What Was The First Prog Album

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: ... At least it's the album that made prog official. There's also a good argument for Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues which precedes "Court" by almost two years. Frank Zappa, Soft Machine, Family, The Nice, Procol Harum, Pink Floyd and others paved the way but for full blown prog I'd say King Crimson's debut is probably where it all began (at least officially).

Hi,

I'm not sure how I think/feel about it, but I do remember folks thinking (around me in Madison, WI a very big university town!!!! AND very cool!) that it was some art rock, but the thing that confused many folks, was that only two songs had a similar/same sound and the rest was experimental, at best ... it really gave the idea of ART ROCK a huge push, as it showed that some other experimental things could be done with music.

I always thought that perhaps, The Moody Blues, The Nice, Procol Harum, Electric Prunes (for example) were really on the side of classical music, or at least doing something that made it more intelligent and classical, instead of bubble gum pop music, which is what radio (in America) was at that time, at the beginning of the rise of FM radio.

PF, did not get as much attention until AFTER Syd Barrett, the story that really had folks going ... wow ... and the band having to change to something else, made it clear that a Syd Barrett mold was not possible to continue anyway, ripped or not, as Syd did not know chords or notes, and played by the sound and the feel he felt and heard (per Robert Wyatt!!!) ... which is not exactly sustainable in the long run in terms of continuing, at least in this very case!

While I'm not sure that KC's album deserves the idea/thought that it was one of the first, I do think that the artistry in the music and the open-ness of the new FM radio in America made for things to be done, that were new ... and it helped bring us a lot of music, which made it tougher to decide which one was first ... I don't think there was a "first", per se, as the music had been changing and developing ... we don't even go around saying that Chuck Berry was the first either that helped make the guitar (and poor subject matter) and songs known on rock radio which was at that time the worst bubble gum and crap music, with nothing to say. All of a sudden, some folks changed that tune! And the next 5 or 6 years, completely blew out the AM Radio format in America for a while until the FM radio band thing died down when the independent stations were all bought by corporate America.

I think there is too much that created a problem to DECIDE which album was first and some ideas think this is the one, and other ideas think that something else is the one! ... it's not as simple as that from our point of view some 50 (or more) years later!

Edited by moshkito - May 23 2025 at 06:23

^ agreed - and ITCOTCK is definitely not proto-prog as was suggested earlier in the thread. Sure it was influenced by proto-prog but it took things a quantum leap further, and as you say it laid the basic blueprint for prog rock.

bardberic wrote: ThyroidGlands wrote: Surely many will disagree, but for me it's The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other by Van der Graaf. Let's remember that it was recorded in the first weeks of December '69, just two months after the release of In the Court of the Crimson King (proto-prog for me) I agree, ItCotCK is not quite full fledged progressive rock, yet. I'd, too, call it proto-prog.

As others have commented in similar ways before me - I couldn't disagree more. The weirdest thing to me is thinking that The Least We... is more fully fledged prog than In the Court... is. Love both dearly, but surely the former album has as much or more late 1960's psychedelic spirit and "hippie-feel" to it. And there's no genuinely iconic 21St Century Schizoid Man, Epitaph or In the Court... (the end-epic) type track featured on it either (it doesn't make me appreciate it any less). Which I consider to be three blueprints for three different approaches to many progsongs in the years to come. Including some by VdGG.    

Saperlipopette! wrote: ... The weirdest thing to me is thinking that The Least We... is more fully fledged prog than In the Court... is. Love both dearly, but surely the former album has as much or more late 1960's psychedelic spirit and "hippie-feel" to it. ...

Hi,

I think that KC's album was more about possibilities than it might have been about "prog", or (at the time) "art rock", which it definitely WAS!

But this is where things get cloudy I think. I don't disagree with DE and he cleaned up the terminology and the ideas a bit better than most of us, however, I'm not sure that us inventing the "terms" and "terminology" some 20 or 30 years later, helps determine that ideas behind the music ... for me KC's album is a perfect screenshot of the time and place and its people, and the quite different pieces take on a lot of what was going on at the time, the megalomania, the wars and its killing of our "friends", the hippiedom idea and its romantic outlook, the wind talking but never saying anything for any of us to listen ... it didn't stop!

Does it make it "progressive", yes it does, in the sense that it was quite adventurous and very experimental in ways we had not heard before, but, I'm not sure that our definitions and terminology really clarifies the time and place and its music, or arts ... it wasn't that simple, I don't think! Specially applying terms and ideas that were created much later to try and make sense of a lot of the arts, and in this case music.

At that point, The Nice, Frank Zappa and VdGG are more important, and they all broke the mold and did something special ... that we love dearly.

I just hope that the history of it gets cleaned up some more, and the music/arts matched to the time and place, so it makes better sense instead of us feeling that it is all too isolated and the meanings are not important ... everything about the artists/musicians helped create and define these things ... and I'm not sure we are giving them enough credit for it.

But, yeah, it would be progressive in the sense that things changed and showed something that was not there before, but isn't that the history of the arts?

Edited by moshkito - May 24 2025 at 10:31

^ I think I understand what you're trying to say. I mostly tried to relate to this in the way I understood the question being asked, and using the same "logic".

Btw: When I write Hippie or Psychedelic it's not meant as something negative or less worthy. It's closer to stating that Verklarte Nacht by Schoenberg still has a foot in the late Romantic era - while his Suite für Klavier has totaly abandoned that. The former composition is the only one of the two I love and listen to nevertheless.

moshkito wrote: But, yeah, it would be progressive in the sense that things changed and showed something that was not there before, but isn't that the history of the arts?

Yes that's clearly the dominating approach of an art historian writing the history of art. But I don't necessarily think its the only way, or fair, healthy, good or accurate.

Schizoid Man is a completely progressive track, unlike the rest of the album. ITWOP is much more progressive than its predecessor, and I consider Lizard and Islands to be jazz-rock albums with progressive touches. LTIA is definitely a fully progressive album. But well, that's just my opinion.

Anyway, I do consider King Crimson and ITCOTCK as the quintessence of prog (even if that album doesn’t seem entirely progressive to me).

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: What about the first Egg also which was recorded two months earlier but released a month later.

Totally agree.

Edited by ThyroidGlands - May 24 2025 at 13:12

Saperlipopette! wrote: ... Yes that's clearly the dominating approach of an art historian writing the history of art. But I don't necessarily think its the only way, or fair, healthy, good or accurate.

Hi,

I just find it sad that, even here on PA, a lot of the history is left behind, which kinda makes a lot of albums come off without a soul in my book. Or, as I have heard one time and was incredibly astonished, was someone commenting on Neil Young and his very strong song about Kent State ... and that person thought that Neil was an ash-hole!

Music, and any art, is all a part of the complete picture of any time and place, with one slight manipulation ... you look at the Renaissance, and you see the control of the arts, and there are many stories of persecutions and attempts at removing other artists, and writers, and we can go back to Galileo and many others ... the idea was to convince people that the powers that be made the laws and the decisions. You won't even consider that Guernica was a snapshot of a war that a child sees out the window in his house ... and it makes no sense ... the incredible carnage on top of it for a youngster to remember the rest of his life! Sure, calling it "cubism" is of interest, but that's like saying that Miro painted the most meaningful work of the 20th century, which both you and I will ROFLOL ... about!

Rock music, specially, broke the mold and they ripped apart American radio for some 15/20 years, but this did not happen without what was taking place in the streets at all ... and I tend to think that over the years we have made the idea that numbers and songs are more important than life itself ... and I find this sad, and sometimes, even with the Internet ... extremely empty ... and something that eventually is going to hurt down the line as we take so much of these songs as if we were, still, 15/16 or 17 years old and loving a song that we played 10 times in a row! But I'm not sure that you won't agree that Jimi, Jim, Jefferson A, Creedence and so many others that were the bands that ended up helping the art rock become progressive rock within a few years! And they had opinions, unlike so many bands today that their work is not exactly important in relation to the rest of their time and place.

Edited by moshkito - May 26 2025 at 07:16

siLLy puPPy wrote: ... There are literally dozens more that featured early prog characteristics but existed in that murky "proto-prog" territory KC was without a doubt the most developed and perfected prog album to emerge which is why many consider it ground zero but quality isn't the same as definition :)

Hi,

I have a tendency to think that considering many of these bands listed as "proto-prog" is not right ... in my book, they were a part of what helped bring what we consider "the real thing" to fruition, thus kinda considering many of these bands "inferior" and not fit to be included in the line with the big kahuna!

It makes it look like we could not agree on a lot of things, so we invented a sub-genre, so we could dump all the stuff that wasn't "good enough" to be considered a major work ...

The hard part is that I see we are ignoring the history and the timeline of these bands and their life and appreciation/influence ... I think from a ground roots idea, they were probably more important to the general listenership than KC would have been, because their work was easier on the ears, for example. But in all likelihood it was what helped us get ear sensitive and end up appreciating a KC and other works.

Genres are created by perception not production (they are categories for music, not music itself), and with hindsight.

I'd say that ITCOTCK is the first prog album in the sense that people would largely agree, with hindsight, that prog as a genre existed from the point ITCOTCK came out and not before (at least, only a minority would say it existed as a genre before, or it had to wait still for longer). Of course same holds for Hot Rats but rather by implication - Hot Rats could be assigned to an already existing genre at that point without big problems. ITCOTCK not so much.

But what is important about this is that the statement that ITCOTCK is the first prog album in this sense is not exclusively a statement about the album itself and the music on it. It is a statement about the state of development of rock music at this point in general, and it also includes that many elements of prog had been there before. This means that all or most of the albums listed here that came before ITCOTCK like Ars Longa Vita Brevis, Days of Future Passed, Freak Out etc. actually contribute to forming the prog genre and have their part in saying that with ITCOTCK prog was finally fully there. So for example the point is not to listen to ALVB and ITCOTCK and to say ITCOTCK sounds full prog and ALVB doesn't. The point is many elements (also brought in by other albums) important to prog were not yet there when ALVB appeared but were there when ITCOTCK appeared, including ALVB itself, and it's this what makes ITCOTCK the "first prog album".

Edited by Lewian - May 26 2025 at 08:41

Lewian wrote: Genres are created by perception not production (they are categories for music, not music itself), and with hindsight. I'd say that ITCOTCK is the first prog album in the sense that people would largely agree, with hindsight, that prog as a genre existed from the point ITCOTCK came out and not before (at least, only a minority would say it existed as a genre before, or it had to wait still for longer). Of course same holds for Hot Rats but rather by implication - Hot Rats could be assigned to an already existing genre at that point without big problems. ITCOTCK not so much. But what is important about this is that the statement that ITCOTCK is the first prog album in this sense is not exclusively a statement about the album itself and the music on it. It is a statement about the state of development of rock music at this point in general, and it also includes that many elements of prog had been there before. This means that all or most of the albums listed here that came before ITCOTCK like Ars Longa Vita Brevis, Days of Future Passed, Freak Out etc. actually contribute to forming the prog genre and have their part in saying that with ITCOTCK prog was finally fully there. So for example the point is not to listen to ALVB and ITCOTCK and to say ITCOTCK sounds full prog and ALVB doesn't. The point is many elements (also brought in by other albums) important to prog were not yet there when ALVB appeared but were there when ITCOTCK appeared, including ALVB itself, and it's this what makes ITCOTCK the "first prog album".

There are artists that are truly the first to experiment in a new style and then there are artists that start a revolution

KC started the revolution but weren’t the first prog

Same thing for the Sex Pistols who started the punk revolution but weren’t the first punk act

It seems there a divide between which of these distinctions is being prioritized