Nineteen Sixty-Nine

Soft Machine > Salty Dog > Uncle Meat > Ummagumma > Trout

2 Colosseum

3 Procol Harum

4 Soft Machine

Don't like any of the others.

Same. They were invaluable in Madison and Chicago, and in many ways, a real spokesperson for a lot of things we thought at the time!

At the time, I had only heard a few of these, and while I knew the name of Frank Zappa, I had not given it a listen yet, and it wasn't until around 1972 I think that I heard "King Kong" and went and got the album. 

BTW, that song was the version that was done by "Babe Ruth", that I even went to the "Whiskey a Go Go" to see, because that first album was fabulous. So, you know my introduction to Frank Zappa was unusual to say the least.

Procol Harum was fine, but their follow up albums never stood up for me, compared to the first. 

Renaissance, was something I did not get into until later, although I had spent time looking for the ORIGINAL Renaissance, with Keith Relf of the Yardbirds, however, the stuff was not widely promoted or released in America, and I was not able to get these for about 7 to 8 years. It was not better than the next group, but it was very nice, and had a lot of promise, as far as I could tell.

I think we might have suggested to look at these in a time/life span, since it is really different. 

It's also weird to not see Jethro Tull listed, or Fairport Convention, and I had already heard these in 1969 before I even bought any of them. In fact, the first Jethro Tull album I got was a bootleg, that had an immense version of "My God", that I still have not heard in any album release!