Chicago was a band that really threw their credibility in the crapper with those cheesy ballads. Peter Cetera obviously laying a lot to blame, many of their cheesy hits, if they were not necessarily written by him, they were sung by him. You can be thankful in the early ’70s Chicago had so much better […] Continue reading →

Warm Dust was one of those obscure progressive rock bands that slipped through the cracks, but released three albums. This was an early band featuring Paul Carrack before he earned his fame with Ace (“How Long”), Sqeeze (“Tempted”), and of course Mike & the Mechanics, not to mention the solo albums he did in the […] Continue reading →

Birth Control was a German group that was only considered marginally progressive, much of the time they were in the Deep Purple or Uriah Heep vein, lots of heavy guitar and organ work, although a lot of their music often had prog tendencies. I have to admit they made their share of great albums, 1972’s […] Continue reading →

The Scorpions, for many, will give one guaranteed nightmares of ’80s pop metal and cheesy anthems as “Rock Your Like a Hurricane”. But the band has a history that predates that song (or the album in question, 1984’s Love at First Sting) by almost two decades. They actually formed around 1965, but wasn’t until around […] Continue reading →

Harmonium is highly regarded in progressive rock circles, those that is, those aware of the prog rock scene in Quebec. The band formed in 1973 with Serge Fiori, Michel Normandeu, and Louis Valois (basically handling guitars and vocals, except Valois who was the bassist) and in 1974 released their self-entitled debut, which was largely a […] Continue reading →

Julian Jay Savarin is better known as a sci-fi author, but for a short time, he involved himself in music. He first founded a band called Julian’s Treatment, which was a progressive rock band with lots of ’60s psychedelic overtones. They released an album called A Time Before This (which I have reviewed here on […] Continue reading →

Klaus Schulze sure played an important role in the world of electronic music and Krautrock. First by being a member of Tangerine Dream and appearing on the album Electronic Meditation (1970), and then moving on to Ash Ra Tempel and appearing on their self-entitled 1971 debut. He left the group shortly thereafter to embark on […] Continue reading →

There is no doubt about it that Czeslaw Niemen was simply one of the biggest pop icons during communist-era Poland. What’s more surprising was how the government even allowed this music to be made there. West of the Iron Curtain and in North America, we are accustomed to many different record labels (Warner Bros., Atlantic, […] Continue reading →

Machiavel was apparently one of the best known and most successful progressive rock bands to ever come out of Belgium. From 1976 to 1978 they released three progressive rock albums, Machiavel (1976), Jester (1977), and Mechanical Moonbeams (1978). Most of their reputation lies on the last two mentioned albums. Starting with Urban Games (1979) they […] Continue reading →

The Pentangle sure wasted no time following their great debut with a followup album, in fact, their second album was released later the same year (1968) as their self-entitled debut, and they went way further than you expect a band that barely got started. This second album, Sweet Child was a double album, the first […] Continue reading →