Didn't you say that you consider Yes to be the greatest prog band ever?

Kinda. I consider King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, even Pink Floyd, to be somewhat interchangeable on this list.

Well they are all juggernauts of the genre, no doubt about that.

Crimson should easily be #1. They didn't just invent the genre. They saved it.

In the mid 70s when punk was becoming huge and New Wave was starting to take over, progressive rock was losing popularity and fast. Fripp decided that to keep the genre alive, he'd spend time looking at New Wave. Come "Discipline" he had understood the scene well enough to revive progressive rock as a wole by adding blatantly New Wave elements, largely thanks to Adrian Belew. There's also the addition of Chapman stick, which has led to a huge sure in touch guitar playing in prog (Nick Beggs, Sean Malone, Trey Gunn, Markus Reuter, etc.) and some heavy influence from more of the ambient, New Wave elements like in Porcupine Tree, whose keyboardist was originally in Japan.

So King Crimson invented, saved, and defined progressive rock twice. That should be more than enough for a #1 position.

Yeah I agree. King Crimson managed to stay relevant for an unexpectedly long time.

Despite being the biggest Yes fanboy in the entire universe, I'm perfectly fine with having King Crimson at number 1.

I think you're overstating things a bit here. Sure King Crimson managed to add more modern elements and keep going but they were hardly lone saviors of the genre, nor were they the only 70s Prog band adding modern elements to maintain their commercial viability. Yes released Drama in 1980, which also incorporated New Wave elements. Camel started adding disco elements to their music starting with Rain Dances and released 3 albums starting in Nude in 1981 and Stationary Traveller in 1984 that all incorporated elements of popular 80s music. Genesis, although they would eventually move to making straight-up pop music, released Duke in 1980 which still contained Prog elements. Pink Floyd released arguable their most artistically ambitious, and most commercially successful, album in 1979.

Then you have the Neo-Prog bands which gained cult followings amongst Progressive Rock fans during the 1980s, particularly Marillion who achieved far more commercial success than King Crimson's 80s output and had a larger influence on the direction of subsequent Prog bands.

True, but Crimson was arguably among the most popular of all of them and has the longevity, whereas Camel lost popularity and (as you said) Genesis became a pop band. Let's also not forget that Yes's 80s stuff is nothing to brag about, and especially compared to albums like Discipline and Beat.

And yes, Marllion was popular in the 80s, but they never seemed to do anything particularly innovative, as the majority of their sound comes from early Genesis. They are an amazing band, but neo-prog owes a LOT more to 70s prog than it does to Marillion.

Crimson was one of the few bands to really innovate at the time by incorporating polyrhythms, New Wave, and touch guitar, which as mentioned before has influenced many of the newer progressive groups that rely less on technical skill and more on ambience.

No, they demonstrable weren't. Discipline reached 45th on the US Billboard, Beat 52nd. Drama was 18th on the US Billboard and 2nd in the UK. Nude, The Single Factor and Stationary Traveller by Camel placed in similar positions to Discipline and Beat on the UK album charts. Genesis may have turned into a pure pop band later on but they were still releasing Prog in the very early 80s, the period in which you claim that King Crimson solely kept Prog alive.

Then there's Rush, who I neglected to mention in my previous post. They were massively successful during this time and the material they released then had a profound effect on Prog in the years that followed.



Early in their career, certainly, but by Fugazi was a significant step away from that. Misplaced Childhood, their most successful album - one of the best selling Prog albums of all time - sounded very little like Genesis.



No. The reason Neo-Prog bands that formed after the initial wave of bands in the early 80s are known as Neo-Prog bands is because they write music similar to the pioneers of that subgenre, chiefly Marillion and IQ.



Yes on the polyrhythms and touch guitar, no on New Wave as I've pointed out. As innovative as King Crimson were during this period, the idea that they saved Prog is selling their peers of the time short.

Do we count New Prog bands?

Yes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mt2-mlTz7Y

The shape of things to come, documentary on the moog. Posting here cuz this prog thread is active. 1:22 (possibly tl;dw, but interesting)

Cheers for posting, Krym. I shall give that a watch when I next have enough free time.

Pink Floyd should be raised up to number 2. I can't really see any other band being more important to progressive rock besides King Crimson. Crimson and Floyd were two of a kind. Yes was too, but from what I know: Pink Floyd and King Crimson are both highly superior to Yes when it comes to influence and importance. Yes are arguably the best performers of prog. Floyd could even make #1 in my eyes. They wrote songs over 30 minutes, storytelling, poetry, instrumentals, lyrics, they were just the most perfect band when your talking about this kind of criteria. I see this for the top 5:

1. Pink Floyd
2. King Crimson
3. Yes
4. Genesis
5. E.L.P.

What other Prog bands did Pink Floyd influence specifically?



Pink Floyd never wrote a song longer than 30 minutes. Neither have any of the other bands you listed. All of the bands you mentioned perform strongly in the criteria you stipulate here - these not the criteria for creating these lists, I should point out.