PFM Photos of Ghosts (1973) includes songs taken from Per un amico and Storia di un minuto + Old Rain.

So here I have chosen Per un amico.

Having recently moved to Italy I should participate here (although RPI is not my strongest field).

I'm with Area by some distance!

But you did not vote...

The others are not even in the same league, in my gruff opinion.

and as long time forum forum members might remember.. the album is a source of one of the great unsolved prog mysteries ever.  Even went to the source.. asked Tony himself and even he couldn't answer it.

Le Orme just over PFM.

Alphataurus would be a nice addition to this selection. 

Squonk19 wrote: I see London has changed to Italy, Lewian! Hope it goes well... Which part of Italia? Hope the wine is of a good standard!

Bologna... I'm actually more of a foodie than a drinker but Bologna's quite right in that respect.

^^^ great list David..  I might add one of my personal favs. A top 10'r fav of all RPI albums. What a dark and vicious little album. with more balls than the average prog band could dream of possessing..

All great albums, but to me Arbeit Macht Frei stands head and shoulders above the rest. Every time I listen to it, I wonder at how fresh it still sounds. One of the very best debut albums ever without a doubt. I also endorse my other half's recommendation of Jumbo's Vietato ai minori di 18 anni?. It's a pity most people on this forum (and elsewhere for that matter) won't get to appreciate the lyrics, which alone are enough to debunk the myth that prog is about elves, dragons and wizards. "Specchio" is like a punch in the gut - a tale of loneliness and marginalization more direct and effective that anything Peter Hammill has ever written.

Lewian wrote: Squonk19 wrote: I see London has changed to Italy, Lewian! Hope it goes well... Which part of Italia? Hope the wine is of a good standard! Bologna... I'm actually more of a foodie than a drinker but Bologna's quite right in that respect.

Bologna is one of my favourite cities in Italy, and I hope one day I'll be able to visit it again. It is heartwarming to see that people are moving there from abroad, seen as my fellow Italians seem to think they are living in some sort of hell on earth.

oh and by the way.. god you are so hot...

I was in Bologna already for three months in 2011 as a visitor in the dept. where I am now working. I absolutely loved it. I know a lot of Italians work-wise for quite some time. Some Italians are indeed very skeptical about why anyone would want to move to Italy, and they told me that it's great for visitors but it's something quite different to live and work there. I have yet to find out. Hardly anyone has left the department between 2011 and now, and surely most of them could find something good abroad if they wanted, so it can't be that bad.  

Went with Museo. 

someone_else wrote: Alphataurus would be a nice addition to this selection.

Were it so, I'd vote for that!

Yeah that Jumbo album owns a special place in my collection.   I like the roughness of Alvaro Fella's voice. 

^Yes the whole geekyness to it is also why it was ridiculed and loathed by jocks and rockers alike, but the 00's + adulthood feels like the actual Revenge of the Nerds

Logan wrote: compare the themes in progressive acid folk such as Comus to songwriters such as Nicki Minaj (okay, a very lame comparison).

haha they can both be very sexually aggressive though, and Nicki's got some Canterbury-silliness to her rhymes sometimes:

"Flyer than a kite, I get higher than Rapunzel / Keep the Snow White, I could buy it by the bundle / Step your cookies up 'fore they crumble / Don't be actin' like the Cardinals and go and fumble"

Banco>Area>Le Orme>PFM>Museo

Museo for me

Area above the others

Since technically Per Un Amico is not from 1973, I went with Zarathustra.

But I voted for the mighty Zarathustra!!!

The PFM album was my first RPI and fell in love with with the genre.  Le Orme and Area albums were next.

All of them are special in their own way.

 

It's cool stuff. But no more great than Storia, Collage, Contra, Uomo

These guys were better than most of the English bands. Way better than PFM imo

Did you see them play the whole shebang at Prog Fest '97? That was pretty amazing. I like Il Fiume a lot, too (which they also played most of).

Yup!  I actually prefer the progfest version.

So here's how I'd rank them

1. Felona E Sorona

2. Arbeit Macht Frei

3. Io Sono Nato Libero

4. Zarathustra

Okay for one thing there is Rush, who did have some high fantasy themed songs early in their career: Rivendell, By-Tor And The Snow Dog, Madrigal, and The Necromancer especially. Plus a lot of A Farewell To Kings just sounds medieval. However they interspersed this with other stuff. Even on A Farewell To Kings, Cygnus X-1 is fully science fiction. Caress Of Steel and Hemispheres both have 20 minute excursions into Classical mythology, Greek and Roman inspired storytelling, which is just too many centuries prior to Tolkien's setting to call it the same thing.  Not to mention 2112, that most ubiquitous of their prog epics, which is very plainly Randian and Orwellian rather than Tolkeinien.

How about Tull? Aqualung features a rather storybookish cast of characters, though they seem to owe more to the whimsical fantasy of Alice In Wonderland than the high fantasy of The Lord Of The Rings, or even the Hobbit. Thick As A Brick is pretty British and mentions poets and soldiers wielding and licking swords and pens, but the lyrics don't really fall in line with any expected Arthurian legend tropes. A Passion Play is much closer to Dante's Inferno. Right time period, right continent, wrong genre.  There's the folk albums as well, though they seem to be content depicting country life rather than epic questing.

How about King Crimson? 21st Century Schizoid man is a no go, In The Court Of The Crimson King has a pretty medieval cast of characters though! But no dragons and no deadly battles, just a depiction of a fantasy courtroom. I think once again there's a case of not very much in this artist's discography directly evoked that high fantasy feel, and that which does lacks the sense of epic quest or battle which prog is often accused of being about.

Emerson, Lake, And Palmer get the battle and epic quest thing right with Tarkus... but an armadillo tank isn't exactly Tolkien inspired. Karn Evil 9 also just goes the sci fi route.

Yes definitely seems to have some medieval themes in some places, but in typical Jon Anderson fashion, all the lyrical influences are blended together into a high fantasy, philosophy, religion, chess, Siberian inspired soup.

And then there's Genesis. While pastoral and folky passages are one of their specialties, as well as epic songwriting and fantastical lyrics, there's not much in their catalogue specifically akin to the whole D&D schtick in question. There is Can Utility And The Coastliners, though it's more about politics than epic adventure. Time Table as well is about the right aesthetic, but too wistful and not enough action. Supper's Ready features a battle section, but it takes as much from medieval fantasy as it does from greek mythology and the Book Of Revelation, probably even a bit less. The Battle Of Epping Forest is about a very 20th century gang fight that just happens to be in a forest. The Cinema Show casts Romeo and Juliet in 20th century America, before a refrain about a Greek mythical figure.  the entirety of The Lamb is about as far from medieval as it gets. The Musical Box feels more Victorian. A Trick Of The Tail and Wind And Wuthering both have moments of fantasy, but they seem a bit closer to Narnia than Middle Earth.

So where is all the great prog about Bilbo and Smaug? It seems to me much more of it lies on the hard rock and heavy metal side of things. Led Zeppelin notable looked to Tolkien for inspiration quite often. Stairway To Heaven and The Battle Of Evermore being two excellent examples. Rush falls in this wheelhouse as well and it's no wonder they have more Tolkien inspired stuff than the other prog bands I mentioned. Uriah Heep was mentioned earlier in the thread and they definitely have their share of epic fantasy battle themes as well. Or how about Dio? Whatever band he's in, he's always writing about dragons and witches and tarot cards and the like. I think a quick look will show hard rock and heavy metal cite Tolkienish stuff much more often than prog.

Although! There is of course Rick Wakeman's King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table. No denying that fits in with the theme, but then Wakeman is rather infamous for his cape wearing. In fact I think it's telling that he specifically comes to mind when you think of that stage gimmick, no one else.