Of course I'm making a generalization anyway, but oftenly the strenght of MY favourite prog music relies mainly in the instrumental parts of it - btw I´m really interested to know some fully instrumental concept prog albums, though I think there are not many of them, any suggests ?

im not familiar with it, but the majority of people will suggest Camel's The Snow Goose if you haven't heard or know of it. so im doing them a favor without really knowing that lol.

That's the concept in a nutshell. 

You can expand on that to your heart's content: you can pour and paw over the lyrics as much as you like; you can identify the theme of each lyric readily enough the clue is in each song title; you can then try and construct a narrative that connects the dots between one song and the next just as the music segues seamlessly through the album; you can make it as allegorical or as literal as you like; it can be as linear as a journey, as regular as a heartbeat or as random as the sound-bites; you can incorporate George Hardie's cover graphic or you can ignore it; you can puzzle over the riddle of the pyramid and ponder the omission of indigo from the spectrum. The wide appeal of the album is that you don't have to think about it if you don't want to, it's the Forer Effect - the universal horoscope - one size fits all - anyone and everyone can identify with some part of the lyrics at some point or other. 

The critics can think whatever they want. Leave them out of the picture. You don't always have to think what others think. You say it's a concept album. Why? Because other people told you? Or because you can make a case for it yourself?

 

Originally concept was to be the pressures of modern life (Nick Mason, Inside Out Page 186, it is also mentioned in other sources.), clearly Waters introduced some of his thoughts on madness into this concept so the concept changed and developed as the album was being written. The themes of the songs up to and including "Us and Them" are self-evident and most of them have self-descriptive titles just to make it abundantly clear and cover various aspects of modern life (relationships, money, time, death, conflict, travel etc). The final three tracks (together with the album cover) are related to insanity and madness with a bit of high school philosophy thrown in for good measure, and since they form the conclusion and denouement of the album then it is evident that to tie everything together they are the key element of the overall concept. {pressures of modern life} >> {insanity} >> {...}

Looked at this way it we can consider the album to be about the pressures of modern life that lead to mental breakdown. Except when you read the lyrics it doesn't really work. As I said earlier, anyone and everyone can identify with some part of the lyrics at some point or other; some part of the lyric will resonate with some of us at some time in our lives. We all can and do experience every aspect of modern life as depicted in the lyric without going crazy. Simply observing that "I fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way" or "when I ask for a pay rise it's no surprise they're giving none away" doesn't exactly have me reaching for the Prozac, even the thought of an inevitable death at some unspecified time in the next 40 or so years doesn't tip me over the edge.

It is only when we consider how the pressures of modern life prey on our minds can we make the connection to mental breakdown - the nagging doubt, the foreboding fear, the gnawing worry, the troubled conscience - that the pressure we feel is self-inflicted when we listen to these voices in our head (ie our inner voice). Now the lyrics to the first part of the album make sense in relation to the concluding part.

That is not my concept, that is my interpretation of the concept as I understood it back in 1973

...and it's disparate not desperate btw 

It doesn't not work.

Starting with the cash-register of Money is a bit of a sonic jolt to begin with but it does work and since the tracks segue perfectly the rest of it flows well enough. (and better than the CD versions where Money follows after Great Giggle without the protracted "intermission" that flipping over an LP naturally introduces)

Gilmour once referred to the spoken word tracks on Moody Blues albums as "Poet's Corner", so I don't imagine he was a fan of that kind of non-musical interlude. 

 oooow that was tenuous.  

Shame you couldn't think of 'desperation' links to the rest of the album, Time should have been an easy one, it even mentions it in the lyric.

Perhaps, you have considered the fact that whether or not it sounds desperate also depends on each one's interpretation of the lyrics, yes?  Because what sounds desperate to you only sounds wry and matter of fact to me.  Haven't we seen billionaires buy up football (soccer) teams even if they understand very little about the game, haven't we seen superpowers make friends or enemies out of the same nations/entities?  Far from being desperate, I find the words of both songs ring true to me even today.  Whether more so than the 70s or not I cannot tell.  

My misunderstanding is understandable. 

Otherwise I'm calling "bullcrap" 

Right, but in that case, merely the fact that the lyrics of Money or Us and Them sound desperate to you (and not necessarily to everyone in general) doesn't mean there was no concept or that Waters was only pulling cotton wool over us all.  The concept broadly encompasses the things that drive people crazy and cause strife in the planet -  greed for money, war, the race against time and so on and so forth.  In that sense, it's a very 70s album (though the conclusion in Eclipse is already a lot more depressing and dreary than typical 70s optimism a la Anderson and his magic Eastern solutions) and where it differs is the way it chooses to narrate the concept.  I think one of the main reasons people might find the notion of DSOTM being a concept album questionable is that there is no protagonist here passing through different experiences and narrating these in first person.  In fact, a lot of it is in second person, stating everyday truths in a very matter of fact tone with just enough subtlety that it doesn't sound bald and crude and largely avoids topical references (which is why it continues to find fans even today).  But I would argue that that (the first person narrative) is the just the cliched idea of what a concept album is supposed to be (which has evolved over the last few decades) and it is not necessary that every artist who comes up with a concept album has to frame it that way alone.

Sorry to have embarrassed you in public, please go in peace.

Same for Aqualung and others like TAAB. It was never really discussed and we just enjoyed the music. We didn't even talk about Tommy or Quadrophenia in those terms.

Not until years later did I read articles that brought up this idea about some albums.

Perhaps I was too busy with school at the time to think about it.

 

 

Well...I'm not exactly apologizing for anything but saying that the idea of so-called concept albums wasn't really an issue with me and other listeners until critics and other writers started saying they were. An early meme perhaps.  

 

 

btw...what part of the USA are you living in?

...and I hope your mac deg isn't too bad ...is it wet or dry?

This brings us full-circle {How important are lyrics...}. 

To not notice a concept or theme in an album is to not notice the content and meaning of the lyric - to hear the music, the song and the vocal is to treat it purely as an aural entertainment for the purpose of enjoyment with little or no regard for any comment or statement the artist is attempting to make in the lyric being sung by the vocalist. This is not unlike reading Pride and Prejudice as a light-hearted love story without noticing the satire and social commentary within, at both levels we can appreciate the skill of the author, the quality of the writing and the literary value of the book. There is nothing wrong with that if entertainment is all you are seeking, and let's be honest here, that is its primary purpose after all. There are onion-like layers to almost every work of art but first above all those in any appreciation of it is the requirement to actually like the piece, to enjoy it and take pleasure from it, at that aesthetic outer layer. 

And we can stop there. There is no rule that says we must delve deeper, or that doing so would increase or decrease our enjoyment, it is the listener's choice. The artist can chose to impart some meaning or commentary into the album but it is for us to decide whether to give them any consideration; we can appreciate that Anderson, Anderson, Waters, Gabriel, Hammill, Sinfield et al can pen a good lyric without analysing what they are saying and even if we do there is nothing to say that any of them are great shakes in the philosophy department.

Well, it's a poor metaphor and in no way relevant to anything I've written so I'm not sure what the 'tongue' icon represents in this case.

Good. I love discussions and love it more when the persons involved can keep it to the subject being discussed and do not resort to personal remarks about the person they are discussing with. However "humorous" they think they are being, it's a cheap shot and frankly, I'm sick of it.