Fairport Convention is one of the biggest names of British folk rock to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Without them, you wouldn’t have Steeleye Span, and Richard Thompson wouldn’t embark on his own solo career and the same thing for Sandy Denny. You see, Richard Thompson was a Fairport member, so was […] Continue reading →

Pulsar is regarded as one of the best known French progressive rock bands, and for good reason. They have been called the French Pink Floyd, but they had plenty of their own style so as not to be considered copycats. I am focusing only on their first three albums as that’s the ones I’m familiar […] Continue reading →

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 →

Machiavel might be Belgium’s best known and most successful progressive rock band, but they weren’t the first. Probably the earliest band from that country playing this kind of music is Mad Curry, who released a single called “Antwerp”, and then a self-entitled album, both in 1970 on the small Pirates label, meaning LP copies aren’t […] Continue reading →

If you’re American, the name José Cid might not mean much. If you’re from Portugal, you know him as one of the biggest names of Portuguese pop. But there was a short time in the 1970s where he was exploring progressive rock, relying heavily on the Mellotron and synthesizers, and that was from 1975 to […] Continue reading →

Brainticket sure kept you on your toes each time they released an album, since they kept changing their sound each time (the only time the kept the same sound, and lineup, for that matter, more than once was in the early ’80s with the heavily synth/percussion driven Adventure and Voyage in ’80 and ’82). 1973’s […] Continue reading →

People generally have their opinions about this Canadian band FM, and I have to admit a lot of their music is a bit on the commercially inclined side (1980’s City of Fear more so than their previous albums), although they did make a couple of great albums. In 1977, the group, which consisted of keyboardist/bassist/vocalist […] Continue reading →

Jean Michel Jarre is the son of film composer Maurice Jarre, who embarked on a musical career all his own. Contrary to popular belief, Oxygene was not Jean Michel Jarre’s debut album, it was actually Deserted Palace in 1972 (he released a single around 1970 called “La Cage”), but the early stuff is basically for […] Continue reading →

Kraftwerk is a well-known pioneering music act who helped influence (for good and for bad) many electronic, dance, synth pop, and techno acts to appear in their wake. That’s very well-documented. In 1974, Autobahn found the band reaching an international audience, with the edited version of the title track becoming a hit. Life with Kraftwerk […] Continue reading →

Manfred Mann had fronted several bands, in the 1960s he fronted a pop-rock band (simply called Manfred Mann) whose best known hit was “Doo Wah Ditty”. By 1969, Manfred Mann himself assembled a band called Chapter III, a brass-rock band no doubt inspired by the likes of Chicago or Blood, Sweat & Tears (without imitating […] Continue reading →