Progressive Rock
The "ultimate"
website for Progressive Rock fans.
Started off as an Italian student's dissertation and move online and translated into English. From their History page:
Even after being ill-treated and object of recurring criticisms by irreducibly detractors and although "out of fashion" for some time, Progressive Rock "music for the mind" today, still boasts, all over the world, innumerable admirers and collectors to confirm its large musical artistic value. Its principal characteristic is to be "timeless music", immortal, explaining the incessant interest enjoyed over the years.
Born in England at the end of the sixties and direct descendant of "Psychedelic" and "Pop/Symphony Rock", this type of music developed mainly in Europe until mid-seventies, the period in which its decline began. The principal philosophy of the creators of this current music was to experiment with new harmonies, rhythmic schemes to contrast the stagnant melodic scene of that period.
After the unripe initial alchemies experimented for more than a biennium, by various groups, amongst which we recall: Family, Blossom Toes, Beatles, Arzachel (Uriel), Soft Machine, Pretty Things, Group 1850, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Moody Blues, Nice, Skip Bifferty, Skin Alley, Second Hand, Giles - Giles & Fripp, United States Of America, Vanilla Fudge, July and Small Faces, Progressive Rock reached its maturity. Therefore, complex musical passages were composed. Intriguing and refined, some of which were surprisingly enjoyable, characterized by continual and sudden tone changes, rhythm and modo (in contrast with classical structures: verse, chorus, verse), and were of extraordinary lengths of time, covering a whole LP.
A huge discography with over 700 photos of album covers and MP3 clips; an excellent resource for this music.
Posted by DaveH at June 10, 2005 11:57 AM