An Embarrassment of Prog

Nov 14 2024 12 ep. 75 mins 3

An Embarrassment of Prog Podcast artwork

Sailing the Topographic Oceans of a musical obsession that never became cool, three friends revisit the Genesis of their Yesterdays, from the Court of the Crimson King to the Thickest of all Bricks, from Peter Gabriel dressed as a sunflower to a flautist who proved that "Dickensian rat-catcher as rock god" was a viable career option. Henry Tenney, Charlie Nieland and Bill Tipper invite you to join them on a triple-disc, extended-Mellotron-solo journey through the astounding, perplexing, (sometimes) agonizing Embarrassment of Prog.

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S2: Episode 3: The Prog in Your Pop

Nov 14 2024 77 mins

Put down your double-disc concept albums and 25-minute musical fantasias. Everything you love about prog rock lives in the Top 40 and FM radio hits of the 70s. In this episode we’re putting our collective foot on the (classical) gas and sailing away to the point of know return. There may be a little hocus pocus involved assembling this Frankenstein of an episode, but we sure felt

S2: Episode 2: Still Raelin: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Part Two)

Jul 29 2024 73 mins

Picking up from the conversation started in our last episode, Charlie, Bill and Henry head for a visit at the Colony of Slippermen and the second half of "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway," the trippily majestic 1974 album that was Peter Gabriel's last outing with Genesis. Sunny high notes, facing down death, taking a few moments for a jazz odyssey, meeting (and eating) new friends..

S2: Episode 1: You Got Your Lamb in my Broadway (Part One)

May 30 2024 70 mins

The prog-rock podcast you didn’t know you needed is back for a new season of concept albums, long-form musical odysseys, sci-fi scenarios and occasional calls to the Rhyme Police. We’re starting out big, with a 2-part journey into the last record of the Peter Gabriel-era of the band Genesis, 1974’s double album “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.” In a departure from their

Episode 9: Joe McGinty Preaches the Book of Jobson

Jul 19 2023 95 mins

The English keyboardist, violinist and composer Eddie Jobson has a career that has touched nearly every corner of prog rock's strangely shaped universe. A prodigy who joined the band Curved Air at the age of 17, he went on to play with Roxy Music and Frank Zappa before becoming part of UK, prog's first "supergroup," in 1977, alongside bassist/vocalist John Wetton, drummer Bill Bruf

Episode 8: A Foxtrot When Supper's Ready

Jun 01 2023 91 mins

If there's a single record that might be said to occupy the heart of prog rock, there's a good case to be made for Genesis's 1972 "Foxtrot," a record that begins with the cinematic, Mellotron-drenched "Watcher of the Skies," comments on rapacious landlords in a mixture of Dickens and dystopian sci-fi with "Get 'Em Out by Friday" and then winds up with "Supper's Ready," clocking in

Episode 7: The Perfect (Nursery) Cryme

Apr 09 2023 65 mins

"The Musical Box!" "Harold the Barrel!" "The Return of the Giant Hogweed! "You may be asking "Could these possibly be the titles of enduring classics that no home should be without?" You might already suspect that we'd answer that question in the affirmative, but whether you're already a fan of the 1971 Genesis album Nursery Cryme or just want to increase the amount of joy in your

Episode 6: Into the Future with ELP's Tarkus & Trilogy

Mar 09 2023 77 mins

“Have you walked on the stones of years? When you speak, is it you that hears?” If these lyrical questions are familiar, you’re one of thousands of prog fans who looked at the crudely rendered, mechanical tank-armadillo creature on the cover of Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s TARKUS and said “I want to know more.” Did you ask yourself "What is the 'Endless Enigma', anyway" a

Episode 5: Kate Bush! Incredible String Band! Ambrosia!

Mar 06 2023 77 mins

In a voyage to the borderlands of this podcast's announced subject, this week we listen to three records that might not be your (or anyone's) idea of prog rock, but which all share something elusive with the music that more comfortably flies the Mellotron Flag. We start with the Incredible String Band's 1968 psych-folk opus "The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter," cross an ocean and a c

Episode 4: We Get Disciplined

Mar 06 2023 72 mins

King Crimson's 1969 "In the Court of the Crimson King" stands for everything familiar about prog rock—the fantastical lyrics, the eerie ghost-choir Mellotron atmospherics, a brooding atmosphere of Heavy Tunes for Bookish People. But when guitarist Robert Fripp re-formed the band in 1981, after a long personal quest for spiritual and artistic renewal, the sounds that came out were

Episode 3: A Whale of a Tale!

Mar 06 2023 65 mins

Is there any purer expression of the prog-rock moment than the one-side-per-track "concept album"? How about a double concept album? This week, Charlie, Henry and Bill say Yes to the excess and set sail across the four sides and 80-plus minutes of Yes's 1973 "Tales from Topographic Oceans." Conceived when vocalist Jon Anderson got his hands on Parahamhansa Yogananda's "Autobiograph