Top 20 Prog Albums of All Time

I'll be waiting for a while, I think.

"Gnosis" is easy to knock, but one should remember that Prog, like any "Underground" musick genre has seemingly 1000s of small-label & private-pressed releases each year. If one likes the genre sound, s.th. like this is useful in sorting wheat from chaff. If a site like "Gnosis" is unique to prog rox0r I will be very suprised. They rated my CD "Orbis Tertius" as being as good as "Tales From Topographic Oceans" which made me happy. My new one, which I got mastered this monday will got to gnosis for review ASAP.

Although Yes are shite.

Taking Sides: Neil Peart vs Phil Collins

Even better--Taking Sides: Neil Peart vs Phil Collins...as lyricist

I just finished reading A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & The 1970s. It's full of interesting information, but maybe a little focussed on detail rather than overview, so that I had some déjà vu as each chapter (on a particular band or scene) recounted formation, success (or failure) and sometimes dissolution, a bit like reading 40 prog rock magazine profiles in a row.
I revive this thread, however, due to a modest 20-song list of "Suggested Listening" at the end of the book, organized in a mostly chronological arc:

"Itchycoo Park", Small Faces
"Legend of a Mind", Moody Blues
"21st Century Schizoid Man", King Crimson
"It Happened Today", Curved Air
"The Barbarian", Emerson, Lake & Palmer
"Introduction", Gracious
"Golf Girl", Caravan
"Killer", Van Der Graaf Generator
"One of These Days", Pink Floyd
"Roundabout", Yes
"Can-Utility and the Coastliners", Genesis
"Kemp's Jig", Gryphon
"Mother Goose", Jethro Tull
"Son of 'There's No Place Like Homerton'", Hatfield and the North
"The Advent of Panurge", Gentle Giant
"A Last Straw", Robert Wyatt
"Nirvana For Mice", Henry Cow
"Master Builder", Gong
"In the Dead of Night", U.K.
"Northern Lights", Renaissance

Sort of a curious two-hour summary of the genre. There's not much discussion about what made the list and why. The Small Faces song is used in the text as an example of the English tendency to transform everyday life into a transcendental experience, a forerunner of the progressive rock. Six of these tracks are the first songs on debut albums, so perhaps selected as ideal calling cards that show what the band is about.
I haven't listened to the list as a whole yet, I'll do that this weekend.

"Son of 'There's No Place Like Homerton'", Hatfield and the North

This is my favorite prog track. Like a river of euphoric harmonic ideas flowing to and from nowhere. The section with the Northettes singing is as beautiful as music gets.

This is my favorite prog track.

Some of the reviews of the Mike Barnes book complain that he spends too much time on the Canterbury scene, I guess there are four or five examples on the list depending where you put Gong.

I haven't listened to the list as a whole yet, I'll do that this weekend.

- I love the Small Faces, but they're still a couple of steps away from prog per se; if I had to choose psychedelia on the verge, I might have picked "White Room" or "Shine On Brightly".
- Gracious are in the book (and I guess the playlist) as examples of a third-tier group who never really made it; I'd substitute a missing example of blues-going-progressive like "Jumping Off the Sun" by Colosseum or something from the Web album.
- "Can-Utility and the Coastliners" isn't anyone's favourite Genesis song, is it? It always seemed like half-a-dozen ideas hammered together, even more than some of their other songs. Still a bold choice over six or eight better-known pieces (and one of only two songs here that is included in the top 20 albums list at the start of this thread).
- Nice decision to pick folky instead of rocky Tull to connect with the Gryphon song.
- U.K. and Renaissance each providing off-ramps to AOR and late 70s pop is an elegant conclusion.

Trivia: By my count there are only four musicians who appear twice in the list: Greg Lake, Richard Sinclair, Bill Bruford, Nick Mason.
More trivia: If I had made this a poll I'd probably be going for Gentle Giant.

yea the pick of Can-Utility is weird, one of the classic era songs that never stuck with me in any way, don't think they ever really played it live either (though Hackett has been recently!), idk some people really do like it though

nothing against Northern Lights but there are way more interesting Renaissance songs out there. even if you just want a short one I think Carpet of the Sun is a lot better, I think that gives a glimpse into a side of the genre you don't hear often

Hatfield song titles are like Stereolab titles; I can generally never remember which is which. But if “Homerton” is the one I’m thinking of, yes that’s beautiful.