What song or album is the "final boss" of prog rock?

I'M PERFECT! ARE YOU?

I guess it depends how you interpret "final boss"

I don't really play video games, but in asking the question I thought of three different interpretations (which may overlap). The piece of music:

• is the most technically advanced, sophisticated and innovative from the point-of-view of composers and players
• is the most difficult, inaccessible, challenging from the point-of-view of listeners
• is historically the "final" expression of the prog rock genre or subgenre

Did any of the major prog acts of the 70s bow out with their most challenging records? Most "went for it" before 1974 and backpedalled or, more generously, made attempts to make their music more ingratiating. Here's my informal list of each band's more challenging record:

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma
Jethro Tull - A Passion Play
Yes - Tales or Relayer
Genesis - The Lamb, I guess
Crimson - Lizard? Larks' Tongues? Starless and Bible Black?
ELP - Not Works?
Gentle Giant - Acquiring the Taste
VDGG - Pawn Hearts
Rush - Hemispheres
Zappa - Uncle Meat
The Captain and Tennille - MEKANÏK DESTRUKTÏW KOMMANDÖH

etc etc

is the most technically advanced, sophisticated and innovative from the point-of-view of composers and players
is the most difficult, inaccessible, challenging from the point-of-view of listeners
is historically the "final" expression of the prog rock genre or subgenre

definitely all of this, yeah. but also, know your meme

final boss is a vibe

"The Captain and Tennille - MEKANÏK DESTRUKTÏW KOMMANDÖH"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzCZ74fahKI

clearly not

"Zappa - Uncle Meat"

boy, "civilization phase iii", that's one ingratiating fuckin' record right there haha

"Related to this third point, I was browsing a book one time that suggested that Western Culture by Henry Cow was chronologically "the last prog album". I forget the argument, but this makes sense to me, as that record feels like they had "progressed" to a point where they had wound up at the outer boundaries of rock - if they went any further, it would become jazz, or free improv, or modern classical. Although I guess there was a new genre - Rock In Opposition - waiting to occupy the areas they had colonized."

oh my god did you just call henry cow colonizers lol if fred frith hears you say that he'll beat your ass

i'd say "love beach" is a more challenging, in the term of "listener-unfriendly", record than "brain salad surgery"! i mean i knew one person who liked "love beach", and he was into some challenging fuckin' shit, i'll tell you what. anybody can like a good album. liking a terrible album, _that's_ a challenge...

i've also read that daryl dragon performed extensively on dogbowl's _cyclops nuclear submarine captain_ but i don't know if that's true or not

Did any of the major prog acts of the 70s bow out with their most challenging records?

I think a bunch intended to! King Crimson called it quits "forever" after Red. Yes and ELP both "split up" the same year after Relayer and BSS (both of which I think are their most difficult). VdGG took a long break after Pawn Hearts. The one notable act that didn't was Genesis with The Lamb though I think PG leaving invigorated them a bit - as great as he is you gotta admit he was kind of a sideshow

Is this a question about chronology since similar things like what was good about prog have been done under different genre titles since haven't they? & post prog don't things tend to be more a melange of different influences to a greater degree anyway. Like to be purist is also to be pretty retro innit?

Bad things about prog seemed to be what took over the genre in its decline. Chops for chops sake, bombastic ideas and themes. Which is obviously why the punk wars had to happen like.

Can definitely hear elements of things one might call prog in things like reunion era Swans and a number of other current artists. Post-punk had some of the proggier elements creeping back into rock after the year zero attempt of punk. So it seemed that teh records one deemed untouchable for a couple of years may have snuck back out of the back of the record box. & the influence of it has pervaded since to a point where it is just part of the fabric.
Interesting to hear that artists from the Detroit techno scene were claiming Yes to have been favourite artists in their youth too so not sure if its influence was passed on there too.

Just intrigued by where the cut off point for where teh last boss could have appeared is thought to be. I know neo-Prog sucks but I think the influence of that early 70s stuff like 69-73 can still be felt in a few places. Just not called by that name directly.

Don't quite get the gist of this question, but I always thought "Heart of the Sunrise" was some sort of epic apotheosis.

The literal next song they produced chronologically was CTTE lmao

i've also read that daryl dragon performed extensively on dogbowl's _cyclops nuclear submarine captain_ but i don't know if that's true or not

Love that album!

Just looked up what the term Final boss means after thinking it was just something of a benchmark. I'm not a gamer so it's not a phrase I'm familiar with.
& still I would be thinking that prog continued in some forms way beyond that era of VDGG so not sure how it applies.
It's pretty much gone off teh boil for me and seems to be pompously taking itself over seriously or alternatively showing off its wacky sense of humour. & what I find interesting in it seems to be taken on as influences under other genre names.
h
So strikes me it may be an idea that only really makes sense in a level of remote hindsight and takes a perspective that obscures a part of the picture. Since it was perpetutated on a possibly more marginalised level way past what I think is its sell by date as prog. Also wondering if prog as a term post dates it's peak form anyway and would not have been a term used by its practitioners at the time. So wondering if once it is being used you can tell if the band using it is worthwhile by that usage. & yeah I am aware that progressive was teh next sales term after psychedelic, or close to in around 68. Or possibly more progressive underground. Not 100% sure when prog was first used as a term though
I do really like protoprog though do know that that is a much later term. Think that the earliest explorations i taht direction before any element of formula crept in are more appealing to me

Like, am aware that there were a load of names being used to describe music that was later groupd under the umbrella genre prog. I think when I was first hitting record shops in the early 80s there were a lot of titles in the prog rock section though it may have also been called progressive rock at the time but it strikes me as a later category title used by record shops & possibly music weekly hacks.

Love that album!

― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.)

it's a fucking great one, maybe the best use of clarinet in rock?

i'd say "love beach" is a more challenging, in the term of "listener-unfriendly", record than "brain salad surgery"!

I guess I was trying to avoid "this is so prog it's punk!" or "this is so pop it's prog!" goalpost-shifting, lest we end up deciding that the ultimate prog record was a Dennis DeYoung solo album or something. I don't think it's good, but I think Love Beach is more listenable than the Works albums, it made sense at that point to go in a (musically) "tasteful" AOR direction.

maybe the best use of clarinet in rock

Not a crowded field once we get past the Mascara Snake and Supertramp.

Always liked Richard H. Kirk's clarinet playing in Cabaret Voltaire.

Vratislav Brabenec sadly overlooked on a prog thread of all places.

(I haven't heard dogbowl, though, and don't know what the final boss of anything is.)

there was a reason people died in the Punk Wars wasn't there? Please tell me it wasn't all for naught.
& that's like 5 years after Pawn Hearts .
So anything made in the genre after taht was fighting a losing battle already? Were they aware of that?
I think sell by date would be around 73 for me and people were still continuing to work in the genre way after that I thought.

you could interpret "final boss" as the big, challenging moment before you finish the game (prog rock) and move on to another game (another genre), in which case the final boss might be an LP which bridges prog rock and jazz fusion, or one that leads to on to post-rock.

I kind of wish people would stop linking prog with punk rock. People, usually prog rock fans, talk as if punk was obviously a reaction against prog and that's why it happened when that's not obvious at all. Prog had already run out of steam by the time punk came along, its best days were gone - or rather the best days of its leading exponents were gone. Which introduces another possibility: that punk happened, not because prog was too elitist and complex or whatever, but because it wasn't very good anymore!

Prog and punk are not so different in a surprising number of ways. They both fit as knuckle tats for one

So anything made in the genre after taht was fighting a losing battle already? Were they aware of that?

After 1976 no one ever heard from Genesis or Yes or Rush again

"there was a reason people died in the Punk Wars wasn't there? Please tell me it wasn't all for naught.

― Stevolende"

heroin overdoses, generally. or possibly undiagnosed gender dysphoria. or possibly both!

"I kind of wish people would stop linking prog with punk rock.

― Buckfast At Tiffany's (Tom D.)"

agreed, i feel like we need to do more work linking prog with disco!

See "Warm Sporran" by Jethro Tull, prog folk disco:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbqeAF5-KB0

Actually to make that clearer when I first wrote that the then refered to wad intended to be in reference to Pawn Hearts which is 1971. So still not able to work out how the term final boss applies.

Also Punk Wars is a semi sarcastic joke that inevitably becomes progressively funnier every time it's used.

Not a crowded field once we get past the Mascara Snake and Supertramp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVop4nLYpoM

https://vassifer.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341c18b253ef02a308d9f08f200c-600wi

See "Warm Sporran" by Jethro Tull, prog folk disco:

― Halfway there but for you

well of course it would be from the dee palmer era! :)