The 100 Best Classic Progressive Rock Songs: Part 2, 80-61
Welcome back, my friends to the show that never ends. It's the 100 best classic progressive rock songs.
Sean Murphy
Sean Murphy has been publishing fiction, reviews (music, movie, book, food), and essays on the technology industry for almost twenty years. During his time at PopMatters he has written extensively about music, movies, and books, and his column "The Amazing Pudding" celebrates all-things Prog-Rock. His memoir Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone was published in 2013; his novel Not To Mention a Nice Life in 2015. Murphy is currently the writer-in-residence at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts on Martha's Vineyard. Visit him online at @bullmurph and http://seanmurphy.net/.
The 100 Best Classic Progressive Rock Songs: Part 1, 100-81
After gamely attempting to track the 25 best old-school progressive albums of all time, it's inevitable we turn our attention to the best songs of the genre.
All Hail the King: Chuck Berry Reinvented Music, and America
After Chuck Berry, rock music would forever be a gumbo of competing and complimentary source points, but his first-person flights of fancy still represent its most undiluted potential.
Led Zeppelin Loathed, Loved, Copied, Scrutinized and Glorified
For Zeppelin fanatics, Marc Roberty’s book will become an enduring bible of the good times, the bad times and even the boring times.
One Shot: Remembering Michael Cimino’s Masterpiece, ‘The Deer Hunter’
The Deer Hunter gets war, yes, but it also nails the beautiful, if banal simplicity of working class existence.
None More Black: Reassessing Black Sabbath’s First Three Albums
The sound Black Sabbath cultivated remains, at once, neither derivative nor capable of duplication.
The 25 Best Classic Progressive Rock Albums
The purpose of this column has been to revisit, reassess and, above all, celebrate classic prog rock, so it’s inevitable we name names and select the best of the best.
Edgar Allan Poe’s 10 Best Stories
Edgar Allan Poe endures as an artist who made his life's work a deeper than healthy dive into the messy engine of human foibles, obsessions, and misdeeds.
Reappraising Ian Anderson’s ‘Minstrel in the Gallery’
Minstrel in the Gallery seems as autobiographical as any Jethro Tull album, before or after, and there is a vulnerability and sensitivity that the songwriter was simply growing into.
‘Five Easy Pieces’ Must Be Appreciated on Its Own Cantankerous Terms
As the hippie hangover from the ‘60s begins in earnest in ‘Five Easy Pieces’, Jack Nicholson’s Bobby Dupea has neither tuned in nor entirely dropped out.
‘Pedro’ Is a Glorious Romp Full of Stories That Only Pedro Martinez Can Tell
No one can say Pedro did not walk the walk.
Schizophonia: Cantorial Recordings Reimagined
Schizophonia set a new bar for ways we can imagine intersections between the old school, the spiritual, and the evanescent.
