The Doors are a PROGRESSIVE BAND, one of the best ones and they are American

ah now it is my turn to see

xp

Billy Cobham was born in Panama so technically Mahavishnu where 20% American.
\pedantry

Panama is not and never has been part of America
\uberpedant

I know. The violin dude was the only american, hence 20%

haha ah I get it my bad

& he was in a San Francisco band with proggish tendencies too innit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9Wh1iXIxA

Thanks for the Yezda Urfa clip, that sounds amazing.

glad you like it. they're a hidden gem -- some of the most complex 'rock' music i've ever heard

craziest song by yezda urfa is this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKK8kdDVMag

but it also reveals problems with the notion of american "prog" as a genre. there's very little that can be called "prog" during the peak years of the british movement from '69-'74. what shows up is later, mid-late '70s, and is either horribly obscure (yezda urfa, graced lightning, random) or, you know, kansas. kansas are actually one of the more interesting examples here, as the "kansas ii" lineup, aka proto-kaw, was operating during the prime uk prog period, and was doing extremely far-out vdgg-influenced material like "totus nemesis", containing a long section best described as noise (it's on cuneiform, so i can't link you to something to listen to).

now, in the late '70s, you had stuff in the dc area like "happy the man" (not actually named after genesis), "the muffins", which were more avant-garde and slightly more popular than graced lightning or tommy marolda's private press prog lp (which is so obscure that i still haven't heard it, although it's doing the cd-r circuit), and it's this sort of music that feeds directly into the us avant-prog scene which has existed continuously since then, but as far as what is known as "symphonic" during prog's prime years, there's just not much american stuff to speak of. late '70s dc-area prog does have a precedent in the earlier baltimore group "oho":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWQYmanG3M

but again, we're dealing with a band which was deeply obscure and which nobody heard at the time, and again we're clearly dealing with something, like yezda urfa, which is derivative of first-wave UK prog.

as for the doors, if they're prog than jim morrison is america's greg lake.

by the way, i forgot to mention one of my favorite us prog bands, jasper wrath. the stuff they did after their first album (some of which came out on tax scam labels under pseudonyms like "zoldar & clark") is better than their first album material, which is very much in the "proto-prog" vein, but they're still near the top of the heap as far as us prog goes.

there's also the first couple JOURNEY albums, and more obscure, CATHEDRAL, MITHRANDIR, and SHADOWFAX

I think elements of The Doors was 'progressive' in a 1967-69 sense before prog was really a more defined genre of rock. I'd say this even goes more for Love and Spirit. Love definitely went into using some Sgt. Pepper orchestral arrangements. Spirit had a legit jazz background and their albums have all sorts of vaguely spaghetti soundtrack style pieces. All three bands (The Doors, Spirit & Love) being from the same rock scene that birthed the Mothers of Invention. There was that few year period where bands often had very wide repertoires. They might do some heavy blues, maybe a couple of acoustic numbers. In the UK, I'd say similar groups would be Jethro Tull and Colosseum both of which had the heavy blues numbers but then had other tracks that would venture into acoustic folk and soundtrack jazz.

Oh yeah, I kinda think a 'prog' Stooges is Black Sabbath.

ban me from this site but i swear "GOOD VIBRATIONS" is a total proto-prog jam

You got to figure the Moody's were way into the Beach Boys.

You can stream a track from that Proto-Kaw album on Cuneiform's Bandcamp page:

http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/early-recordings-from-kansas-1971-1973

the GRATEFUL DEAD are (at least sometimes) an american progressive band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugRct9pNQYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN6mjNMNytY

so is deicide

and SYMPHONY X

The Doors, one of the better LA 60s bands with a keyboard player. Better than The Music Machine; probably not as accomplished as The Association; not as rocking as The Seeds.

The Seeds - WEB OF SOUND - 1966

try:
"Pictures and Designs"
"Tripmaker"

Prog Stooges = Magma?

1 (although "Talk Talk" by The Music Machine rivals anything by anybody, and "Eagle Never Hunts The Fly" is ersatz to the max.)

2 (Talk Talk should have done a song called "The Music Machine". But they didn't.)

Prog Stooges = The Stooges

The Doors, one of the better LA 60s bands with a keyboard player. Better than The Music Machine; probably not as accomplished as The Association; not as rocking as The Seeds.

The Association didn't have a keyboard player.

The Doors aren't supposed to "rock"

Listing the 'better LA 60s bands with a keyboard player' and not mentioning Spirit?

The Doors weren't better than the Music Machine is some ways. They surely had more pretty moments overall, but they were together longer. The Music Machine did what they did better than anybody, which was turning garage rock into high musical drama with just note-perfect execution. Maybe they were the only band really shooting for this, but that was part of their genius. I think my favorite Music Machine songs are "Masculine Intuition" and "Double Yellow Line."

how fucking cool looking was jim morrison? it's fucking ridiculous is what it is, what a rock star

I don't mean to give the Doors any short shrift, by the way - just sticking up for the Music Machine. The Doors' accomplishments were sometimes super massive. I'm still a big time believer in the literary adventure of the pop musician, whatever my feelings might be about particulars in this Doors lyric or that. The spirit of the thing, literary seriousness - I am still a believer.

music machine were cool as hell
gloves!

1 It's funny that you brought up Spirit, because I think they are 1) great and 2) arguably, the first American prog band (or maybe the first American jazz-rock band....def an underrated giant step forward!)

2 Association had a keyboard player, but it's true that keyboard is not up high in the mix, and not present on all songs either.

3 I enjoyed Sean B's rant against folkies that was reproduced on the Rhino Best of the Music Machine....and also the teen tv show where they lip synch Talk Talk at a zoo

people who think jim was a hippie need to buy a clue.

easily top 10 american rock band.

2 Association had a keyboard player, but it's true that keyboard is not up high in the mix, and not present on all songs either.

Not in the 60s they didn't.

who thinks doors were hippie? they were way sleazy drunk death vibes

Manzarek sure talked a lot of hippie crap at times though

... but after Jimbo died, I don't know if that's significant or not.

no keyboards in the Association?.....well, very pleasant organ solo closing out "Never My Love." It's even on TV from 1968.

Also, the first notes on "Along Comes Mary" - that's an electric keyboard, right? On the Smothers Brothers appearance it's pretty clear that none of them standing there are playing those opening notes, then they get going.

There's a keyboard on the studio version of "Windy" too I think.

Hey, Spanky and Our Gang. Great hits, creepily calculated TV hippie appearance (see great song "Sunday Will Never Be the Same" as TV appearance for the awful truth). The other guys in the Doors would have looked like they were in one of those other hip/square bands. Kind of ironic that rock "star power" was in short supply in the (non-punk) Los Angeles bands in the 60s, they all look like they are uncomfortably inhabiting their clothes. Jim Morrison stands out as a huge exception of course.

I said no keyboard player, I didn't say no keyboards. It's almost as if bands didn't always play the instruments on their records or something crazy like that.

Dudes no one has ever gone as deep on the topic of whether or not the Association had a keyboard player

which association keyboard player you talking about, they had two iirc

The keyboards played themselves, tongues wagged - the explanation on the Smothers Brothers about being an "association" rather than a band had been taken as a joke - so later one guy had to sit there and pretend to play. The keyboards were the first to split when the hits dried up, emerging in Munich a few years later, and the rest is history.

50 FOOT HOSE, the SILVER APPLES, and SUICIDE were solid american progressive bands of the DOORS school

Just bought the two Yezda Urfa albums. There's also a new wave-ish followup called Crafty Hands.

I always hated The Doors and now I know why: I hate fucking prog.

lots of overlap between the two yezda urfa albums. i think 'boris' is a lot of demos for 'sacred baboon'?

NYCNative, you even hate CAPTAIN BEYOND?

The reason I like "Hyacinth House," for one example, is not because it's progressive. It would be interesting for me to hear people who like to think of the Doors as progressive to identify particular songs from the repertoire that fit that designation so we could see the extent to which they fit and maybe look particularly at why. I would say I kind of get it with The Soft Parade or side four of Absolutely Live, but not sure I get it elsewhere.

Even with The Soft Parade, I start wondering how many other psychedelic music albums I would also have to consider to be progressive.

Reggie, I'm not sure why the Silver Apples or 50 Ft. Hose are singled out as particular examples. Silver Apples' first album has nine tracks, eight of which are 4:11 or under. The second album does have four tracks that are 5:11 or longer, but the longest one is 6:26.

organ dominated non-pop jams, a la ray manzarek, the first keyboard wizard, is why they're singled out, in a continuum from the DOORS to SUICIDE

There is no organ in Silver Apples. I kind of get maybe looking at Simeon as a wizard in a "progressive" sense, though. Not sure I get it with Martin Rev.

50 Ft. Hose had someone making noise with electronics but "If Not This Time" sounds like the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, too.