Days of Future Passed

[Quote] Dick:

Excuse me?  Days of Future Passed was 1967.  Ars Longa was mid-1968.  In the Court was May 1969.  Renaissance was late 1969.

Thus, the order would have to be:

[Revolver: 1966]

Sgt. Pepper: June 1967

Piper at the Gates of Dawn: August 1967

Days of Future Passed: November 1967

Ars Longa: 1968

In the Court: 1969

Renaissance: 1969

Peace. [Quote]

MAANI

(This is the third time of writing. The two previous responses, once written had me hitting the send button, only to be told that I’ve been logged out – and most annoying those words sent irrecoverably to an electronic black hole. I’ll cut and paste this from a windows file*.)

You have to remember I’m responding to a thread ask about those who were there about the credentials of DOFP being the first prog album. Since I was there, and in my late teenage way nobly trying to promote and sell this record as a record shop assistant, I’m relating my firsthand experience about reasons why this album didn’t sell particularly well the first time around. The distinct initial perception of this being an album by a has-been pop group, put together on the possible whim of a record company executive with the Decca Record house orchestra, best know for churning out lush covers of popular music on Decca’s Phase Four Stereo record label for British middle aged, middle class folk who had the new fangled, high fidelity stereophonic gramophones. As a reminder Decca were very slow in recognising pop fans might also like their albums in stereo rather than mono; the Rolling Stones Aftermath had something like a 6 week delay between mono and stereo releases, and I think with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton it was more like a 12 month gap. So apart from being released in a distinctly psychedelic period, there was a feeling of sell out, by a band not then heard as underground. To repeat, apart the pothead anthem Nights In White Satin released as a single, the MBs had to seek fame and fortune in the USA, where they did in deed achieve fame and fortune - I would suggest without the previous history hanging round there necks.

So I most strongly suggest, the labelling of the album ‘progressive music’ was much delayed, and then after more obvious candidates for the title had made their mark. But as illustrated (so far) by another recent thread, the use of ‘progressive’ (beit with the words ‘music’ or ‘rock’ in tandem), was far less common than thought nowadays. In the period 1966 to 1970, you would more likely heard and read ‘underground’ or ‘psychedelic’ ‘music’/’rock’ – with the term ‘progressive music’ being used far less often and then by trendies). And as to ‘art rock’.