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Originally Posted by The Watcher
I would give the first ELP a spin as well, Tarkus is a great song, yet it's unrepresentative of ELP as a whole - I think the first album represents them at their peak in terms of musicianship and before they went a little crazy with the over the top stuff...... Still I think you make an interesting point when you reference ELP is "full of prog stereotypes people hate", it's funny because ELP was what progressive rock represented at the time to most people - same with bands like Genesis with the costume changes and such (Genesis are obviously excellent, I just don't care about costumes) - there were a lot of preposterous elements yet thats what prog was...... That excess was what made prog so unique, regardless if it was Spring having THREE mellotron players or ELP or whatnot........
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I think that there is something unique specially the first seventies years prog. I donīt think itīs excess altough the music was mostly very powerful. Itīs very hard to explain what it is, of course those albums sound so good, much better than most of the music after seventies, but I donīt think itīs just that. Maybe itīs that the prog musicians wanted to go to the very different worlds than this ours and I think many of them succeeded! Itīs quite amazing also that almost every prog bands albums started to weaken in the end of decade (of course thereīs exceptions: King Crimsonīs Red is maybe their best album!).
Altough I donīt think Tarkus is one of the greatest prog albums, I still enjoy to listen it a lot. Yeah, Iīm going to listen also that first album, because I like a lot The Nice and Iīve heard itīs something in the middle of The Nice and later ELP.
The Peter Gabriel time Genesis is just great, to me it is quite the same what they did on stage because the music is just great! But I think there is some differences for example in Genesis and ELP. Genesis musicians were also technically talented, but I think the important think to them was to create great music, not show the skills almost all the time like ELP do in Tarkus (I havenīt listened Gentle Giant a lot, but I think that band has also many same problems as ELP in itīs music). And so did all the other bands that I mentioned. I think also it was quite typical that time that people wanted to hear long songs and improvisations and they were fascinated about the skills of the musicians (It has also said here in Finland that you couldnīt see the fingers of Wigwamīs Jukka Gustavson and Pekka Pohjola when they played). But what I think itīs great of the seventies prog there were so many bands who instead of skills showing made so good music!
I donīt know have you listened Procol Harum, but I picked also from the library their album "Exotic Birds and Fruit" and it is very very great, as good as the earlier "Shine on brightly", "a Salty Dog" "Home" and "Grand Hotel".