a modern classic prog album

Dean wrote: Komandant Shamal wrote: Dean wrote: Komandant Shamal wrote: I believe you but it's not some special revelation that someone would be flattered by amazement as you probably expected, and i will explain you why. If you said that Roger Dean did do CttE front cover with aerosol car paints, it's ok, why not, but If i say that an aibrush was used at this cover of an album by Smak released in 1980.....   :: insert pointless cover image here :: .....then everybody can see that effectivelly it's the same thing on that kind of covers ie that "big" difference in used technique is invisible on the final product.    :: insert pointless cover image here ::  Dean wrote: The Close to the Edge cover was not painted with an airbrush. Roger Dean didn't even own an airbrush at that time, his first airbrushed cover was Yessongs. The CttE inner cover was painted using cans of aerosol car enamel paint (See Views by Roger Dean page 105) - he wasn't happy with the final picture and you don't have to look that closely at it to see that the masking and spraying wasn't that great.  So, you were saying?... Roger Dean used cans of car enamel paints because he didnt own yet an airbrush at that time as you read or he didn't know yet how to use that instrument on the right way as i speculated [with an aerosol can of paint it couldnt happen that, like airbrush if you dont know to handle well, begin to bleed the paint unevenly and that sh*t, this is the most important thing, cannot be fixed anymore, and all work could be destroyed in a blink of eye] but it doesnt matter actually because of his intention. His intention was to use aerosol can enamel paint just for an effect - to blending one color to another like a smoke, or as Italians would say, to make sfumato.  Effectively, it's the same thing if he did it with an airbrush instead of the cans of aerosol enamel paint because the difference of those techniques is invisible at the final product ie CttE album jacket. Thats what i said.   The picture on the inside of the gatefold was painted using cans of aerosol paint - the sky - the lake - the rocks - the waterfalls - the clouds & mist - the islands - all painted using cans of aerosol paint, the fine-detail and outlining was done by over-painting in ink. Got that? He didn't use aerosol cans  for "effect"; he used them to make figurative art - the Octopus cover for Gentle Giant was car enamel, as were the first two Greenslade covers, the Mowtown Scarab and Osibisa Woyaya. It is harder to do than using an airbrush because the nozzle and the airflow cannot be adjusted nor can they be regulated, it takes great technique and ability to make even the simplest composite images using them. Roger Dean perfected his technique over many years and was exceptionally good at it, however I can tell that CttE inner cover was not painted with an airbrush. If you cannot that does not concern me. I repeat for the umpteenth time: His first airbrushed artwork was for Yessongs - the floating islands in space ("escape") was car enamel and the rest ("arrival", "awakening", "pathways") were all airbrush, his technique on those paintings shows that he knew how to use the instrument.

For painting "sky", "clouds" and so on, with above mentioned sfumato effect, for young Roger Dean it was easier to do it with aerosol car enamel paints because in that case the jet is already set by manufacturer. With aibrush, it's much more diffucult to do it, because the painter have to control the jet and yet to avoid bleeding of paint what often happen [what knows damn well anyone who ever have been a hobby modeler of small aicrafts that have to be painted in a camouflage colors]. But the aerosol car enamel paint is inferior because you cant use it for small details [and yet on LP jacket sized piece of paper - when you hold an album jacket of Yes done by Roger Dean, it's the real size of an original Roger Dean work on paper - it's not a wall where graffiti artists are painting their big images] and also because the paints cannot be mixed in favor to get a several shades of one color. When you prepare paint for airbrush you can make a hue, and you can painting the details but you must be very, very skillful in that, and you need a time to practice that.

^I think the landscape will have to change. How can there be consensus on what's a classic when everyone (hyperbole alert) is listening to music through ear buds and no one buys stuff. By what social mechanism would something evolve into a classic?

Seems to me that for a record to be a classic:

Green Shield Stamp wrote: As 'prog' is a term retrospectively applied to a style of rock music from the early to mid 1970s

If you believe it goes this way, then none of RIO, prog metal or modern prog albums would be 'prog'. For me, this is nothing but superstition. Ther are myriads of albums released after 1977 which are no less 'prog' than CttE (and perhaps even more 'prog' than any Yes album). Univers Zero is enough to mention.

You can view 70's prog as a kind of subgenre (call it, for example, 'classic prog' or so), but it doesn't give you a right to call other prog subgenres not being 'prog'. The very structure of ProgArchives imples that.

Every decade is likely to produce some album that will eventually be considered as a classic, and since Prog is a long-living scene there will be some albums from each decade that will in time be considered classic Prog albums, but they will not be similar to CttE.

Edited by Gerinski - May 04 2015 at 13:20

From a different perspective, when was the last "landmark" jazz album? Anyone? How about the last truly great classical composition? Has anyone really made a blues album in the last 30-40 years that stands out from anything accomplished previously?

Edited by The Dark Elf - May 05 2015 at 09:03

To those of us that were not there to experience the 60s, 70s, or 80s, albums like Deloused in the Comatorium, California by Mr Bungle, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's In Glorius Times,  eclipse those very records you guys speak of.

But maybe Thick As A Brick doesn't mean anything to me and I don't see it as a classic... Dark Side of the Moon? Wish You Were Here? Not classics.

So what you're saying is that my opinion doesn't actually matter and since generally everyone else decides what is a classic album there's no chance that Anything else will ever be a classic because everyone else says so? Haha

Im quite confused here

Smurph wrote: But maybe Thick As A Brick doesn't mean anything to me and I don't see it as a classic... Dark Side of the Moon? Wish You Were Here? Not classics. So what you're saying is that my opinion doesn't actually matter and since generally everyone else decides what is a classic album there's no chance that Anything else will ever be a classic because everyone else says so? Haha Im quite confused here

Yes, you are confused, and I don't think I can help you with your discombobulation.

The Dark Elf wrote:   Let us forget the fact that the albums that have been bandied about in the last few posts (Close to the Edge, Thick as a Brick, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here) all charted in the top ten upon their release in both the UK and the US (so they were publically popular), and that critics in general praised the albums as groundbreaking or special (so they were critically well-received also); instead, let's just stay closer to home amongst rabid prog-heads: all four of the albums are listed in the top ten of Prog-Archives Progressive Rock Top Albums list with ratings of 4.59 or greater (in fact, the top two are CttE and TAAB, WYWH is fourth and DSotM is seventh).   So, there is a consensus among prog fanatics, there was a consensus amongst critics and the normally stupid record-buying public also bought millions of the albums. Granted, naming albums "classics" and "masterpieces" is certainly subjective, but one can use objective data to derive basic criteria that bolsters certain opinions.

Edited by Smurph - May 05 2015 at 14:23