What Was The First Prog Album

For anyone interested i made a comprehensive list on Rate Your Music that features the earliest examples of progressive rock, jazz fusion and progressive folk

It covers the early proto-prog as well as the full blown prog and roughly covers the period from 1963 to 1969 with a couple 1970 albums appearing because someone changed the release date since i made this list

The multiple tagging feature on RYM allows you to gauge the fuller sound of any particular album. This list was fun to make as it turned me on to many acts i had never explored.

/rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/secret-origins-the-earliest-examples-of-progressive-rock-progressive-folk-and-jazz-rock-fusion/

siLLy puPPy wrote: For anyone interested i made a comprehensive list on Rate Your Music that features the earliest examples of progressive rock, jazz fusion and progressive folk It covers the early proto-prog as well as the full blown prog and roughly covers the period from 1963 to 1969 with a couple 1970 albums appearing because someone changed the release date since i made this list The multiple tagging feature on RYM allows you to gauge the fuller sound of any particular album. This list was fun to make as it turned me on to many acts i had never explored. /rateyourmusic.com/list/siLLy_puPPy/secret-origins-the-earliest-examples-of-progressive-rock-progressive-folk-and-jazz-rock-fusion/

I’m impressed with this list! You even have one of the three obscure ones that I mentioned (Omega). I think that sometimes it’s the one that gets the most noise that people put forth, but you make a convincing argument that it was a bubbling cauldron of this and that which morphed into this stew that we call Prog rock. There were certainly a lot of post-WW 2 Jazz cats that were making very complex and modern sounds. I unearthed some of them recently and was just blown away. Check out Art Tatum “Yesterdays” for example.

Art Tatum - Yesterdays

Edited by Jaketejas - Yesterday at 08:08

Saperlipopette! wrote: ^ I don't think any one person - or in this case band, started anything ever, as such. Not single handedly. But with In the Court of the Crimson King, what we commonly understand as "classic Progressive Rock", was sort of calcified. You can find earlier examples and many traces of most - if not all of the music featured on that album. But I'd still argue that there was nothing quite like it out there already, before it was released and unleashed. The effect and influence it has had on the scene that was to become, cannot be overstated imo. In The Court... started something of a musical revolution (in a rock context) that doesn't really happen anymore - almost worldwide. There's so much Progressive Rock (and more) that "we" love and treasure that can be traced back to that specific album.

Hi,

I like this, and I wonder if this album ended up defining something about the music that no one gives a damn about, these days (nothing to fight for?) ... but it was very clear in the KC album ... it's lyrics were very pointed and direct and took on various themes ... where most bands, did one or two pieces that had a point and the rest was either a filler, or not as important. I kinda remember Jefferson Airplane, be like that some ... one really pointed thing, and then another that was ... wtfudge happened? And these days all books point to the different personalities in the band between Martin, Paul and Grace and probably others. This was not the case with the KC album, and it continued on all musical pieces all the way to the end ... you end it with an Epitaph to the many friends you lost or knew in one way or another ... it didn't matter if it was VietNam or the Irish bombs, or some other global event ... it was all there, but us kinda looking at this as just a "progressive album" or the "1st album in the progressive mode", is nice and a great thing, but I think this makes RF think that the completeness of the work is being ignored and not mentioned or discussed, because no one has read the lyrics, or gives a damn about lyrics anyway! In the end, the lyrical content alone makes a lot of bands come off second rate, and I sometimes think that is a fair statement.

Thus, it is a progressive first, and even more so ... lyrically ... something that most of us here, do not like to discuss ... because half the time we don't bother reading it or appreciating it ... witness the usual discussion of TFTO and so many folks dismissing it, as just crap and over stuffed tomatoes!

Yeah, in the end, this KC album gets y vote in many more ways than just one ... but I don't think that it got that done without seeing so much of it in front of them by so many other groups and folks, though I would agree that it was not as strong, and complete, as KC managed to get it to be ... and I think this was the strength of the album ... it's not just a bunch of ninny pop songs!!!

^ Not unlike King Crimson, Magma presented themselves to the world with something unique right out of the gate. But Magma weren't unique in the sense that they "invented" a new kind of music. Their debut/Kobaïa & Zeuhl are a combination of many existing musical expressions. Of course you already know this, but I'm just trying to answer your question. Vander's Coltrane worship is well known. Their two first albums are essentially a highly original, spiritual and distinctive take on Jazz Rock-Fusion.

I love most things Zeuhl and Christian Vander coming up a total package, including a complete universe, a made up language and a new musical genre is both impressive and a stroke of genius. But the genre thing is still partly a gimmick to me. I mean The Residents had a full concept and their music arguably came even more out of nowhere imo. But they didn't introduce themselves with a new musical genre to boot, so we lump them into Avant Prog. Magma would either have been lumped in there too - or in Jazz Rock Fusion. If it wasn't for Zeuhl it would have been just as natural or unnatural for us as having Zappa and Miles placed in those two genres. There was plenty of music made in 1969-1971 (and before) for me to state that Magma and Zeuhl - unique as it is - was also smack dab in the middle of the zeitgeist of the era.