Things sure been looking up for Zappa by the time We’re Only In It For the Money came out at the beginning of 1968. He had already two albums under the belt (maybe three, as some sources say that Lumpy Gravy was released in December 1967, before We’re Only In It For the Money came […] Continue reading →

Things sure have changed big time with Zappa between the 1966 release of Freak Out! and the 1981 released of You Are What You Is. In that time span, he decided to bring an end of the Mothers of Invention name after the release of Bongo Fury in 1975 (because, after all, the Mothers existed […] Continue reading →

Osanna was one of the great Italian prog rock bands. Maybe not as well known as PFM, Le Orme, or even Banco for that matter, but definately worth looking in to. Palepoli is Osanna’s third album, and was the very first Italian prog album I ever heard and I was just totally amazed! It also […] Continue reading →

Far East Family Band spawned the careers of three guys. Their names being Fumio Miyashita (who often released his albums under simply the “Fumio” name), Akira Ito, and most of all, Masanori Takahashi. Maybe you might not know Masanori Takahashi by that name, but you know him as Kitaro, the prolific New Age artist of […] Continue reading →

One area of prog rock I failed to cover here is the French scene. I covered the British, German, and Italian scenes pretty well here, even threw in some Scandinavian acts. When people think of French prog, they think Magma, Ange, Atoll, or Pulsar. Another band worth looking in to is Carpe Diem, who only […] Continue reading →

If you’re a fan of Gong, here’s an album I should suggest you: from Clearlight, called Clearlight Symphony. Sometimes the band is called Clearlight Symphony (but it doesn’t really matter, the band was called simply Clearlight after this album). Mainly Clearlight was a project of French keyboardist Cyrille Verdeaux, and whatever musicians he could find […] Continue reading →

When it comes for the prog rock scene here in America, it seemed like the Midwest and the Northeast Coast (New York, New Jersey, DC, etc.) was where most American prog bands originated. Like Starcastle (from Champagne-Urbana, Illinois), Kansas (from Kansas, of course), Atlantis Philharmonic (from Cleveland), Cathedral (from New York), Ethos (from Ft. Wayne, […] Continue reading →

Having the Italian prog scene pretty well covered here, it should only come as natural I should review one of the best albums from one of the biggest names of Italian prog. I am referring to Premiata Forneria Marconi, better known as PFM for us non-Italian speakers. Per Un Amico, released near the end of […] Continue reading →

Gentle Giant is often a highly regarded band in the prog rock community. The rock critics (of the Robert Chistgau, Dave Marsh, and Lester Bangs variety), for the most part, hardly ever said anything good of these guys. And yet the band didn’t have the same “overblown pretentiousness” (critics opinion, not mine) that was often […] Continue reading →

For every Yes, ELP, Genesis, King Crimson, etc., there were many more lesser known prog rock bands. Bands like Gentle Giant, Van der Graaf Generator, Caravan, Cressida, Beggars Opera, Spring, etc. all created some great music but were often forgotten in the mists of time, but those who found out about these bands gave high […] Continue reading →