I
An amazing pudding it certainly is, as POPMATTERS announces. And you probably have to think about the definition of „progressive rock“ with all its parameters of complexity. I do not share the obsessive love for Yes works there, Rush always have been strangers for Gregs and Joey. Wolfgang and Lajla could easily skip Camel or even Pink Floyd’s „The Wall“, other Manas would certainly add the first Mike Oldfield album (on a nostalgic day), the second Caravan opus (everyday) and the third Soft Machine double prog masterpiece (as a cornerstorne, though one with heavy freewheelin‘ jazz input).
II
There would be good reasons to add some of XTC’s outstanding creations (f.e. „Mummer“), but XTC of course balances on the margins of a wide definition of prog rock. And no KRAUT PROG? Anyway, some good instructions for time travelng are guaranteed, with weird metres & polarities, British eccentricities – and if you like to count rhyhms, you’ll be in heaven. There are some more or less hidden gems („Octopus“), and some works that only stand the test of time in proggy oldie shows.
III
But, on the other hand, you cannot fail with King Crimson. According to Michael and Mike Barnes (The Wire, December edition), The „Thrak Box“, just being released, can be regarded as „instant 90’s classic prog rock“ where high mathematics of sound (Mr. Fripp loves Bartok, and here you get to know why) meet adventurous spirits and uninhibited outbursts of raw emotion.
IV
Often the cover art has been „gargantuesque“ (though the writer of thesé lines, a go-betweeen of half-stuttered bon mots, zeitgeist distortions, and more or less invented memories, does not know exactly what that word means). The good news is that some of this „debatable list“ is still setting Lucy-in-the-sky-high standards with mind-blowing side effects. And Steven Wilson had a lot of this in his hands doing remasterings, „sensurroundings“ and archival discoveries.
(MHQ, extract from two Manas talking on the phone)
V
„Really don’t mind if you sit this one out.
My words but a whisper – your deafness a SHOUT.
I may make you feel but I can’t make you think.
Your sperm’s in the gutter – your love’s in the sink.
So you ride yourselves over the fields and
you make all your animal deals and
your wise men don’t know how it feels to be thick as a brick.
And the sand-castle virtues are all swept away in
the tidal destruction
the moral melee.“
(Brick)
– M.E.