On 02-Jan-09 23:05, Florian Pesth wrote:
> It was also long before my time and maybe I'm totally of, but I would 
> just put Queen in the category of commercially succesful glamrock.

For me this song changed my opinion. I used to think more or less along 
your line, but with Bohemian Rhapsody that changed. It proved that they 
were prepared to do something rather complicated and still get an 
audience for it. It may have helped expand the musical taste of a few 
people.

> Musically there has been much more experimental stuff in progressive rock 
> before and afterwards - from german perspective with its variant called 
> "Krautrock" - highly experimental music, which blended rock, classical 
> music and electronic music (a lot of musicians in progrock came from a 
> classic background - for example two members of the Krautrock group "Can" 
> were students of Stockhausen). What is comercial succesful and succesful 
> in bringing certain styles of music to the masses (which is a very good 
> thing) is sometimes not the latest stage of developement of music. For 
> example take a band like Gentle Giant, which is quite difficult to 
> understand musically. Nevertheless I think, they influenced also rock 
> musicians outside of progrock quite considerable.
> 
> If you never heard of them, this recording is might be good to get a 
> first impression (maybe it will just sound like noise the first time, but 
> I think it is quite intelligent music):
> 
>  http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-4781222750582852771

I do know them. I am somewhat of a Yes fan (and a lot of other progrock 
as well) and last.fm figured that I would probably also like Gentle 
Giant. I had at least one track marked as a loved track, but it seems to 
have dropped of the stack. I also though I had one album of them on my 
Amazon wish list. Also not true. As I said before 'My brain keeps 
surprising me'.

BTW are you sure this video is in the public domain?

> I don't want to take the elitist opinion of the "stupid masses", but 
> there are some pearls, which didn't make it in the charts, but were 
> important nevertheless.

There are two sides to this. On the one hand in this top2000 are a 
couple of Yes songs that have not made it into the charts or nor very 
far, like Roundabout and Close to the edge (played in full 18 minutes 
during this broadcast \o/ ). Nr 8 is Alan Parsons' Old and wise. Also 
'Child in time' was for a long time nr 1 in the list and only 10 years 
ago or so replaced by Queen. in 2000-2002 it was still nr 2 and it has 
now dropped to 4. All without being a memorable hit. So the list does 
include 'some pearls, which didn't make it in the charts, but were 
important nevertheless'.
On the other hand Mary Black, Loreena McKennitt, Ayreon and Eric Bogle, 
to name a few, are totally missing and Robbie Williams is at 24.

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