Popel Vooje wrote: I'll admit that prog isn't really my area, and that I'm no expert even on the better-known European stuff, let alone its American equivalent, but ioff the top of my head...
Apart from the obvious (and already discussed) Zappa, and Todd Rundgren's Utopia (on whom Yes were an obvious and acknowledged influence, and whom I personally can't stomach for much the same reasons I can't stomach Yes) the only possible example I can think of is the Hampton Grease Band.
They ceratainly had the virtuosity, the penchant for lengthy instrumental wig-outs and the ability to switch abruptly between time signatures. Nonetheless, they also had an abrasively raw, live-in-the-studio sound and an atonal proto-punk vocalist (Bruce Hampton's voice, oddly, is a dead ringer for that of Pere Ubu's David Thomas) that probably made them an anathema to many of the dope-smoking longhairs of the day who just wanted a quasi-intellectual chillout soundtrack to stroke their goatees to. Presumably this is why Columbia Records found their sole album "Music to Eat" so impossible to market that they promoted as a comedy record!
(Many thanks both to Dog 3000 for turning me onto, and to Lawrence for copying me that marvellous commercial aberration, incidentally).
Yr very welcome PV. :)
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