Progressive Rock/Metal

[mac1]

What prog bands do you guys like.

I like Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment, Tool, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Radiohead, Tangerine Dream, The Who and some Genesis.

[littlemissattitude]

Have always loved The Who. "Tommy" is great, a real tour de force. I think there was some stunt casting in the film, but the music survived even that. Funny story. Not long after the film version of "Tommy" came out, I went to Las Vegas with my parents. Ann-Margaret, who played Tommy's mother in the film, was performing at one of the hotels, and we went to the show. The audience was mostly middle-aged and older folks, who didn't quite know what to do when she sang several songs from the film, along with having scenes from the film projected behind her. I loved it, having just seen the movie a little bit before that, but there were some quite befuddled folks who hadn't been expecting that at all.

Anyway, I digress. "Who's Next" is my favorite Who album. "Behind Blue Eyes" is my favorite Who song, and one of my favorite songs of all time. But then there's the old stuff - "My Generation" is the standout, as far as I'm concerned. I find it delicious that Roger Daltrey has gone on to be an apparently quite well-respected actor. Not sure at all about Pete Townshend (his mouth tends to get him in trouble sometimes), but he is clearly a genius.

I'm not sure I "get" Radiohead. A friend turned me on to "Creep" when it was first out. A truly bizarre song, but I quite like it. ("I want a perfect body/I want a perfect soul" - how many of us haven't had that thought at some point?) But I don't really find Radiohead's more recent work all that accessible. Maybe I'm just too old.

Geneisis - I'm much more fond of their work post-Peter Gabriel. I don't know what it is about him. I quite like some of his solo work, but he just creeps me out for some reason.

Pink Floyd are, well, Pink Floyd. They are an institution as much as they are a band.

Otherwise, aside of having heard of Tool but not being consciously aware of their music, I don't know any of the other bands you've listed. Like I said, maybe I'm just getting too old.

[mac1]

Age is a case of mind over matter.

If you dont mind, it doesn't matter.

Your hotel story is great. I can just imagine the scene now! I think Tommy probably is my favorite album by The Who, its just sssooo dark.

As for Radiohead, I kind of missed out on them the first time around. I pretty much discarded them for what they where early on, just another Indie band, but then a friend of mine lent me Kid A. I found to my delight, that the band had grown from a fundamentally post-grunge rock band, into a fully fledged progressive rock group. Once I got over my earlier dismissal of the band as something they had previously been I really started to enjoy the interesting music they produce.

One prog band I have never really been able to get into are King Crimson. They are much more avante-garde than their peers at the time (Pink Floyd and the like), and as a bit of a fan of avant-garde music, I feel I should perhaps like them a little more, but nothing I have ever heard bu them has really stood out to me.

Originally Posted by littlemiss

Otherwise, aside of having heard of Tool but not being consciously aware of their music, I don't know any of the other bands you've listed. Like I said, maybe I'm just getting too old.

Tool and the other bands I listed (aside from Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream) are all prog metal groups. Progressive metal has always been a somewhat underground genre, which is perhaps the reason you have not heard anything by these artists.

As for Genesis, I found that they had OK to good tracks throughout their career, yet I always found, that they were a little hit and miss. IMHO, many albums consisted of just a couple of decent tracks, with 6-8 "nothing special" filler tracks. There were a couple of albums I liked most of the way through, Acabab springs to mind, but TBH there weren't that many Genesis tracks I thought were outstanding. Phil Collins solo stuff on the other hand...

[knivesout]

I don't consider my self a prog fan at all, but I lkke amny of the bands bigmac mentioned, especially Tool.

I've enjoyed a lot of Rush over the years, but mostly the old epic stuff. King Crimosn has some great albums and oddly my fave is a recent one called Thrak - you may like that, bigmac, if the idea I'm getting of your tastes is accurate.

Yes and Genesis sort of bored me. I've heard some other stuff like Dream Theater, LTE, Spock's Beard and so on but they all seemed too portentuous and technical for humble me.