What Was The First Prog Album

Which is the first one listed in PA?

Do you mean Foxtrot by Genesis? That is 1972, right? I wonder what is the earliest Prog album listed on PA. That should be the one.

Right! I see the problem.

Edit: didn't notice your reply and wrote basically the same as you

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: Well technically the first one listed is Miles Davis - First Miles in 1945 but we can discount that as Miles is here for his fusion albums and they start much later.

Edited by Saperlipopette! - 20 hours 10 minutes ago at 05:28

^Can't recall that it actually rocks, but in that case it's the first ever rock-album too. Well done, Varèse!

Disconnect wrote: ... To be fair, the thread title is "What Was the First Prog Album", not "What Was the First Prog Rock Album".

Hi,

I'm inclined to think that the idea/OP is not clear on that matter, and that the listener is not interested in music, but what others think!

Maybe William J. Lederer was right! ... A Nation of Sheep? Heck, and that was 1961, right around the first mentions shown in this thread ... it says something about the time and place, that TODAY, we simply don't care about, or anymore!

Disconnect wrote: ... Not a fan of Varèse, eh Pedro? I admit his works are extremely demanding listens. Still I am surprised more people here aren't fans of his work...or at least familiar with it.

Hi,

I had more Varese LP's at home (dad had massive collection that ended up near 3K) and knew it some way before my first LP of "art rock" ... ELP's "Pictures at an Exhibition", though I was familiar with the hit song from their first album, but did not get it for at least a year ... I bought it after I got "Tarkus".

You should be able to tell that music history is not an alien concept for me, like it is for most folks here! Like music is not an evolution, but has been about hits for 500 years ... interesting, and no radio or communicating devices in until some 100 years ago! Music travelled by scores, or someone's memory! It just speaks for the commercial mentality of the Internet that the record companies have been trying to instill into the masses ... and we continue supporting them, and trying to keep "progressive" afloat ... we're doomed to see it die, because we do not understand how they got to where they are accepted, or ever appreciated the anti-commercial invisible messages in the early days ... it was what made the American FM radio so huge in the 1970's before the Great American FM Radio Rape by the largest corporations in America ... heck, I think I heard that Texaco was the actual buyer/owner of the station when it was sold in 1980 or so ... just like all the others ... and the worst case that we allowed it to continue, when one conglomerate shut down KMET in LA and came up in the next morning as hew age mish mash stuff. Or better yet ... The Firesign Theater's sign of the double cross! And some think that SNL is funny. HAH!

Edited by moshkito - 13 hours 34 minutes ago at 12:04

should we go back to India like 1500 years or so ago?
some old Indian drone music I'd say is pretty progressive, even those were derived out of middle eastern stuff, which in turn was influenced by ancient Greek stuff

If we're looking at like modern era, then I'd say Beethoven, with the creation of the Romanticism period of classical music really pushed music into a "progressive" realm, which Tchaikovsky would later exemplify with his long, linear flowing compositions.

Perhaps if we want to look even more modern, then I guess Miles Davis? I'm not too educated on mid-20th century jazz, which is part of the foundation of prog rock.

My vote is Beethoven, ultimately.

bardberic wrote: should we go back to India like 1500 years or so ago? some old Indian drone music I'd say is pretty progressive, even those were derived out of middle eastern stuff, which in turn was influenced by ancient Greek stuff If we're looking at like modern era, then I'd say Beethoven, with the creation of the Romanticism period of classical music really pushed music into a "progressive" realm, which Tchaikovsky would later exemplify with his long, linear flowing compositions. Perhaps if we want to look even more modern, then I guess Miles Davis? I'm not too educated on mid-20th century jazz, which is part of the foundation of prog rock. ...

Hi,

I think that all music was "progressive" in one way or another, however, we don't have a way to find it, or hear it, and sometimes, all one finds is ... a song ... somewhere ... because what might have been part of something larger was not labelled or described, and was then, considered gibberish.

I'm not sure that Romanticism created the "progressive" realm, and I tend to think that Mozart was the one that changed things to a "story" and then a more "personal" style with a lot of his music, operas and such. That had not been a part of the earlier music, from the baroque era (let's say) which was less about a story and what it meant, and more about the mechanics of the notes and chords involved. The only story, I like to say, was ... melody" as music was thought to be nothing but that. That's kind of like I see it, though I can't say I have thought it out clearly at all.

I think Tchaikovsky and Beethoven changed the mechanics of things, by creating Symphonies and long pieces of music that were quite VISUAL, instead of them being a more simplistic thing as the earlier music had been before Mozart. I think that Mozart brought the huge change that some folks did not get ... which you can see in a funny way in the movie "AMADEUS" ... which I think was a really good study at the changes that took place at that time.

For the 20th century, things change some ... now that things were being heard and recorded, we found a lot of new music, and specially, one thing that was not there before for everyone to hear ... POPULAR MUSIC ... and that ended up bringing the songs by the movie studios with THE JAZZ SINGER and eventually give a rise to knowing and realizing there was a lot of music out there, and the thing that picked up the most was jazz, and in the 1950's rock music also appeared, but jazz was already well represented, and Miles is not the only one, as we do not want to leave out Coltrane and many others.

In my book, Stravinsky and Miles were the most important ones ... the Beatles, Rolling Stones and others, mainly brought out the possibility of commerciality, and they blew out the whole business model that the movie studios had invented. All of a sudden the old farts that were famous for their classical music were quickly pushed aside, specially after they said a lot of bad things about the new generation and their music. The example of that BBC bunch that didn't want longhairs that didn't know music to touch their equipment, which had been used by some of the greatest classical folks around.

By the time "prog" and anything else got some attention, it was now a commercial thing, and the sad thing is that the American Corporate folks made a point of killing the FM radio stations that were independent that brought us so much new music ... to be replaced by "classics", which are still there today!

To me, and progressive is important, the only sad thing I see is that it isn't about the music anymore, at least by so many copycopycopycopycopy things released and yet another metal band posted on PA, as if they were progressive, which mostly, in my ears, they aren't, and with musicians that are high school levels at best, from drummers to the formats! The inventiveness of the music was going to suffer, and this is where I try hard to not post much when someone thinks they have another guitar hero ... doing the same thing that 20/30/40 others have done before!

Heck, I must be the only one that says that Portnoy is the worst drummer. He won't be a good drummer until the day that he takes his snare drums and used them as collars for decoration for his beard and then tries to drum ... without his clutch! Even Terry Bozzio did not do that ... and understood with Frank Zappa that just keeping time, was something that Frank used metronomes for, not musicians!