Costume prog?

Psych/pagan/prog swedish band Goat

I have to look back and read more on this ... but it is thought and understood that PG copied OSANNA in a tour in Italy, I think ... and I believe that ANGE also used costumes, probably in the earlier material.

I would caution the question though, as Europe has had a very long and large history of musical dramas, including Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht, all of which were completely costumed for performance, and some were outlawed in their countries and went to a different place. The "fantasy", or "story book" stuff that GENESIS created, is all but a continuation of the line of this material that could even go as far back as the GRIMM Brothers, whose stories were stolen by Walt Disney left and right to the point where most think that the WD version is the original, and IT ISN'T.

In England, FISH used costumes in some shows with Marillion, and I think this is one of the things that did not stay with Marillion at all, and instead ended up relying on the singing of the new person ... however, many folks prefer the older version, although the tendency is to state that it was a PG copy, and it WAS NOT since PG is not an actor ... FISH was an actor that sang ... 

One other one, and odd one for many folks, THE INCREDIBLE STRING BAND, in the early days, were all about the costumes and the show ... and seeing one of their films, it looks like a left over hippie thing, but I'm not sure that it was just that ... Robin Williamson has stated many times, that their experiments into POETRY, THEATER and other performance attributes were just a nice mix between himself and Mike Heron ... and the presentation was different, though you could tell that the amount of money their presentation had was probably 5 nickels and 1 dime ... and a cup of coffee! Specially compared to bands that had a few more bob to spend, like GENESIS, though they mostly spent their money getting more instruments and better gear from the early days!

In America, this whole thing never really took off as it became a sort of lash-back to the hippie days, and the media onslaught saying how bad it was with all the sex, drugs and rock music! And some still say that the death of a couple of the musicians, was the reason why it all died ... their theatricality was no longer viable and the media made sure to punish it! Conversely Europe has a much more extensive history of the arts in performance ... up to and including things like opera ... things that have a history of over 300 to 400 years, and the suggestion is that these things were around before as well!

And this leads to something else ... there is no way that the "public" that saw the shows at THE GLOBE did not hear or see music, since most of them other than a handful of nobles, were street people standing up around/outside the stage area ... which means it had to have some music to counter some of the stuff and make sure the folks watching were not having fun ... after the witches, do you really think those folks could just stand there and listen to the endless spiels? I doubt it ... even today!

Unfortunately it's not as well known as it should be but Peter Gabriel and Genesis borrowed HEAVILY from the Italian band Osanna who started the whole costume / face paint prog thing first.

Due to England's domination in prog fame, facts like this tend to get overlooked but if you research the timeline of who did what first, there's no denying that OSANNA was in the forefront of costume prog.

If you want to get into proto-prog scenarios then The Crazy World of Arthur Brown could be considered the cutting edge of both prog and metal shenanigans that followed.

Another underappreciated band was the proto-punk, proto-metal, pseucho-prog band ZOLAR X who haunted the L.A. club scene in the 70s. They failed to score a record label during their popular run as an L.A. strip entertainment behemoth but they had a few proggy songs such as this one. They very well could be considered prog related but i've never suggested them.

Unfortunately very little live footage survives of their alien impersonating stage antics but nevertheless they were pretty out there for the 70s.

Well, I hope you live in Los Angeles! Otherwise it could be difficult.