Progressive Rock Fantastic Four

With one concession to an established and well-known progressive band, The Moody Blues, I’ll bring up another 4 bands which fit this genre.  I have Julia to thank for referring the Moody Blues to me, Jim for Bacamarte, Leonard for Museo Rosenbach, and both Jim & Leonard for PFM.

 Moody Blues.  At this point I have their top album, Days of Future Passed, albeit in the quadraphonic version (deluxe), along with the next two, In Search of the Lost Chord and On The Threshold of A Dream, also in quad versions.  Pretentious? Sure. But still damn good and effective.  Days is a concept album loosely starting with morning and continuing to the evening, almost like “Dance of the Hours” from Fantasia.  They managed to snag an early Mellotron [early synthesizer with pretaped loops of various instruments] for 90% off (£300 instead of £3.000) and went off from there, leaving the commercial R&B sound they had before and developing something new.  In Search and Threshold aren’t quite as good – inevitable that they would fall short of the high standard set by Days – but are still excellent. 

 Years ago I sent a mix of songs to my friend Jean, including “Breach of Lease” by Bloodrock.  His reaction?  “Psychedelic homo-wimps.”  Hmm…coming from a guy whose top band is Pink Floyd?  And I know he had Piper At the Gates of Dawn.  Syd, Nick, Richard and Roger don’t look like they’d bludgeon you to death in a dark alley, more like redecorate your house or give you a makeover.  He clearly hadn’t seen a Bloodrock album cover, as these guys looked as menacing as Lynyrd Skynyrd (by Dark Side, though Floyd looked less “swooshy” and more simply grimy, particularly Gilmour’s greasy hair pulled back behind his ears, but still no match for the tough gangs from Florida or Texas).   However, looking at the Moody Blues, that image does come to mind.  With the exception of Graeme Edge, whose beard makes him look like he’s channeling the Three Musketeers, the others look as though they stepped right off the stage of a Charles Dickens play.  They probably shopped for clothes at the same stores as 1967 era Pink Floyd.

 Having said that, and even with the Mellotron, the Moody Blues still seem to give some sort of strength and force to the songs. “Lovely to See You” is a knockout song despite its lame name – and appears to be the Scorpions’ inspiration for “Loving You Sunday Morning”.   “Ride My See-Saw”, “Peak Hour”, and even melancholy songs such as “Never Came the Day” have a backbone to them.  Just when you write them off as fops, they smack you on the side of the head – like Larks Tongues in Aspic following right after Islands (King Crimson).  As David Wells put it in the liner notes to the Live At the BBC 1967-70 album, “the Moodies’ combination of memorable melodies and counterculture-friendly experimentalism meant that they managed the neat trick of appealing to both the psychedelic/progressive underground and the traditional, more conservative pop audience.”

 Bacamarte.  From Brazil, of all places, and they only have two albums, Depois do Fim and Sete Cidades, both of which are almost impossible to find, long out of print.  The lyrics are in Portuguese.  The singer on the first album, Jane Duboc, now slags Bacamarte as some poor relation and is now doing TV theme songs.  The primary creative focus of the band is Mario Neto, the guitarist, who was the one responsible for forming the band in the early 70s and putting out the second album.  My Brazilian avogado metaleiro friend Leonard has met and spoke with Mr Paul, the percussionist, who now works at a photo lab in downtown Rio de Janeiro.  Overall it sounds like an impressive synthesis of King Crimson, Jethro Tull and Uriah Heep.  Depois was, like Days, yet another album which inspired multiple listenings.  

 Museo Rosenbach.  One of the little-known branch of Italian progressive rock bands. I have Zarathustra, their 1973 album, which has an odd album cover even including Mussolini.  They broke up shortly after, then reformed much more recently.  The lyrics are in Italian, are inspired by Nietzsche (would the title be a giveaway?) and the musicianship is clearly top class.

 PFM.  Also from Italy, coming from the same scene as Museo Rosenbach, PFM (Premiata Forneria Marconi, Award-Winning Marconi Bakery) seem to be the most long-lived and prolific band of this genre, with the most success outside Italy, and even putting out albums in English.  In fact, they briefly had King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield (who was behind In The Court of the Crimson King) writing lyrics at their early stage.  I have Photos of Ghosts and When The World Became the World, both albums in English. 

 The Moody Blues predate Crimson, while the other three were clearly influenced by them; yet they all add something unique to the mix and don’t simply give us an Italian or Brazilian copy.  You can also hear elements of this in more recent bands such as Opeth.