S2: Episode 4: Larking About With King Crimson
An Embarrassment of Prog
Hello darkness, our old friend! This week, we've turned out all the lights (except for one blood-colored bulb) and turned up the volume on the trio of albums recorded by the band King Crimson in 1973 and 1974. For "Larks Tongues in Aspic," "Starless and Bible Black," and the culminating "Red," Robert Fripp gathered a collection of musicians willing to push themselves into strange, magical new places. He was joined by John Wetton, Bill Bruford, David Cross and Jamie Muir in creating a new kind of prog rock: dense, difficult, and exhilarating. Who knew the dark-matter...
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S2: Episode 3: The Prog in Your Pop
An Embarrassment of Prog
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 like three lucky men by the end. Join Charlie, Henry, and Bill for the most hummable episode of An Embarrassment of Prog yet! On YouTube: "Classical Gas" on the Smothers Brothers: "Sylvia/Hocus Pocus"...
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S2: Episode 2: Still Raelin: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Part Two)
An Embarrassment of Prog
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...will Rael make it back to New York City? Will our trio of musical adventurers keep their footing as they Ride the Scree? Will they get lost in a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut's fiction along the way? There's only one...
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S2: Episode 1: You Got Your Lamb in my Broadway (Part One)
An Embarrassment of Prog
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 previous songwriting practice, the band allowed Gabriel to become lyricist-in-chief for an extended suite set in an American environment that seemed a far cry from their previous outings. But as Gabriel dove into a...
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Episode 9: Joe McGinty Preaches the Book of Jobson
An Embarrassment of Prog
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 Bruford (both ex-King Crimson) and guitarist Allan Holdsworth. UK burned briefly and brightly, and to lead us through the thrills of their self-titled debut and their follow-up "Danger Money" we're joined by NYC's...
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Episode 8: A Foxtrot When Supper's Ready
An Embarrassment of Prog
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 at almost 24 minutes, a journey through mystery, mythology, identity crisis, and the Book of Revelation that will have you humming along in 9/8. This week, Charlie, Henry, and Bill face down the task of explaining...
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Episode 7: The Perfect (Nursery) Cryme
An Embarrassment of Prog
"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 life, in this episode Charlie, Henry, and Bill tell the story of how Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joined Gabriel, Banks, and Rutherford to brew this delightful concoction. (And stay tuned for part 2, in which we...
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Episode 6: Into the Future with ELP's Tarkus & Trilogy
An Embarrassment of Prog
“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" as you gazed at their fused heads on the cover of their follow-up, TRILOGY? This week, Charlie, Henry, and Bill get an organ transplant (sorry) from prog rock’s keyboard-centric power trio to take you on a...
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Episode 5: Kate Bush! Incredible String Band! Ambrosia!
An Embarrassment of Prog
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 continent to the sunny L.A.-based sound of Ambrosia's 1975 self-titled debut, and wind up in the studio with Kate Bush and her arrival as a sonic auteur, 1982's "The Dreaming." We finish by facing the question...
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Episode 4: We Get Disciplined
An Embarrassment of Prog
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 from another universe, a tightly-woven, world-music-and-found-audio informed sound that was...danceable? Can we even call records like "Discipline" and "Three of a Perfect Pair" prog rock? Charlie, Henry...
info_outlineKing 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 from another universe, a tightly-woven, world-music-and-found-audio informed sound that was...danceable? Can we even call records like "Discipline" and "Three of a Perfect Pair" prog rock? Charlie, Henry and Bill talk about the unpredictable road that led to these surprising, thrilling records, the new King Crimson documentary, and why Robert Fripp's NYC album "Exposure" is the secret art-rock gem we want to make one of your new favorites. 3/06/23: UPDATED WITH SOUND CLIPS!
Discussed in this episode
King Crimson's "Discipline" full album on YouTube
King Crimson's "Beat" full album on YouTube
King Crimson's "Three Of A Perfect Pair" full album on YouTube
Robert Fripp's "Exposure" full album on YouTube
The League Of Gentleman's "Dislocated" Live Video 1980 on YouTube
King Crimson's "Elephant Talk" Live Video on Fridays 1981 on YouTube