goons monty python influence but the music it's actually quite serious i think
Speaker 2yeah so i think those three albums are the the best argument that that you could possibly make to claim that this was the year the progressive rock kind of peaked yeah um whether whether they're your favorites by those bands or not i think it would be hard to argue that this isn't the pinnacle of yes's catalog it would be hard to argue that thick as a brick isn't at least among the peaks of tull's catalogs and perhaps the same is also true well i think
Speaker 3with foxtrot it's the one album as you alluded to earlier that had a massive impact on the music industry and i think it's a massive influence on bands later on more so i think than selling england or the lamb or possibly
Speaker 2true yeah there's one other album which we're going to talk about in the prog on the continent category which i think is up there with those three which we'll come on to later let's just go through some of the other albums that were released this year that are nominally uh part of the progressive rock uk division flash flash which i think was a sort of yes offshoot band i listened to peter banks yeah it sounds like yes uh but not as good but it's kind of belies what we're saying earlier that there aren't many bands that sound like yes well there was
Speaker 3one you know it isn't well star castle being another but yeah flash it's not a bad album you know if you want a yes substitute it's not bad but it's kind of drawing more from the kind of yes album era i don't really want to substitute thank you very much peter banks wasn't on
Speaker 2that i'll go back to yes caravan's water lily we love caravan on the show they're jazzy slightly more jazz influenced album great but great title track well uh uh loving your eye beautiful beautiful piece of orchestrated progressive rock procol harum live in concert with the edmund symphony orchestra i don't know this record that was one of their
Speaker 3biggest ever albums i think um commercially it's it's great it's them with an orchestra on is it stem with an orc is that why it's
Speaker 2called not a lot of bands did that at the time
Speaker 3not a lot of bands did it at the time they did it's them okay with an orchestra sounding grand okay are they
Speaker 2live as well is that why it's called live it's actually it's
Speaker 3actually live in concert um i mean i love the voice i think gary brooker great voice yeah what
Speaker 2a voice the gents the gents two albums two fantastic records this year three friends and an octopus you know gentle giant always the sort of underdogs in a way but their music i mean we talked about progressive bands that sounded completely mature these records are are just beyond in a way aren't they oh they're
Speaker 3incredibly inventive i think going back though to the bands who were huge one of the things that they all did share was a very recognizable vocalist yeah we've talked it was as good as anything you know anderson well both anderson's gabriel i'd argue greg lake you know i think that trilogy um you know lake is a fantastic vocalist and can write wonderful melodies so you know and i think with gentle giant they've got two really good vocalists i don't think they're quite in the league i think it's gabriel or the anderson's
Speaker 2but i think it's more than that i think the music is so intricate so complex it's actually a little bit more impenetrable a little bit more impenetrable i love it but actually i had to grow to love it uh i remember yeah because i i used to try and i remember you playing the gentle giant we first met and i and i didn't it didn't connect with me and then later on i think i just had to be in the right mood and give it the time to understand oh my god these guys are just doing incredible things here um so they don't have that kind of accessibility that i think perhaps you know you listen to something like the pretty section of a new and i and you're straight in there it's easy to enjoy it's easy to understand what's going on the fact that something very complex and much more angular will be just around the corner is okay because you've walked through this door the opening thick as a brick all sorts of things the
Speaker 3opening of supper's ready they're gorgeous melodies
Speaker 2you've walked through this door which is into this very accessible world and then you're prepared for this more complex whereas gentle giant are straight in aren't they with this really i mean they have beautiful moments don't
Speaker 3get me wrong one of my favorite in fact possibly my favorite gentle giant track is on three friends um school days beautiful beautiful and that i think it's that section i kind of i really like carrie's voice he's got this very angelic choir boy yeah and that middle section there's a particular repeated piano motif with melatron which is probably my favorite gentle giant moment i think octopus is a better album i think it's a more consistently strong album in a way but yeah they are it's obviously one of the tracks on octopus knots which i have read the rd lang poems that this is based on gentle giant are quite a tricky naughty band and i guess you've got to work i think i think that's it like them i
Speaker 2think you have to give it time to appreciate whereas you can instantly understand the appeal of elements of any of the aforementioned i think gentle giant you really have to commit yourself a little bit harder to it but i think the time time has been kind to them i think their albums have stood the test of time we still talk about gentle giant and in fact if anything i think people now talk about gentle giant as being right up there with those other bands yeah whereas they probably didn't uh some musicians i think they
Speaker 3were a musician's band because ian anderson was definitely inspired by them and they signed to chrysalis and certainly you know songs from the wood i think has got gentle giant elements and frank zapper apparently was a fan
Speaker 2yeah yeah i can definitely see that i think we've got a listener's review of this next album my favorite band of all time pink floyd obscured by clouds won't surprise you to hear that i love this record but let's have a listener's review first of all guys i would like to
Speaker 4put forward obscured by clouds by pink floyd although it probably doesn't feature on many pink floyd fans top five albums it's an album where i think rick wright really shines and it's got a wistfulness to it that um really really makes it a beautiful record and um one worth
Speaker 2checking out i totally agree i love this record there's something about obscured by clouds when you consider the dark side of the moon was the next album dark side of the moon being this very polished very produced piece of work obscured by clouds is quite rough yeah it's got quite a rough dry sound but you hear a lot of those those sort of as the as the listener pointed out a lot of those keyboard textures rick's voice the way dave and rick's voices work together and some great songs on here some great songs you know things like um stay uh the instrumental is mud man absolutely curtains it's pure floyd isn't it it's pure floyd it's but it's kind of pure floyd in the sense it's between the psychedelic era and what's to come
Speaker 3well i think that it kind of can be compared with more in that it's seen as an interim album the soundtrack to more and both of them of course were soundtracks and i love more you know it's got one of my favorite floyd tracks of all time sirius minor is on more um so i i think both of those albums as well i think you you've highlighted it there's an unpolished spontaneity to it that not a lot of floyd even when they're improvising on source full of secrets it seems very complete it doesn't seem very tentative to me whereas more and obscured by clouds i've got a more rough edge tentative quality recorded in a very short period
Speaker 2of time i think that's the reason but it almost feels like this is the floyd making a bunch of demos that will point the way to yeah yeah it's going to come you know doing it very quickly recording it very rough and ready and then it's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be a lot but a band that have kind of you know are about to arrive in
Speaker 3that sense and i think it it is an important bridge between echoes and dark side i absolutely love
Speaker 2it i absolutely love it let's just quickly run down some of their albums uh released in normally in the progressive rock category this year renaissance prologue yeah the first album by what people think of as the classic you know annie haslam lineup of of renaissance good i mean although
Speaker 3i like the other two as well
Speaker 2i do too yeah the early matching mole both their albums came out yeah yeah so robert white's interim between soft machine and his accident and then obviously going off in a whole different tack with his solo career from from the wheelchair these are albums where he's still the drummer
Speaker 3beautiful records and both great yeah i mean it's a very traditional well what he manages to do you know again you've got these gorgeous songs oh caroline being of course one of the most beautiful and then these really extreme improvs and experiments with sonics you know these are these really deep albums that also have beautiful melodies um i think i'd go with little red record
Speaker 2amazing both great records in in the sort of slightly more angular uh so i guess somewhere between hatfield and often henry curve you think of them as the two kind of yeah yeah sort of opposite poles in the canterbury scene curved air phantasmagoria i don't know if we like no i don't
Speaker 3think we have i i really always like this in the second album i think they've got very distinctive synth sounds she's a really interesting vocalist and once more i think you know they had kind of had the hit with backstreet love so you had almost across over they've got that early 70s almost glam drum sound as well you can see how pop artists you know pop fans would like them even though they were making some pretty experimental and far out work the band with
Speaker 2the poshest drummer name in history is it's florington pilkington smith or something something like that florian pilkington also we have barclay james harvest baby james harvest uh moody blues seventh sojourn i think we've talked about our love of the first seven mood yeah well both of
Speaker 3those really i love seven might be my favorite you made a police album what else have
Speaker 2we got this year soft machine fifth we love softs don't we yeah yeah
Speaker 3good album then venturing even more into uncompromising jazz
Speaker 2territory khan space shanty another another good entry in canterbury
Speaker 3really like that and that's now my kind of discovered belatedly actually because i know all of the stuff around it hatfield national health egg and so on and i actually only discovered this a few years back and i really strong album very underrated a real sort of cool in dave stewart's um well and steve hillage too and thief village of
Speaker 2course yeah yeah family's bandstand their sixth album have we talked about family on
Speaker 3the show i think we did we might mention i think we might mention them in 68 i like this i think it's a consolidation of what they've done before again a bit like ziggy stardust and maybe sandy day to come this is a more conventional album for family and it's got burlesque and my friend the sun two of their absolute you know stunning hits if you will but it still takes risk and he has got a stunning voice you know he's got a voice that's up there with anybody's
Speaker 2and then we've got man be good to yourself at least once a day now a band i don't think you're
Speaker 3familiar not as familiar i know a couple of albums i don't know this one i love man they're
Speaker 2somewhere between uh a kind of american jam band they have that american jam band sensibility they're welsh if you can imagine a welsh version of the grateful dead and pink floyd i mean they have elements of psychedelia progressive rock a lot of use of keyboards a lot of extended compositions uh with quite complex structures at least for for a jam band anyway and this is kind of the peak of their more sophisticated uh run of albums only four pieces that go through very very interesting kind of diversions and different sections um very much recommend you check them
Speaker 3out well i've heard a couple of the albums after this and actually i i rated them they were a lot better than i was expecting man to be because i think i'd always been sold on this idea that man were you know the uk's equivalent of grateful dead and it didn't strike me as being quite as rambling as that description i think that's like i say i
Speaker 2think that's only part of the equation i think 50 the grave that does make sense and the other 50 is for i mean if you listen to a track called prologue the storm from their their 13 minute long track from their previous album two two ounces of plastic with a hole in the middle great time it's pure no they were good writers good players i've heard and this album i think and also has one of the greatest novelty sleeves of all time a fold-out map of wales you have to check it out i want that the only other album i think we should probably mention because after all it is by one of the bands that are seen as being you know the one of the forerunners of the the preeminent progressive rock bands elp's trilogy it's got some great tracks on it hasn't it i like the title track very much i think the title track
Speaker 3is fantastic yeah well i think the thing is with trilogy i think with elp full stop it wasn't just with works or the brilliant love beach they never really made a completely good album i think the debut is perhaps as close as you get yeah to something that is consistently strong because they'd always have a throwaway joke track they'd always have a little classical piece they'd always have yeah something where they were just showing off their chops and so for me the great elp albums you know and tarkus and this i'd include and certainly brain side of surgery some astonishing music you know as players they're all wonderful especially for me emerson so yeah i think they never really made a completely strong album but certainly in their run of classic albums there's some brilliant progressive material that you can hear influencing bands both in britain and on the continent you know so we're going to come on to sort of especially italian bands where i think elp and van der graaf or perhaps the two strongest influences um so yeah the title track certainly i think it's the endless enigma um i think there's some really good stuff
Speaker 2on this yeah that's the other good track i think elp haven't dated that great for me um it does sound the one obviously one of the one of the accusations that people that don't like progressive rock will constantly throw at it is that it was self-indulgent yeah musicians playing 10 minute long moog solos that's elp isn't it it is elp uh you know and and the sort of the the classical pretensions as well i always have an issue with with the classical pretend
Speaker 3but you know where i say elp go against it on two fronts really of the attacks that people have on progressive rock unfair attacks number one there was a lot of humor in elp i don't particularly like the humor but the humor is one of the elements i don't like in elp but there was a lot of very juvenile humor in elp so they weren't always taking themselves seriously and number two i think they had a real sense of rock and roll showmanship that actually this really was you know as roxy had to a certain extent as well they were entertainers they were still drawing on kind of rock and roll or ragtime or roots music with enthusiasm so and i think that slightly negates the classical pretensions that people throw at them okay but
Speaker 2i certainly see the classical pretensions uh and i have no particular axe to grind yeah when you get to a point where you're like works particularly with side a side taken up by keith emerson's symphony or whatever or concerto whatever it was to me that's the and pirates is one of the worst pieces of music i've ever heard in my life that the gilbert
Speaker 3the gilbert i'm i'm not very fond of pirates
Speaker 2that's i so i think they get a lot you know a lot more they go a lot more down that road later but but i think the
Speaker 3one thing that people isn't there a soft pastiche of
Speaker 2bolero on this album as well there is
Speaker 3i don't mind it i actually quite like it um you know there's definitely our copeland influences on this album but one of the things i sort of like about erp is they seem to be enjoying themselves there's kind of a chaotic energy about the band for sure and i definitely
Speaker 2think they're they're a first division band when they're when they're far when yeah like on the title track here or parts of uh parts of the first out particularly and and definitely parts of brain cell surgery you think this you know this is a band and parts of tarkus as well you they're right up there absolutely but the
Speaker 3weird thing is that they didn't seem to sustain this for 40 minutes or 35 minutes you know this was a band that did add a lot of filler to almost every i think they were reading
Speaker 2between the lines it feels like they were a little bit too dysfunctional as a band interpersonal interpersonality wise to actually achieve what bands like yes achieve and crim well i say crimson crimson notoriously all falling out with robert all the time anyway but maybe that's maybe crimson's not about a good example but a band like yes for example they seem to all be somehow finding a way to all be able to move in the same direction all the time for the betterment of the whole this kind of gestalt thing
Speaker 3and i think you're right yeah because that comes in i think with genesis as well who lived together at one point where there's a communal attempt and this is why when i said about those two albums you know particularly that every single member of genesis and yes 1972 is firing all cylinders they're all brilliant they're all contributing pushing each other and they're pushing each other along whereas you feel that maybe with elp there was a lot of competitiveness that could have been negative i think it's
Speaker 2competitive and it's also now i want my 10 minute solo yeah you're having your 10 minute solo i'm going to have my 10 minute solo and by the way i'm going to have a sort of persian rug on stage now and by the way i'm my drum kit's going to be suspended off the ceiling this showmanship and this kind of wanting to outdo and i hear it in the music and it's not so it's not just about the presentation i hear that sensibility yeah and
Speaker 3yes and genesis both came out of a kind of post beatles approach to making music and the beatles at one point had this push each other to greater heights which you hear you know you hear george harrison becoming a better player on certain albums yeah and um and ringo starr was always really interesting you know regardless of what people say about him and i think that's it that with with yes and genesis you kind of feel that they're really pushing one another along and they're absolutely lost in this explosion of sound whereas with elp you kind of sense that lake and emerson palmer they're looking each other with disgust during certain moments i think there's
Speaker 2also i don't want to be in a situation which feels like we're roasting elp here but oh don't think because i do think they're an incredible band they were extraordinary band but i think the other thing is that i'm slightly suspicious that there's an inherent sense lack of taste there look at the cover artwork tarkus is one of the worst covers i've ever seen in my life compare that with the cover to thick as a brick or the cover to close to the edge yeah yeah great redefining unforgettable i think there's now looking at the cover to trilogy yeah but maybe
Speaker 3there's a greater sense of ego in elp and that's what made them great and it's also what perhaps worked against them yeah um and i do think you're right i mean taste it's an interesting thing because sometimes i really like it when bands go down that rabbit hole of bad taste because sometimes we don't have enough of it because there's some music being pretty you know we said this before that you know i've loved the ecm label i've loved albums on this but sometimes i'm overwhelmed by good taste of making the right sound choice the right note choice and i sort of like it sometimes when bands actually just think you know what bugger it do you like the cover to love beach i think it's an atrocity and in a way i love it because of that what would you rather have on your wall the cover to love beach or the cover to tarkus oh neither but tarkus really
Speaker 2i'd say i'd rather have love beach because at
Speaker 3least it's funny okay it is funny but yeah i mean obviously i mean i i've always said about love beach that actually if you put the side long epic on the first side you have a different cover that's an elp classic
Speaker 2let's draw a line under progressive rock uk division there we'll come back to progressive rock on the continent later on we just moved into our new house and i didn't
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