Face to Face with Rick Wakeman: Jon Lord

On the TV show ‘Face to Face’, presenter and Yes' keyboardist Rick Wakeman interviews Deep Purple's co-founder and keyboard player Jon Lord who died of cancer about a year ago (16 July 2012). Read more here. 

Proto-Progressive Rock bands

As it's name clearly indicates, Proto-Progressive Rock refers to the earliest form of progressive rock or progressive rock in embryonary state. The Proto-Prog bands normally were formed and released albums before prog rock had completely developed, but there are some rare Proto Prog bands from the early 70's as well, because the genre didn't expanded to all the continents simultaneously. The common elements in all these bands is that they developed one or more elements of prog, and even when not completely defined as part of the genre, they are an important stage in the evolution of progressive rock. Read more here. 

Arthur Brown

Arthur Brown is an English rock musician best known for his flamboyant, theatrical style, wide ranging operatic vocal style and significant influence on Alice Cooper, Peter Gabriel, Marilyn Manson, George Clinton, Kiss, King Diamond, and Bruce Dickinson, among others, and for his number one hit in the UK Singles Chart and Canada, "Fire" in 1968. Read more here. 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatles are not progressive in the true sense but, this record is more than rock: it contains the early psychedelic patterns and it also contains basic progressive elements that surely contributed to make the progressive rock style itself to emerge. This album is often considered the starting point of progressive rock. Read more here. 

Kaleidoscope (Fairfield Parlour)

Kaleidoscope was a great English psychedelic rock/proto-prog band (not to be confused with the American band Kaleidoscope which existed at the same period and played basically psychedelic rock too) that was active between 1963 and 1972. The band was also known at various times as The Sidekicks, The Key, I Luv Wight and Fairfield Parlour. They had talent to be one of the major progressive rock acts of their age but they "died" prematurely due to bad luck in the crucial moments. Kaleidoscope were one of the first progressive rock bands that evoluted with the genre and made a fantastic work. Read more here.

Andromeda

Andromeda was a blend of psychedelic, progressive, jazz and hard rock power trio which lasted only enough to release one album. It is considered a proto-prog band. They were formed back in '68, by John Du Cann, after the break of his previous band, The Attack. Du Cann (guitar), along with Mick Hawksworth (bass) and Jack Collins (drums), recorded a psychedelic rock project named The Five Day Week Straw People, being a concept album much praised by collectors nowadays. After recording this project, the three decided to form a band, that was called Andromeda.  Read more here.