do you like the "dark side" of the discography?

Usually, what is considered "the dark side" of a group ends up being something i don't like.
 
Some cases are untried, when i have not heard the music, like with ELP-never heard Love Beach, or In The Hot Seat, so can't pass judgment-what i have heard of Black Moon, i like (and i saw them on that tour)

one of the only groups whose "dark side" i have ended up embracing is Triumvirat, with their last two pop rock albums A La Carte and Russian Roulette, but both were initially a hard sell for me-it took decades before i liked them, but now i definitely do

Time is an excellent album; my favourite ELO album.

Hercules wrote: Time is an excellent album; my favourite ELO album.   Camel never really did a stinker of an album, though The Single Factor tests my loyalty somewhat - it's really an Andy Latimer solo album (Stationary Traveller on the other hand is a superb album).   Marillion and Rush also never really plumbed the depths, IQ produced 2 odd but enjoyable, more commercial albums with Paul Menel and, them excepted, I can't think of another band that did not release something truly hideous.   Tull - Crest of a Knave (Steel Monkey must be their worst ever song) ELP - Love Beach (Bloody awful in every respect) Genesis - Genesis (Sold 8m albums to cloth eared idiots) Pink Floyd - The Final Cut (Like a third rate 3rd album to THe Wall, which is not my favourite Floyd album anyway) Yes - Big Generator (Resembles a serious train crash lasting over 43 mins)   To see such great bands releasing substandard rubbish like these is sad, but perhaps they ran out of creativity after their great 70s albums or perhaps they just wanted to make some serious money.

Seems to me what you're really asking is whether there are albums from prog bands that we still enjoy but that aren't generally considered to be their best work, and/or came out during a period when the bands were on the wane.

I agree with 'Time' and 'The Final Cut' which have already been mentioned, although both bands dropped large turds on their respective follow-up albums IMHO. 

Here's a few that come to mind:

Supertramp - famous last words (Hodgson was always about sappy emotion, and never more so than on this one)

Manfred Mann's Earth Band - 2006 (Mann managed to reawaken some creative spark long after I thought he was washed up)

Kansas - Audio-Visions (more authentic than most other stuff being put out by prog dinosaurs in the early 80s)

Renaissance - the Other Woman (not the classic band sound at all, but I still play it more than most of those older ones)

Yes - Open Your Eyes (even if Howe brought back Asia's sound with him, this is still the best thing the band had done in more than a decade)

kenethlevine wrote: Big fan of "Cured" by STEVE HACKETT

Ahh yes, Cured. I like Highly Strung as well. Great stuff! Good 80s drum sound on the latter especially.

I even like the GTR album, with Hackett and Howe which is better than Asia and has some vicious proggy material, like "the Hunter."

Its not in the digital music stores anymore, damn it. I should have recorded the stereo mix of it when I had the chance. More fool me.

thehallway wrote: Jazz musicians seem to get along consistently, without having a "classic period" and then 12 reunions, none of which contain any creativity. Must be a rock thing!

I think its about not beeing that commercial in the first place. Economic interests spoiled Rock and Prog, no doubt in my mind about that.

A lot of artists here at PA have released non-prog, but yet very good pop/rock albums that I really enjoy a lot. Genesis-post-Duke, Phil Collins and Peter Garbriel solo, ELO, Supertramp, and Queen definitely fall in this category.

ProgEpics wrote: I agree about time by ELO, a concept album as well. An astronaut in space away from his lover, for some reason he is in the wrong time period. The song lyrics such as "remember the good old 1980s?" even though the album came out in 81. My interpretation is that the main character gets back to his proper time at the end of the album, hence the standard rock n roll hold on tight. But the rest of the album is very futuristic, very cool idea.

The album has a very cool idea indeed, but it could have been fleshed out a little more. Apparently the main character was tempted to travel into the future but then could not return (despite all their great inventions and good intentions here I stay), The future was soulless and electronic, with orbiting space stations and moon colonies. He is provided with a robotic facisimile of his missed soul mate back in 1981. She is too cold and heartless for him to love. He decides to travel around, go to the Moon, and space, he sees beautiful things, but everything is so heartless, and he increasingly comes to obsess on the past and his lost lover. A bonus track has him visit his hometown and he is horrified to find that the everything is gone or rearranged, and his soul mate Julie has long since moved away and died. Finally he denounces the 21st century altogether, which he cannot relate to (~2095 the year is, I think). I think you are right and he gets home in the end. The album's overall theme is lack of fulfillment, lost love, loss of meaning in modern conditions, Here is The News sorts of highlights the post-modernity of the main characters situation, where the news is pointless, cacophonous and empty-hearted (someone left his life behind in a plastic bag) (someone escaped from Satellite 2 [the main character?])

As for APP someone said they were not Prog. Their music is far more serious than most so-called Prog, while the musical content of their work aims at popular appeal but is incredibly adventurous, unusual, moody and tightly woven together. Their albums include beautiful instrumental workouts and cohesive flow of one track to another, deep and ambitious themes... everything you could want from a prog band. I don't see a lot of difference between them and Pink Floyd, for example,, in terms of their musical content, except Floyd is a tad harder. You don't have to sound like Close to The Edge or Heavy Metal to be prog. 

I really like ELP's Love Beach, Yes's 90125, Pink Floyd without Waters and Supertramp without Hodgson.

I do not like: Genesis without Peter Gabriel or much of Gabriel's solo work; Yes's Tormato, Open Your Eyes and Fly From Here; Floyd's Final Cut; Ian Anderson's jtull.com; most of Asia's material; post-Hemispheres Rush; post-Red King Crimson.

Big Generator is good in parts, but cringe-worthy in places too. Phil Collins was a good drummer with Genesis, but I do not want to hear his solo work or the albums he produced for Eric Clapton.