I am willing, however, to concede that I've not given it a fair chance. There may well be prog records that, listened to closely and in depth, do reveal their joys and fascinations to me. I do, hand on heart, hope so; I'd love to discover something rewarding within the genre.
And so this is the thread where I listen to a selection of the Greatest Prog Albums of All Time and tell you what I think. And where you respond by telling me I have ears of the proverbial cloth, or that I am in fact damn right about everything ever. BCB is a nasty place at the moment, so I thought I'd try and steer us back on course by getting back to what this place is all about: discovering and discussing music. This will hopefully be a thread that runs for some time. I'm hoping to discover some wonderful new music, or at least some entertaining opportunities for sarcastic and offensive ways to criticise other people's favourite records. I won't be doing an album a day or anything - cue gags about prog albums lasting longer anyway - because I have, you know, a job and a family and friends and an XBox and all that, but I'll try to do a couple a week at least, which will help the thread stay current. I hope I get some responses, at least.
I shall start my odyssey - that just falls into place as the right word to use, doesn't it? - with a band I have often dismissed without ever really listening to very much. The band many people first think of when they hear the word prog, the band who are forever defined by their album art and by their keyboard player's onstage dining. Yes.
I chose the album Fragile. There is some debate among Yes fans and critics about which is their finest work, but this is one of their apparent best, and marks the point at which Rick Wakeman took over on keyboards.
I didn't really know what to expect from Yes. I'd heard a few tracks and I always thought they had a surprisingly shiny, modern sound, a real sheen to the production. I also thought of them as one of the more tuneful prog outfits, as opposed to, say Van Der Graaf Generator. But if you asked me to really describe what a Yes song would sound like, I wouldn't know what to say. I know 'Starship Trooper' and like that, but nothing else had ever stayed put in my mind.
Fragile certainly starts very appealingly, the crescendoes and courtly acoustics that announce 'Roundabout' promising much. What happens next, though, is unfortunately only describable as a catastrophe. This shit is horrible. I can only assume that what happens is something to do with a bass guitar. But I'm at a loss to explain why anyone would do that to a bass. It's vile. And it's a real shame, because there are some nice things going on here. The drums do a good job, and Jon Anderson's voice, which I thought I'd read was a stumbling block for many people, is actually pretty appealing to me. But the bass - and, I have to say, the guitar too - is too much. This could only have happened in the early '70s.
I've not even mentioned the synths.
Look, I can hear the appeal of this. There are bits of this music that are interesting and attractive, but they're oases in a desert of terrible fucking production choices and, at times, pointless noodly sections. I know that criticising a prog song for having pointless noodly sections is kind of fish-in-a-barrel, but they're unavoidable and they're a problem. Maybe this whole enterprise is doomed to failure, because pointless noodly sections are what prog is all about and it's just a question of whether or not one likes them.
Luckily, 'Roundabout' is the nadir. I can't say I like the rest of the album: the Brahms thing that follows is surely a joke - not even Wakeman could consider 90 seconds of what sounds like the soundtrack to a dog running downstairs on a kitchen paper advert a serious musical statement - and they actually spend a bit too much time on pointless, annoying non-starter tracks like 'We Have Heaven' and 'Five Per Cent for Nothing'. But there are moments that work: 'South Side of the Sky' has some good crunchy guitar rock and a nice piano section, and although there are still things happening I'm not keen on, the track does work better as a whole. The small distractions - an unnecessarily strident backing vocal here, the threats of noodle there - are something one has to live with in these climes, I assume, but I can't really accept. I don't want to have to accept bad stuff in the middle of songs I like. Just cut the crap. It's also worth mentioning the surprisingly groovy, rubbery instrumental, 'The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)', a minor but enjoyable number slightly ruined by a completely superfluous vocal part, although I was less impressed by a crap '70s FM rock thing called 'Long Distance Runaround' that sounds like something Todd Rundgren would do on one of his off days.
'Heart of the Sunrise', the last song, is my favourite. This is much more what I want from prog. It follows on from three minutes of Steve Howe amusing himself with some cod-medieval/flamenco strumming that leaves me wondering why I'm not just listening to Jordi Savall instead of this nonsense. 'Sunrise' itself is enlivened by some twisty, intense guitar and stutteringly militant drumming, and has a vocal melody that's genuinely lovely and a guitar part that is, remarkably, almost understated. The band rein in their noodly instincts when they do surface, and the song is dramatic and memorable. If the entire album sounded like this, it'd be a hit. But the issue is, as ever, that they can't resist including all their ideas, no matter how stupid or pointless. Yes are far from the worst offenders, but there is still too much widdling and twatting around here. 'Heart of the Sunrise' and one or two other decent moments mean that this isn't an entirely inauspicious beginning to my journey into the realm of prog, but it's definitely served as a dire warning of the dangers and horrors that surely await.
I will return to Yes at some point, but next time it will be Jethro Tull.
