u/garethsprogblog

It's a 'what's next in the sequence' question this week.

Look at the partial album cover images to work out what links those albums and the sequence, then suggest an album for number 6 - I might accept more than one answer.

If you're quite certain of the answer, please use Reddit's redacted text function to hide your response and allow others to submit their own answers.

____________________

Only numbers 2 and 6 of the 20 album covers from last week remained unidentified. The full list was:

1. A Trick of the Tail - Genesis

2. Above Cirrus - Pure Reason Revolution

3. Arbeit Mach Frei - Area

4. Expresso II - Gong

5. Feels Good To Me - Bruford

6. Live at Carnegie Hall - Renaissance

7. Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings - Bo Hansson

8. Octopus - Gentle Giant

9. Palepoli - Osanna

10. Pollen - Pulsar

11. Romantic Warrior - Return to Forever

12. Stranger Skies - Ellesmere

13. The Black Chord - Astra

14. The Civil Surface - Egg

15. The Madcap Laughs - Syd Barrett

16. The Margin - Peter Hammill & The K Group

17. The Pentateuch of the Cosmogony - Patrick Woodroffe & Dave Greenslade

18. Tom Penaguin - Tom Penaguin

19. Windchase - Sebastian Hardie

20. Yesterdays - Yes

My collection of ticket stubs goes back to the late 70s, though I neglected to retain the evidence that I’d seen Fruupp, Focus, Rick Wakeman, Genesis, Peter Gabriel and Gordon Giltrap in concert between 1974 and 1977. However, I did buy a Time Honoured Ghosts programme at a Barclay James Harvest gig in 1975 which lives on in digitised form. I used to cut out gig announcements from listings magazines for a pay-at-the-door gig before ticketing was available by app.

Tickets, followed by programmes, are the most obvious mementos from gigs. I’ll take a few photos if it’s not against the performers’ policy, I might buy a T-shirt or an album from the merchandise stand but if there are tour flyers available, I’ll always pick one up. Italian bands tend to have venue-specific posters plastered all around the city where they’re performing and it’s not too difficult to find at least one in good condition – my framed Banco del Mutuo Soccorso poster came from a subway leading to one of Prato’s stations. The band or the venue management might leave some information on the chairs in the auditorium – a flyer, a postcard or something slightly more substantial.

I retain the descriptive stickers from sealed LPs and CDs, the notes sent to me by musicians when I’ve bought one of their albums online or just given them a favourable review, and if it’s a band I really like, I’ll buy a special edition of a release with its posters, signed photos and other extras. I’ve also queued to have material signed by bands and been given copies of set lists complete with the tape used to attach them to the stage.

It’s not always items that you invest money in that prove to the best memorabilia. At the conclusion of the album launch gig for Balletto di Bronzo’s 2023 album Lemures, Gianni Leone threw strips of paper into the audience, containing typed parts of what could be interpreted as his manifesto. The two pieces I retrieved from the club’s floor are kept in my limited edition 2LP copy of Lemures.

Does anyone else indulge in this form of behaviour? What do you collect?

Live prog at The Camden Club - For anyone around London on Sunday lunchtimes in June

The image shows a tiny proportion of my prog library, begun many years ago.

My first port of call, whenever I need some information about an album, is the LP or CD itself, and my next choice is to search through my collection of books, only querying the the internet. as a last resort.

I'd recommend anyone with an interest in prog to build a physical library. Biographies of prog bands have existed since the beginning of the genre, but shortly after the start of prog's third wave in the mid-1990s, when the word 'prog' ceased to be a pejorative term, writers and academics began to address the lack of serious analysis on the subject.

Along with the academic writing, there are general books that give an overview of prog, books listing bands or albums and better biographies and autobiographies, an ever-increasing volume of material suitable for novices of the genre and seasoned prog-heads.

My thoughts are set out in full in a new blog

https://www.progblog.co.uk/post/a-prog-library

Does anyone have any recommended texts they'd like to share with the sub?

The 'close-up photos of album covers' quiz is back by popular demand this week.

Simply name the 20 albums shown in the illustration, and the artist or group responsible for each.

If you're quite certain of the answer, please use Reddit's redacted text function to hide your response and allow others to submit their own answers.

____________________

Last week's tracks sharing their name with and in many cases directly inspired by well-known paintings were:

1. The Endless Enigma [Dali] - Emerson Lake & Palmer

2. The Night Watch [Rembrandt] - King Crimson

3. Ophelia [Millais] - Peter Hammill

4. The Tower of Babel [Breugel] - The Tangent or The Enid

5. End of the World [John Martin] - Aphrodite's Child

6. Lucky Seven [Vetriano] - Chris Squire

7. Big Red Dragon [Blake] - Sophya Baccini's Aradia

8. The Portals of Purgatory [Dore] - Metamorfosi

9. Phaedra [Cabanel] - Tangerine Dream

10. Guernica [Picasso] - Caravaggio

11. The Ninth Wave [Aivazovsky] - Kate Bush

12. Orpheus and Eurydice [Poynter] - Focus

Special thanks to those contributing other correct answers.

It's not album art featured in this week's quiz, but well-known paintings.

Artists and musicians alike have been inspired by scenes described in mythology and Classical literature, but musicians also take inspiration from works of art.

The illustration shows twelve paintings, the titles of which relate to a particular song or track by a prog band.

Name each of the twelve tracks and the bands that recorded them.

If you're quite certain of the answer, please use Reddit's redacted text function to hide your response and allow others to submit their own answers.

____________________

The 20 partial pictures of album covers in last week's quiz were:

1. Yesshows by Yes

2)  Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield

3)  Octoberon by Barclay James Harvest

4)  Aerie Faerie Nonsense by The Enid

5. Atom Hart Mother by Pink Floyd

6. Nice by The Nice

7. Leftoverture by Kansas

8. Phaedra by Tangerine Dream

9. Chocolate Kings by PFM

10. English Electric vol.2  by Big Big Train

11. National Health by National Health

12. For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night by Caravan

13. Still Life by Van der Graaf Generator

14. Trespass by Genesis

15. Heaven and Hell by Vangelis

16. Spartacus by Triumvirat

17. Proxy by The Tangent

18. Moving Waves by Focus

19. Greenslade by Greenslade

20. Tarkus by  ELP

It's 2.30pm in the UK, the shutters are open and the afternoon sun is flooding in. I've not listened to this beauty for two years and didn't have the patience to wait for the dark, but back in 1975 when this came out (this copy is a replacement for my original vinyl) it was my go-to listen through a pair of cans in a darkened room; mysterious and trippy, no need for any stimulants.

https://youtu.be/V1xf-HL7Uk0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlh5I1L_YrM

Onségen Ensemble self-describe as being shaped by their environment, northern Finland, and delight in constant evolution. I'm a great admirer of their last three albums Duel (2018), Fear (2020) and Realms (2022) and the dark prog/psyche of the single Garden of Celestials holds out great promise for A Tale

Leroy is the authorative voice on the Canterbury scene and his book has just been released in English.

Can't wait to get stuck in!

Here are close-up photos of a small area of 20 different album covers selected from the ProgBlog vinyl collection. There's nothing obscure about any of these releases - I'd expect any decent record store to stock the majority of the LPs - and the photos are all from somewhere on the front cover, presented in the correct orientation.

The task is quite straightforward. Name each album and artist.

If you're quite certain of the answer, please use Reddit's redacted text function to hide your response and allow others to submit their own answers.

____________________

Last week's quiz about quotations from Eastern philosophy found on album sleeves didn't cause any problems.

The Zen question about the sound of one hand is from Underwater Sunlight by Tangerine Dream;

The Tao Te Ching quotation is from Spiral by Vangelis;

and the paragraph defining Ukiyo is from Jade Warrior's Floating World.

I was in Kraków, Poland for a football match and a spare day and went to look in Paul's Boutique Record Store (it's excellent - I've been there before) only to find it closed for Labour Day. But there was an open market just round the corner where the first stall I noticed had a few crates of vinyl.

I'm a sucker for buying prog from the country I'm visiting and these two **Exodus** LPs were screaming out for me to buy them. So I did.

I've not heard anything by the band before but *The Most Beautiful Day* is regarded as one of the best Polish symphonic prog albums. *Supernova* isn't rated as highly but I thought that it would be foolish to leave it there.

What does anyone think of these albums?

Inspired by what I'd seen on Reddit, bulked out by new purchases and direct approaches from musicians, topped up with a selection of albums from my collection, here's a video of what I listened to in April.

https://youtu.be/gzHqTHzvbNw

Segreti nel nero - L'Ombra della Sera

Dove va la tua strada? - Exit

Rise of Kassandra - Tritop

Tritop120 - Tritop

L'Uomo - Osanna

Demoni e Dei - Hunka Munka

Storie di uomini e non - Rocky's Filj

Means of Escape - Daniel Vincent

Quattro racconti - Lars Fredrik Frøislie

Birdy OST - Peter Gabriel

Felona & Sorona - Le Orme

Un encuentro - Triana

Allium: Una storia - Tillison Reingold Tiranti

1978 gli dei se ne vanno, gli arrabbiati restano! - Area

Godzilla - Audio'm

Round Midnight - Moongarden

Cords - Synergy

Between Flesh and Divine - Asia Minor

Gizmo - Gizmo

The Book of Invasions. A Celtic Symphony - Horslips

Gazeuse! - Gong

One Of A Kind - Bruford

X - Focus

Four Moments - Sebastian Hardie

Split Seconds - Phil Miller

Seguendo le tracce - Banco del Mutuo Soccorso

Hypnagogia - Khadavra

Stati equivoci dell'essere - Il Sogno di Rubik

1984 - Hugh Hopper

Caul - Last Harbour

Et après... - Mémoriance

Fragments of the 5th Element - Magic Pie

Courting the Widow - Nad Sylvan

Fractal Guitar 4 - Stephan Thelen

Anarchic Curves - ESP Project

Road to Darkness (special edition) - Gandalf's Fist

Classic Ash - Wishbone Ash

De Rossi e Bordini - De Rossi e Bordini

Live at Rockpalast - Van der Graaf Generator

Floating World - Jade Warrior

Revelation Space - Peninsula

il-lūdĕre - Il Tempio della Clessidre

Trading River Songs - Brendan Perkins

Three Friends - Gentle Giant

The Delphic Prophecy - Gran Torino

1974 Penn State University - King Crimson

More Places Forever - David Thomas & The Pedestrians

October is Marigold - David Cross & Andrew Keeling

To the Highest Bidder - Supersister

Order and DisOrder - Daniele Sollo

Brain Salad Surgery - Emerson Lake & Palmer

Kontraster - Jordsjø Breidablik

Return to the Castle - Nuova Era