beyond the wizard robes: prog!

it seems to me that prog rock has gotten a bum rap for too many years now. “rock was a bloated egomaniacal spectacle with too many 12 minute concept songs accompanied by orchestras!” punk is praised as the revolution which finally kicked aside prog’s bloated, sequined, wizard-robed corpse, and it may well be true, but now, all these years on, can’t we just stop nudging and winking when we talk about prog? pilgrim hats and velvet doublets aside many of these folks could play the shit out of those, whadaya call em? oh yeah, instruments. sure the kids back then were high out of their skulls, but aren’t they still? its musical descendants have to be called math rock or art rock or ambient as not to draw scoffs. i contend that at very least the prog era was a true gold-mine of whacked out album art. i’ve taken the liberty of throwing together a little monday gallery of some of those album covers. look back and sigh or just giggle and point if you must…












ok. so there it is. i’ve embraced prog rock publicly. yes i’m a king crimson fan. yes i still listen to meddle and atom heart mother. go ahead punks hurl your insults in comments. hope someone out there enjoyed it.

for more in depth historical context and music samples check out…

progressive rock online’s discografia

strawberry bricks progressive timeline

and the mega site prog archives.