Billy Joel seems like the last people I’d bring up on this site, preferring to focus on non-mainstream acts. But there was a time in Joel’s career before he inflicted us with cheesy hit after hit from the 1970s to 1990s (ie “Tell Her About It”, “Uptown Girl”, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, “Just the […] Continue reading →

Los Jaivas was apparently quite popular in Chile. They were formed in 1963, started releasing their first albums in the early ’70s, but suffered some setbacks thanks to dictator Augusto Pinochet taking power in 1973, forcing the band in exile, first in Argentina, then in France. As the band was in exile, they started exploring […] Continue reading →

1973’s Atlantis was the third album by Earth & Fire, and without a doubt their most Mellotron heavy album ever. Again the band explores another concept: the rise and destruction of Atlantis, all told on the first half of the album. The side-length title track sounds more or less like a collection of separate songs […] Continue reading →

Now let it be known that I am reviewing the original German print of Eberhard Schoener’s Video Magic on the Harvest label, rather than a compilation called Video Magic released in 1979 that consisted of material from both Video Magic and Flashback (1978) (often called Video Flashback, especially later on to avoid confusion). Now this […] Continue reading →

Before reviewing this album, I want to point out how the Canadian province of Quebec had their own prog scene separate of the English speaking provinces. There’s this website called ProgQuébec which includes a big listing of artists and descriptions of these bands, their history, and discographies, in both French and English (so not to […] Continue reading →

Porcupine Tree basically started more or less as a joke project by Steven Wilson. He planned on No-Man to be the band people would take seriously. Porcupine Tree started off with three privately issued cassettes, Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm (1989), Love, Death & Mussolini EP (1990), and The Nostalgia Factory (1991), all this was done almost […] Continue reading →

Well, I have just recently discovered a whole bunch of Canadian prog albums, specifically those originating from Quebec. Bands like Pollen, Opus 5, Sloche, and Et Cetera have been some of my greatest discoveries of recent (I hear tons of great stuff about Maneige and Harmonium too, so I’m not likely too far off before […] Continue reading →

Argentina’s Espiritu was known for constant lineup changes, and habits of reuniting now and then, releasing some albums, and breaking up. The band formed in 1973 and that year released their first single, “Hoy, Sempre Hoy” b/w “Soy La Noche”. I have not heard this early single, but in 1975 comes their first full-length album, […] Continue reading →

Buy This CD! In 1969, around the release of Last Exit (which was mainly live leftovers, that is performance of songs found on none of their other albums, and collections of non-album singles, more of an idea thought of by Island Records than by the band), Traffic broke up. Steve Winwood teamed up with Eric […] Continue reading →

Comus was one of those British bands that were somewhere between folk rock and prog rock, but never doing versions of traditional folk material the way of Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span. They have a harder edge than any of those groups, and plenty of creative passages and tempo changes that would make them also […] Continue reading →