Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Though there is the strange case of Zappa/Mothers, who were probably the root of the whole thing on both sides of the ocean music-wise if not in terms of imagery and lyrics. My pet theory is that the MOI + orchestra Royal Albert Hall gig of 1968 was the shot that launched the prog revolution. But Zappa was "very European" for an American (both parents were immigrants I believe.)

There is something "too European" in groups like ELP, with their frankly classist notions of "enlightening the masses with classical music and references to great literature." American equivalent might be "Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops" or something (ultra-lightweight classical orchestra prone to using disco beats.)

Its also why Yes's Relayer is better than Henry Cow!!

Thank you all for your suggestions. That's really great and richly varied advice.

As for the classist thing, this is of course a common criticism of the music (and boy do ELP deserve a lot of it) but Prog was not an exclusively bourgeois / middle class style in terms of the audience and very little of the actual music recorded was that highly pretentious classical knock-off approach you describe. Only the most crass artists went that-a-way and I think ELP would have been a lot better with an r&b based player, a Tony Kaye, Vince Crane, Hugh Banton or Rod Argent. But I digress.

I actually think jazz was just as bigger an influence as the romantic classical movement. Especially on the Canterbury bands and even VdGG were more an r&b and jazz act than not. By 74 the jazz-rock Mahavishnu approach was a huge influence. Just check out "Relayer" and some of the freeform music on side 3 of "Topographic Oceans". Santana's "Lotus" was also hugely influential here as an import. If nothing else in terms of the harsher sonics, the use of percussion and the freeform long-line soloing. Of course the Allmans had been doing that off the back of a strong Coltrane influence for years.

I think the mellotron / organ thing (especially with bass pedals) can give the impression of an uptight churchy sound but I'm not sure how much enlightening of the masses was intended - directly or indirectly. After all these were men in their 20s. It was still largely about sex and drugs and rock and roll. With bean sprouts perhaps but these boys didn't spend their lives in a seminary.

Also I would guess that a lot of the literature and spiritual ideas referred to in prog was as semi-digested as the literature referred to in the works of say Joy Division. Rock and rollers are rarely quite as smart as their publicists want you to think they are. For every Julian Cope there are 100 Wayne Hussey type buzz-word merchants. It's a "short bookshelf" art form. Always has been.

One thing I would take issue with is the political criticism of the music of that period.

I am not at all sure how much of a suggestion there is in Marx and Engels (nothing actually) that the working classes should be fed government approved prole-art and that so-called high culture is somehow decadent and corrupting.

That 70s Marxist approach always struck me as hugely elitist (much more elitist than even a Keith Emerson piano solo) and a form of social control.

"We've read some really big, boring books by some dead German beardy guys so we are now qualified to tell you what you should watch and listen to" is much more elitist than Rick Wakeman rehashing a bit of Bach between pints. In my view the left invoked this reverse snobbery in order to maintain control over the propaganda process. Like Christians and other monotheists, Marxists really hate competing utopias. Esoecially the ones people make up for themselves.

What's that Lenin quote about Beethoven? "I can't often listen to music, it makes me want to hug people." There it is in a nutshell. Great art makes you love your fellow man too much not too little! Seems you can't run a revolution on love so out goes the Mozart, the Shakespeare, the Voltaire and the Poussin and anyone or anything in the thrall of them.

This is the one and only area where Boris Johnson and I see eye to eye. The left really has to learn to stop patronising people.

If, like me, your are of a slight socialist persuasion, but like populist art as much as experimental art - its better to read your post-Marxist, revisionist thinkers like SLAVOJ ZIZEK.