Various Artists

September 12 - 19, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Various Artists

SUPERNATURAL FAIRY TALES: THE PROGRESSIVE ROCK ERA

(Rhino)
What's more pretentious, anyway: Rick Wakeman doing "King Arthur" on ice or Perry Farrell with flaming snake dancers? If you're not sure either, welcome to Rhino's attempt at a prog revival. This five-CD box draws both from the English strain of art rock (mostly pop/psychedelic groups who got ambitious) and the German/European strain (mostly avant-gardists who took strange drugs). I maintain a preference for the former; give me Caravan's tunefulness over Magma's loopiness any day. At times the box skews too heavily to the left-field stuff and ignores the pop/psych crossovers. Frank Zappa is the only American; Todd Rundgren should have been included too. Pink Floyd are absent for legal reasons, but also missing are Jethro Tull and the Annie Haslam incarnation of Renaissance -- and what the hell is Golden Earring's "Radar Love" doing here?
That said, some of the less obvious choices are wonderful. Formative tracks like Traffic's "Paper Sun," Rare Bird's "Sympathy," and Curved Air's surprisingly sexy "It Happened Today" are beautiful pop songs with heavy abstraction. Yes's "Siberian Khatru" and Genesis's "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight" -- the best single tracks by either band -- are almost enough to justify those group's later excesses. What remains resonant about prog rock is its wide-eyed sensibility. Listening to PFM's "Celebration" or Gentle Giant's "Free Hand," you experience a thrill of discovery that flies in the face of today's obsession with formats.
-- Brett Milano