Rare Bird - As Your Mind Flies By

While most of the Prog bands were following in the footsteps of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper, there was one band that took the underground scene in London into the world of Religion. That band was Rare Bird. The music wasn't just like Yes and Rick Wakeman's bombastic tradition of King Arthur on ice and gigantic baloon lobsters filling up the stage, it was more of a beauty and the Canterbury sound material-like sound. The group was founded in 1969 with Mark ashton on drums, the soulful voice of bassist Steve Gould, and two keyboardist that would get Wakeman wish that he was in this band with Graham Field and David Kaffinetti to get that dark image and almost medieval rock. While their first debut self-titled album is a classic, their second album, As Your Mind Flies By is another classic with heavy organs and an ultimate sonic sound.

The opening track What You Want To Know, a sexual encounter with a love one that becomes an organic ballad with a 10 feet high man that tells the girl about he feels about her in a Otis Redding piece becoming more of a Genesis tune. Hammerhead is a sinister taste of the bibilcal gods duking it out in the battlefield. The classical music harpischord love-soung quintet of Down on the Floor becomes a baroque tradition in the 1600's in jolly old england. The wedding music of Prog in I'm Thinking is a special treat while it goes into a bluesy fast speeding tradition and then becomes a gospel rockin' sound about the good years flashing back before getting married and the 19-minute epic Flight, gets a real rollercoaster ride of Prog epics.

Rare Bird would have various members including Nic Potter of VDGG fame. They released three more albums before calling it a day in 1975. Even though they wehre ahead of their time, They are the best Prog Rockers that would defintely get a real kick out of.

Amon Duul II - Tanz Der Lemminge

While the Krautrock scene was changing the waves in the early '70s with Ash Ra Tempel, NEU!, Can, Cluster, and the Cosmic Jokers, there was a band that had a combination of the Grateful Dead meets Pink Floyd. Amon Duul II were one of the bands that took the Krautrock genre on the bandwagon with its musical genres of avant-garde experiementations and atmospheric sounds. The group was founded back in the psychedelic-era of the late '60s after the fall of Amon Duul. They released their debut album Phallus Dei (God's Penis) a classic krautrock album along with Yeti in 1970 which according to MOJO's disc of the day "Hippy-punk communards from Munich chase drug refracted pagan gnosis!" and in 1971, Tanz Der Lemminge (Dance of the Lemmings)

A science-fiction star trekish experimental album with the space music taking you to a different world of weird insanity. The first three tracks are 15 to 19-minute suites that takes the listener inside the monolith with bizarre titles such as Restlesss Skylight-Transistor Child, Syntelman's March of the Roaring Seventies, and the foundation club to Norma Jean among the cult with the Marilyn Monroe - Memorial Church.

While the suites are like something out of Stanley Kubrick's 1968 stoner classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the last three shorter tracks take a steeping breath of psycedelia. Chewing Gun Telegram has a reminiscent of a hard rockin sound of the Grateful Dead while Stumbling over Melted Moonlight is a prequel to their kraut punk classic Between the Eyes with its fuzztone bass sound and the gritty technique. Toxicological Whispering becomes a jamb band session into the mind of Jefferson Airplance. Weird, bizarre, and something you would defintiely get stoned over, Amon Duul II doesn't pull any punches.

CAN - Delay 1968

These were pre-Monster Movie sounds before Can released their 1st album in 1969. Delay 1968 was originally going to be their first album in a bizarre title called 'Prepared to meet thy Pnoom' catchy title ain't it? But the record company wanted them to do something different and that was when they released their first album Monster Movie. Here with this album, you could tell Can weren't sitting on their asses and doing nothing, but more of a darker session feel on the 1968 delay.

The pounding rhythm introduction on Butterfly, is a combination of PiL and early Faust recordings with a mixture of Punk Blues that would make a screeching terror sound from any Velvet Underground album. Pnoom is a 20-second avant-garde jazzy number as it goes into the heavy nugget stax destruction soul number of 19th century man. Thief which would later be covered by Can fans Radiohead, is the killing track. Mixed with a dark guitar solo from the late Michael Karoli and Malcolm Mooney's gothic voice, the band go into an evil territory. Man named Joe an R&B/Punk tradition again, but this time an homage of the 50's rock scene in an experimentation style while Uphill is a tradition of Iggy & the Stooges meets the Jimi Hendrix experience into a metal funk jam session while Little Star of Bethlehem closes the album into a hip-hop '60s style from Malcolm and then becomes a soulful Krautrockin' Mothers of Invention madness.

A mixture of soul, '60s garage rock, early Pink Floyd, and a bit of Hendrix meets Lou Reed's Transformer? They know the score!

King Crimson - Red

They have already put the Prog Rock genre on the English map with the release of their debut album released in 1969, But it was time for King Crimson to take a break after the release of their seventh album, Red. The Crimso were now a trio after David Cross on violin left the band to become more of a session musician while a little help from former members of the group Ian McDonald and Mel Collins on saxes to help out with them.

John Wetton, Robert Fripp, and Bill Bruford were now the prog version of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. From the heavy introduction of Robert Fripp's guitar work on the opening self-titled track, is a torturing work of guitar solos, metalish sounds of the bass, and an explosive drum work, makes the album so damn good. The melodic dreamland beauty of Fallen Angel, is almost a prog love-song, that Crimson would have wished they were a jazz rock version of the fabulous mop tops, the Beatles while the heavy sound comes back in and in a high voltage sound of the thrashing piece of One More Red Nightmare.

The last two tracks shows them in their arranging and composition format. The 8-minute live performance at the Palace Theater on Providence, makes it spot-on with a grunge fusion sound of the Mahavishnu Orchestra while the closing 12-minute piece Starless, becomes more of an epic from the sounds of an early version of King Crimson of In the Wake of Poseidon and then into a heavy metal miles davis sound and then climaxes it similar to the finale of In the Court of the Crimson King.

Sadly, Robert Fripp broke Crimson up after the release of Red. He later worked with Brian Eno on No Pussyfooting and Eno's 1st solo album, Here Come the Warm Jets to the Berlin trilogy with David Bowie. In 1981, he reformed King Crimson in a new line-up including Bill Bruford. But this time with Frank Zappa's guitarist Adrian Belew and Peter Gabriel's bassist Tony Levin and released Discipline. It had been seven years since King Crimson released an album.

Nektar - Remember the Future

There were a few of the spae rock bands that would take the Progressive genre into the milky way with Pink Floyd, Ash Ra Tempel, Gong, and Hawkwind. But a band from Germany would take the Space Rock genre into a Rock Opera tradition. Nektar were more like Pink Floyd's kid brother plus a cult following in Europe and the US during the '70s as they reached up a rocket to the stars with their fourth album to their previous classic A Tab in the Ocean with a mixture of Funk, harmonizing vocals, and brilliant guitar work to Remember the Future. For those of you who may or may not know what the story of Remember the Future is about, It's the tale of Bluebird who was rejected from his home planet and forced to leave because of the way his skin is colored blue and the way he flies across the sky that didn't mixed very well with the people who rejected this kind of thing for him. He leaves his planet and head towards Earth where he befriends a young boy who is blind. As the boy asks Bluebird where he's from, Bluebird talks to the Boy about where he's from as the guitar and the music follow him into the story. During the second act of the album, Bluebird gives the young boy a miracle cure by giving him new eyes to see. As the boy is given new eyes, he is suprised to find out who the person he was talking to was a creature from a different planet. While the story seems like something out of an H.G. Wells novel or story, the music itself is fucking brilliant.

Carmen - Fandangos in Space

Among supporters including David Bowie who got them on the 1980 floor show at the Marquee after his farewell Ziggy Stardust concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, these Californian flamenco/glam/prog rock band blew Aladdin Sane away. Carmen are one of the bands in the 1970's that would take that genre into a different land. Fandangos in Space is almost a story-telling album because of the tales that deal with space, spain, battle dome of the bulls, and thirlling guitar sounds including some amazing footwork also that is 100% perfect.

Tony Visconti, who produced Bowie, T. Rex, and progsters Gentle Giant, did an amazing job producing Carmen's first album because he nailed it so perfectly its almost that Genesis were becoming a salsa-rock fairy tale band. The two tracks that are explosively well to get the album started. Bulerias and Bullfight, are really high voltage that would set the footstomping by going into a faster tempo with the gypsy women's stories and the goriest bulls waiting to attack the humans on a hot and humid day and night.

Alongside the first two tracks, you have the 1-minute spanish classical pete townshend fingerpicking guitar sounds of Poor Tarantos while Stepping Stone becomes a funky flamenco guitar style in the morning sun. Sailor Song, a darker ballad that deals with the rise and fall of a Sailor who wants to be saved and refuses to die, and the self-titled track is almost solar system rockin' sound that is 6-minutes to perfection which later becomes an acapella clapping mexican funeral arrangment music for the Fandango herself to be buried.

Carmen never had the success after the 1980 floor sow. The group would later release three more albums before calling it a day in 1976 after the release of their final album of The Gypsies. Carmen are an excellent band I really dig and the hot day goes to play in the nightless sky.

Faust - So Far

Whenever you think of strange and bizarre weird music, you think of Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, and Henry Cow. But if you have a band from Germany in the 1970's that go into pure avant-garde punk experimental madness, then you've come to the right place at the right time with Faust and their second album in an album cover that's black with So Far. They were the band that would have Miles Davis be very happy with and to be a part of. This album show's Faust that they couldn't get into the whole bombastic feel of Yes, ELP, or Genesis type of sound.

This is more of the Velvet Underground meets Bowie meets John Coltrane in a twisted local environment that would make the doors screech open to. The opening of the banging drums, one piano chord, and a punk-rock chugging of a guitar chord with the humor taste of bubblegum music of It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl, is an ultimate killer. You have the quirky lyrics of 'It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl, It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Baby.' Really fun lyrics to really piss and sneer all of the other teenybopper music. On the Way to Abamae is a folky acoustic guitar instrumental composition while it goes into the 10-minute heavy guitar sounds that would blow the speakers up on No Harm, an homage to Iggy & the Stooges in a Krautrock way with lyrics like ' Daddy take a Banana, tomorrow is Saturday! ' This track is another killer that would make you turn the volume noise up a notch!

Mamie is Blue, an avant-garde extraordinare pice of music that has amps going into total destruction while the previous self-titled track, is more of a brass Parliament Funkadelic meets Edgard Varese arrangment. The last four tracks, show a little bit of comedy and vaudeville ragtime fun. I've Got My Car and My TV, an anti-car and TV commerical message for the viewers watching, the Zappa-style sounds on Picnic on a Frozen River and Me Lack Space while the last track closes it up into a swing paris jazz rock style of In the Spirit brings it to an end. So Far is one helluva album. Play this along with The Faust Tapes and turn it up. You are warned again!