Amazingly, as much as I don't usually agree with Rolling Stone Mag, I pretty much agree with this reader poll of a list of prog albums, all of which I obviously own. (My comments follow each paragraph from R.S.)
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/readers-poll-the-10-best-prog-rock-albums-of-the-seventies-20130821
10. Pink Floyd, 'Wish You Were Here'
Pink Floyd were one of the biggest bands on the planet when they cut Wish You Were Here in early 1975. The Dark Side of the Moon turned the band into a stadium rock act, but their thoughts kept going back to Syd Barrett. He started the group and wrote all their early songs. They owed their tremendous success to the guy, but nobody had seem him in years. They all agreed their next album should pay tribute to their founder. The album starts and ends with the nine-part epic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," which looks back at a time when Barrett "shone like the sun." The title track is another tribute to a lost friend, while the album's other two songs ("Have a Cigar," "Welcome to the Machine") are biting attacks on the music industry. The album is a masterpiece, and it marked the last time that Pink Floyd truly worked together as a band. By the time they cut Animals two years later, Roger Waters had taken over. They continued to make great music for a few more years, but things were never the same.
Hatrock: This is one of those really trippy yet intense Floyd albums that stands on its own. You can often tell when a band, despite their personal differences, can come together to create music magic. This is one of those rare ones for Floyd.
9. Pink Floyd, 'The Wall'
Relations within Pink Floyd completely broke down during the making of their 1979 double LP The Wall. Roger Waters was now writing most of the songs by himself, and he froze out the rest of the band - even booting founding keyboardist Richard Wright midway through the process. Producer Bob Ezrin somehow kept the sessions moving along, and he even convinced Waters to add a disco beat and a children's choir to Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2, helping the band score a rare hit single. The album itself is a rock opera about a Waters-like rock star named Pink who's haunted by the death of his father in World War Two. Waters has spent the last three years taking a revived version of the original Floyd stage production on tour all over the world.
Hatrock: Despite what I just said about coming together to make magic, sometimes it takes a man with a vision and a wizard producer to keep it all together. This is one of the greatest concept albums of all time and Water's continual tour of the album, it is known as the greatest concert production ever seen and heard.
8. Jethro Tull, 'Thick As a Brick'
Most prog albums have at least one really long song, often spanning the entire side of an album. Jethro Tull's 1972 LP Thick As a Brick brought that trend to its logical conclusion: the entire album is just one song. Side one is "Thick As a Brick, Part I" and side two is (you guessed it) "Thick As a Brick, Part II." The two-part song lasts 44 minutes. The group's 1971 album Aqualung won them many new fans, and they took them on a pretty crazy ride with the follow-up. The group wasn't completely crazy – they allowed a three-minute radio version to be cut for radio. To many Tull fans, this album is Jethro Tull at their peak. In 2012, the group's frontman released a sequel to the album called Thick As a Brick 2, which follows the life of protagonist Gerald Bostock. It's likely this move didn't sit well with the others members of Jethro Tull. The band hasn't officially broken up, but they tour in separate camps now and appear to be over.
Hatrock: This is the most ballsy song ever recorded. Ever. Ian Anderson wanted to make a prog album and he did to its fullest... all 44 minutes of dynamic whirling bends, weirdness, with a steady driving force behind it all. I love all the organ. When you've finished listening to it, you're amazed and you feel like you accomplished something personally.
7. Pink Floyd, 'Animals'
Roger Waters had a very negative view of mankind in the Seventies. On Floyd's 1977 LP Animals he divided humanity into three categories: pigs, sheep and dogs. The pigs are the corrupt politicians. Dogs are the aggressive, uncaring capitalists. The sheep are the masses that question nothing, going through life in a state of pure ignorance. Put another way, he had disdain for absolutely everybody. He also had little interest in recording songs like "Wish You Were Here" that would work on the radio. Instead, there's really just three songs on the album, though "Pigs on the Wing" is divided into three sections. The LP turned off some casual Floyd fans who loved songs like "Money" and "Have a Cigar," but the true believers were enthralled by the complex, epic songs. They supported the album with a huge stadium tour that only served to make Waters hate the world even more, though it did inspire him to start writing The Wall.
Hatrock: I consider this album as Pre-Wall. The 70's were a dark time in Western society, but it produced the best music by far to reflect it. Movies like Jaws were dark and scary. The Nixon Watergate scandal had really soured everyone politically about our democracies. Animals came out at the right time for those prog fans mired in this negative tornado wanting an outlet for their angst. However, the true counter-culture music that was bourne was the British punk scene.
6. Rush, 'Hemispheres'
Rush's 1978 LP Hemispheres was the group's last indisputable prog album. They went out with a bang. The success of 2112 and A Farewell to Kings gave them complete freedom to do whatever they wanted. The first side of the LP is taken up by "Cygnus X-1," a six-part song about an explorer that goes into a black hole. (That's about as proggy a storyline as you can get.) Side two wraps up with "La Villa Strangiato," a 12-chapter instrumental. The subtitle of that song is "An Exercise in Self-Indulgence," a clear sign the band knew they had taken prog rock as far as they could without seeming ridiculous. The band re-emerged two years later with shorter songs, and suddenly they were all over the radio. That wasn't anything they had to worry about with the songs on Hemispheres.
Hatrock: Absolutely one of my favourite albums of all time. "La Villa" is the best rock instrumental of all time, period. "The Trees" is one of the funnest songs to play bass/keyboards on and sad the author doesn't mention it. He also has it wrong above. The first song is a title track "Hemispheres" with several titled parts, and yes, it is a continuation, but "Cygnus X-1" was the last song on the previous album "A Farewell To Kings". Anyway, "Hemi" is a wonderfully complete and dynamic album.
5. Genesis, 'Selling England By the Pound'
Selling England By the Pound is the fifth Genesis album, but it's the first time the group completed an album without a single weak song. All five members of the group worked as a team, crafting prog masterpieces like "The Cinema Show," "Dancing With the Moonlight Knight" and "Firth of Fifth." The latter song features a stellar guitar solo by Steve Hackett and a brilliant piano intro by Tony Banks. Peter Gabriel ceded vocal duties to drummer Phil Collins on "More Fool Me," foreshadowing a big change coming to the band a few years in the future. "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" was their attempt at a hit single, but the group really shines on the long and truly weird songs like the 11-minute "The Battle of Epping Forest." Nobody else was making music quite like this in 1973, or really any time since.
Hatrock: I heard this album for the first time last year... yes yes, I know. "Dancing With the Moonlight Knight" begins a-capella Gabriel and some soft Renaissance-sounding reverb ditties for a couple minutes then at exactly 2:00 it explodes into a mellowtron suspended 2nd chord anthem--I literally get tingles everytime I hear it. Then it fires off in a Steve Hackett-Tony Banks organ-guitar dual with Collins soft drumming flying along in the back. You can hear some foreshadowing of parts that became the quintessential Genesis prog sound, even into the 90's. This song though, I began to truly appreciate Hackett and Tony Banks as the top players in their field. Being a huge fan of poppy Genesis in the 80's, it was then I knew Genesis was really the true prog force that every prog fan was raving about and missing during the 80's.
4. Genesis, 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'
By 1974, Peter Gabriel was experiencing what Roger Waters went through just a few years later. He had a hugely ambitious idea for a rock opera, and he didn't think it could work if the band functioned as a democracy. Gabriel, however, is a little better at playing politics than Roger Waters, and he let the band write the vast majority of the music while he wrote the lyrics and plotted out the story. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tells the story of Rael, a half-Puerto Rican who gets sucked into an alternate universe. The story is very hard to follow, and the version that Gabriel typed up for the record sleeve does little to alleviate that confusion. It barely matters. The double LP is a prog masterpiece, even though songs like "Counting Out Time" and "The Carpet Crawlers" work pretty well as traditional pop songs. Most of the other songs are extremely dense, and they provide showcases for all five members of the band. We'll never know how the group would have evolved from here. Gabriel quit the band during the tour in support of the album.
Hatrock: I just bought this a few months ago. Shut up, okay! I actually really like the growly sound of Mike Rutherford's bass on the title track. Genesis would still go on to make more prog albums before their pop influence started to dominate. It paid off huge for the remaining three members.
3. Yes, 'Close to the Edge'
If aliens ever land on earth and demand to hear a single prog album so they can understand the genre, it would be a wise move to play them Close to the Edge. It's got everything: a song that takes up the entire side of the record (with bold time signature changes), freakishly talented musicians, songs divided up into multiple chapters, a keyboardist who liked to wear glittery capes and a song called "Siberian Khatru." Their previous album, 1971's Fragile, had a few long songs, but on Close to the Edge they dove into the deep end of the prog pool. Sadly, it was the final Yes album of the 1970s with drummer Bill Bruford - a guy so progged-out he played in Yes, Genesis and King Crimson. After this, Yes began changing their lineup more often than most people change their bed sheets. They produced some great work, but never quite recaptured the magic of Close to the Edge.
Hatrock: Being a crazy Yes fan, this album is one of several of their string of 70's masterpieces. I strongly feel their album "Relayer" should be on this top 10, if not ahead of this album. I'm sorry but "Gates of Delirium" is deemed as one of the greatest prog songs of all time by many, including Geddy Lee. Anyway, that doesn't diminish how perfect this album is.
2. Pink Floyd, 'The Dark Side of the Moon'
Even people who absolutely hate progressive rock often love Dark Side of the Moon. It's a very hard album to hate, and songs like "Money" and "Time" are prog rock covered with enough sugar to make them go down very easy. This is the album that changed everything for Pink Floyd. They were a reasonably popular art-rock band prior to this, but every day since the release of Dark Side they've been immortal rock gods. No song on the album even goes over eight minutes, but they all flow together into a seamless whole. This is partially due to the fact that the band toured the album before they recorded it, slowly crafting each song until it was perfect. The group was pleased by the final result, but they had no idea it would become a worldwide sensation. They had incredible success over the next decade, but Dark Side of the Moon hovers above anything else in their catalog. Generation after generation of teenagers discover it, earning enough money to guarantee that David Gilmour's great-great-great grandchildren will be extremely wealthy.
Hatrock: Any normal adult who doesn't like this album, or isn't familiar with it, should listen to it, and if they don't like it, they should be subject to punishment of listening to 5 seconds of Nickelback repeated (oh wait, that's ALL their songs, isn't it?). Anyway, although only two songs break the 7 minute mark ("Time", "Us And Them") this album of 9 songs flows like one big 43 minute epic, yet all the songs stand on their own. And that's what makes it great. It feels like a story. And what story would that be? "The Wizard Of Oz" of course. See for yourself how the first 43 minutes of that epic movie uncanningly fit with "Dark Side of the Moon". Believe or not, but the first time I watched that was on YouTube in 2007... when I was living in... you guessed it... Kansas!
1. Rush, '2112'
It's the year 2112, and the world is in rough shape. The evil Priests of the Temples of Syrinx control everything, and they make Big Brother seem almost friendly by comparison. Everything is censored, and rock & roll is strictly forbidden. Things begin to change when a man discovers an old guitar. He dies before he can fulfill his musical dreams, but a new planetary war breaks out that seems to result in the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx going down. (It's a little ambiguous.) It's a fine story, but the brilliance of 2112 isn't found in the story. It's the music. Rush were in a tough spot when they started the album. They weren't scoring hits songs, and their label was on the verge of dropping them. Instead of making a commercial album, they quadrupled down on prog. It didn't lead to a hit, but the album found a huge cult audience. It's nearly 40 years later, and that audience hasn't let go at all. Rush remain the biggest cult band in the world, and every show on their last tour wrapped up with the title track from 2112. Nobody left disappointed.
Hatrock: I totally agree with this album being #1. No other album or song ever recorded in the history of mankind encompasses a theme like this one. Even the foreshadowing of nanny-state scope-creep government intervention and privacy spying that we find today in "2013" democracy can relate to "2112".
I can't imagine being a young boy putting on the headphones to listen to this for the first time. I wish I was there in '76, but instead for me, it was '95. With its spacey anticipation stereophonic intro exploding into lasers introducing the bands technical prowess, I know it would feel you were taking off in a rocketship and once that ship gets going, the heavy metal power chord riff kicks in and you're on your way. This riff is followed by Geddy's screeching voice representative of the anti-freedom, evil Priests of the Temples of Syrinx and their commie mantra mission plan for their society.
After this intro radio-friendly subtrack, the song subdues itself into a scene of sounds of flowing water near a brook. Our hero character is introduced and while strolling near a brook, he finds a "strange device", an old guitar from "ancient" times. Its terribly out of tune, so he ('he' being Alex Lifeson) actually tunes the thing (something I've never heard on an album anywhere yet to this day) and then plays some wonderful simple riffs that even I can play--highlighting the innocence and beauty of the scene. The hero (now Geddy) sings in a soft voice "I can't wait to share this new wonder". In "The Presentation" the hero then brings the guitar to the priests for acceptance with again, soft mid-range singing by Lee followed by the band playing more loudly and Geddy screeching high, again, representative of the anger of the priests. This conversation goes back and forth for several verses. Rejected, eventually, the hero becomes distraught and sees no point in living in this overbearing world. The very heavy fast music here is almost like Mozart's Don Giovanni with its tragedy and darkness. A war ensues and we are left with a deep repeating warning "Attention all planets of the solar federation.... we have assumed control..." and explosion sounds burst with full guitar distortion chords all around, ending the epic in one glorious finale.
My view of this is that the song is a tragedy so the Priests of Syrinx have indeed assumed control over everything.
And let's not forget the other killer songs on side two... that have nothing to do with Syrinx or the theme really.
"Passage To Bangkok" - With a piercing guitar riff and its oriental sound, this solid Rush song takes you around the world in a journey and a major chord anthem chorus and an off-time solo giving Rush fans a taste of the proggy goodness we've come to know and love from the Holy Triumvirate.
"The Twilight Zone" - A reverb band riff and groovy verse, with a jazzy bridge mellow chorus flows along while Geddy hypnotizes you, and Alex's soaring solo takes you way out there.
"Lessons"- A personal favourite of mine with its catchy acoustic guitar chord riff and groovy bass line, Geddy sings, "Sweet memories... flashing very quickly by... reminded me, and giving me a reason why...". Then it gets heavier and Geddy screams and a way we go into a heavy off-time power chord riff. So tight!
"Tears" - A completely different song than the whole album, it gives it the balance it needs. It begins with a sad guitar and a soft Ged singing and slowly builds into the next verse where a flute is introduced (what, a flute?!) and a flowing chorus with a mellowtron synthesizer pad surrounding you. It's a beautiful song--probably the only Rush song that can actually be called "beautiful", especially on this heavy heavy album.
"Something For Nothing" - A speaking of heavy, the album finishes with a cool plucked riff and another groovy bass line with mellow Geddy singing, but then it kicks up into a much heavier sound in the next verse with Geddy waaaay up there and band cymbal shots building to the heavy chord-riffed chorus and then right into a screeeeaming solo, another chorus, another crazy high verse, bridge, and Geddy "whoooooooooooa" intro to the final chorus. This is a guitar player's song and an arc to the ending of "2112" in a way.
Overall, "2112" is truly the best prog-heavy rock album ever and nothing has or will ever come close.
This list overall, is not exactly what I'd pick, but it's refreshing to see prog fans have and always will have, the best taste in the best music ever made!
