They weren't lol. They were a pop band that got a lucky break and could never release a decent follow-up. The power behind Future Passed was the orchestra. Even the majority of lyrics are childish and lame. They were trying to expand on what the Beatles had done with Sgt peppers. But eneded up sounded like a lame Beatles knock off.
@@justaguy2365 That's quite unfair. Justin Hayward is one of the finest rock vocalists of all time, and Mike Pinder's mellotron work was sublime. Most of the late 60's psychedelic acts from the Beatles to Floyd were lyrically childish and silly, that's how it was back then. A band doing that now, would be ridiculous, but back then it was new and rule breaking The MB's were a big part of that, and they very quickly evolved into mature and lyirically quite deep songwriters.
The Moody Blues were NOT Prog imo.They were too light weight and too poppy and there was far less emphasis on instrumental virtuosity than groups like Yes or King Crimson.They were a very good Pop band but thats all.
This is awesome. I'm 52 and been a prog fan my whole life. Never heard of 1-2-3/Clouds until now. What a raw deal for Billie Ritchie. Bummer, but thanks a million for what you've helped create.
Same here. 52 also but 50 when you posted this. I've heard of them for several years. Another early band who were influential at the time was Touch who were oddly enough an American band.
Excellent video and as always Rick Wakeman is great to listen to. No matter what anyone thinks of this genre there is no doubt that it is still alive and well with modern bands carrying the torch. Long Live Prog!
What a cool, humble dude. He knows what he did, how good he is and how many people he influenced, but he's just acknowledging the facts, no false modesty, but no arrogance. If he helped inspire Yes to become what they did, then I love him.
Thank you! :-) Clouds were a massively under-rated group. I consider myself very fortunate to have seen them live. I believe they were let down by their record company. My friend and I came back absolutely raving about them to our friends, and as soon as their first album came out, we said "You have 'got' to hear this group!" Then we put the album on ... it was completely unrepresentative of their sound, and our friends all looked at us like we were mad. That album, I believe, was the pivotal point at which their career took a nosedive from which they crashed and burned. Tragic shame.
Saw them with Tull in San Diego in 1970 - we were lucky to get front row center seats that a promoter had turned in to the box office (didn't need them) .... Shawn Bowker (from Portland ... anybody seen him ????) and I looked down at the sidewalk on a hot weekend day when the sidewalks were empty to find a fat joint which we smoked on the way to the B.O. CLOUDS blew us away ! The drummer was playing bass with the bassist - amazing.`(Tull were in great from, too.)
Yes. I've heard that too about their albums not being representative of their live shows and you don't get much of a sense of early progressive from them. It's too bad they kind of fizzled by the end of the decade.
@@mikereiss4216 The main problem is that the original band - 1-2-3 - never recorded; and when they signed to Chrysalis, they had their name and music changed. When people hear about the fuss the band created at the Marquee, the only point of reference they have are the Clouds albums, which are a very watered-down version of 1-2-3. The other thing that has to be said, is that the successful bands of Prog who 'borrowed' the ideas of 1-2-3, still missed the point. They seized on the musicianship, the tempo changes, the imagination of the arrangements, but they forgot to include taste and songwriting sensibility. Musicians - even, or perhaps especially - great ones, tend to think of everything from the aspect of brilliant technique and virtuoso playing. They (generalising, obviously) don't pay much attention to melody and meaning of the song itself. In that sense, 1-2-3 would still sound very radical, even compared to the Prog heroes who followed.
What I find amusing is that prog-haters actually take the music far more seriously than we prog fans typically do. They clearly perceive prog as such a major threat that it must be unrelentingly put down even 45 years after its brief heyday. One wonders what causes such tense insecurity over a musical style? I enjoy prog AND punk, and I enjoy their differences.
Is the problem in the name 'Progressive Rock' - leading the bands being compared to rock? If the name had been 'Progressive Music' could it have been left to go on its own way, away from rock. With the two never meeting.
l,m 68 and remember the Prog days well . Listening to" Court of the Crimson King "in the music room at school when l was 15 , listening to my mates older brothers albums and on leaving school getting into collecting L.P.'s . Also remember listening to Kid Jensons "Dimensions "on Radio Luxemburg and hearing Soft Machine and Van Der Graaf Generator for the first time both of which became my all time favourite bands (along with Caravan ) . Still collecting and still very much into Prog all these years on . Sounds of the '70's on Radio 1 was a must for prog on weekday evenings , Mike Hardings show from 6 to 7 Tuesday evenings was a must listen too also . On Sunday evenings "ln Concert " featured prog bands too both popular and little known . Great days the early '70's when Progressive Rock was new , exciting and at it,s best . Glad l managed to see most of these great bands live too .
Nice upload, and I sure learned something I didn't know before; I never heard of 1-2-3 or Clouds until I watched this. A little editing of the video would have done though.
Clouds sadly broke up in the early 70's without having achieved any mainstream success,like a lot of artists.of course Family aren't mentiones as well as a multitude of other bands who brougfht music forward in the 60's and 70's
Hilarious story by Rick about the 16 year old kid But he's right it's always gonna be new to those that weren't around when the music became the main focus & those that were good enough to not just get it but to play it. Case in point ,I've been playing guitar since the late 60s & even today when i hear Steve Howe as he plays today & the mind warp style he played in YES & Close To The Edge still floors me & i hear it as it was & felt in 71. We love the Punks only cause they made us laugh at just how terrible their musicianship or total lack of it was so of course they hated the music , hell nothing on Earth could have given them the capacity to as they say Get IT !!! To them they could barley tune their own instruments let alone play them. It was the later excess that took Progressive music out not so much the music even if it was music for musicians & folks with open minds.
The vast majority of progressive rock fans tend to be musicians, mainly because I think it is far more interesting than three chord three minute pop songs. I think Yes had already stolen the mantle of prog-rock's first supergroup when Rick Wakemen joined.
Prog fans tend to be musicians OR people who wish they were musicians. And they tend to be slightly alienated suburban middle-class white males, for whatever reason.
Rick Wakeman's infamous or famous stand-up routine at induction of YES into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame :th-cam.com/video/oYnOZHxtGG4/w-d-xo.html and his justification: soundcloud.com/siriusxmentertainment/rick-wakeman-reveals-reasoning-behind-his-infamous-rock-hall-acceptance-speech
One track from Clouds that reeks of prog for me is "Waiter". It's got all the elements right there. A little rough compared to the extreme virtuosity playing that defined the genre five years later. Great musicians nevertheless. Nice to see the understated majesty of Bob Stanley on this too ... you must check out his (and Pete Wiggs) compilations, if you have not already! Oh, and while I'm here, check out "Crack The Sky" ... the best prog band that you've never heard of! Love and Light folks.
Good post, Marc; "Waiter" IS the nearest thing on record to 1-2-3; the main reason it's a little uneven on the recorded version is that it was the very early days of Chrysalis, and they couldn't afford to keep the 'live' orchestra there for longer than two takes. David (Dee) Palmer (who later became a member of Jethro Tull) was conducting the orchestra, and because of the complex nature of the song, he asked Terry (Ellis) to get the band to stand down for this track, thinking it best the orchestra used their own organist, drummer, and bass player - not because he thought the musicians weren't good enough, it was cost and continuity he was thinking of - but of course, the band utterly refused and played the two takes 'live' with the orchestra just the same.
Every time I hear "Woah, this is out there!" and "What in the world are they doing?" and "Well we just wanted to do something different" and every time I hear Rick Wakeman say anything at all, I feel like I'm right where I belong. Oh, and look: Here's a whole documentary about it. Ok, now don't bother me for a while. I'm watching a great documentary, and it takes as long as it takes.
"It's like musical masturbation. It's just completely self-indulgent. I mean, no one else wants to listen to it". Damn I'm sick of that tired, sour grapes trope. So, then, what was *done* with the multiple millions of albums that they sold and have *continued* to sell decades later? What was everyone *doing* with all that vinyl that made it worth buying? "Dude! I got the new release! What? Well, no, I'm not gonna *listen* to it. It's just completely self-indulgent" As a kid, I thought long and hard about how I was going to spend the little I had. Yeah. I must be the only one who "wants to listen to it."
The criticism sucks. They just ran out of fresh ideas and couldn't out do themselves doing similar things. The fault was in not pushing beyond what they had done before. Commercial considerations was what killed it. The capitalist need to make more money than before. The record companies said they needed sell platinum, gold was not enough anymore. The best scenario in the perfect world would have to do MORE experimentation rather than less but that's not financial feasible, sadly. Nobody asked Mozart to dumb his music down.
King Crimson and Peter Hammill never sold out. Neither did they become rich, but by handling their careers with intelligence and creativity, they made enough money to at least survive comfortably. And that is enough for anybody.
Some interesting new info, plus some distorted opinions ...even from those who were there at the time. I was aware of Clouds ´69, ´70 and ´71 albums but from what i´d heard of them they failed to impress anywhere near as much as The Nice or Van Der Graff Generator etc..
That would be an example of a band that would be seen as in the 2nd or 3rd division, there were lots of them to be honest. They even did a track "Poor Man's Moody Blues" which must have come from some critic.
ummm maybe prog was on its way out... but any music critic that thinks the sex pistols are musical art... imo... its equal to the artist that put a crucifix in jar of urine and called it art...
Lost in time: "Progressive rock" was the name given to post-psychedelic, post-acid rock. Even Led Zeppelin was progressive rock. The term "Prog rock" arrived soon thereafter, a journalistic designation and partly tongue in cheek, to categorize what we now consider prog. The latter is a sub-category of the former. To use the terms interchangeably is sloppy history.
I had a friend who knew Paolo Hewitt at school and would go on about Paolo's role as an early punk scene critic... what gets me is my friend kept mentioning his association as though it reflected well on him rather than badly.
![[안방1열 풀캠4K] 베이비몬스터 'DRIP' (BABYMONSTER FullCam)│@SBS Inkigayo 241110](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AQ4RIghEvUs/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank You for saying that The Moody Blues were one of the most important Prog bands!!! Finally, someone who knows what they are talking about!!
Yes.
Silly of them to show photos of the Denny Laine line-up, though really.
They weren't lol. They were a pop band that got a lucky break and could never release a decent follow-up. The power behind Future Passed was the orchestra. Even the majority of lyrics are childish and lame. They were trying to expand on what the Beatles had done with Sgt peppers. But eneded up sounded like a lame Beatles knock off.
@@justaguy2365 That's quite unfair. Justin Hayward is one of the finest rock vocalists of all time, and Mike Pinder's mellotron work was sublime. Most of the late 60's psychedelic acts from the Beatles to Floyd were lyrically childish and silly, that's how it was back then. A band doing that now, would be ridiculous, but back then it was new and rule breaking The MB's were a big part of that, and they very quickly evolved into mature and lyirically quite deep songwriters.
@@martinrodzzz5329 Crap researching there I think.
The Moody Blues were NOT Prog imo.They were too light weight and too poppy and there was far less emphasis on instrumental virtuosity than groups like Yes or King Crimson.They were a very good Pop band but thats all.
This is awesome. I'm 52 and been a prog fan my whole life. Never heard of 1-2-3/Clouds until now. What a raw deal for Billie Ritchie. Bummer, but thanks a million for what you've helped create.
Same here. 52 also but 50 when you posted this. I've heard of them for several years. Another early band who were influential at the time was Touch who were oddly enough an American band.
same
Excellent video and as always Rick Wakeman is great to listen to. No matter what anyone thinks of this genre there is no doubt that it is still alive and well with modern bands carrying the torch. Long Live Prog!
What a cool, humble dude. He knows what he did, how good he is and how many people he influenced, but he's just acknowledging the facts, no false modesty, but no arrogance. If he helped inspire Yes to become what they did, then I love him.
'Well
Lo stated
Thank you! :-) Clouds were a massively under-rated group. I consider myself very fortunate to have seen them live. I believe they were let down by their record company. My friend and I came back absolutely raving about them to our friends, and as soon as their first album came out, we said "You have 'got' to hear this group!" Then we put the album on ... it was completely unrepresentative of their sound, and our friends all looked at us like we were mad. That album, I believe, was the pivotal point at which their career took a nosedive from which they crashed and burned. Tragic shame.
Saw them with Tull in San Diego in 1970 - we were lucky to get front row center seats that a promoter had turned in to the box office (didn't need them) .... Shawn Bowker (from Portland ... anybody seen him ????) and I looked down at the sidewalk on a hot weekend day when the sidewalks were empty to find a fat joint which we smoked on the way to the B.O. CLOUDS blew us away ! The drummer was playing bass with the bassist - amazing.`(Tull were in great from, too.)
th-cam.com/video/K4qoZEBbAIE/w-d-xo.html
Yes. I've heard that too about their albums not being representative of their live shows and you don't get much of a sense of early progressive from them. It's too bad they kind of fizzled by the end of the decade.
@@mikereiss4216 The main problem is that the original band - 1-2-3 - never recorded; and when they signed to Chrysalis, they had their name and music changed. When people hear about the fuss the band created at the Marquee, the only point of reference they have are the Clouds albums, which are a very watered-down version of 1-2-3. The other thing that has to be said, is that the successful bands of Prog who 'borrowed' the ideas of 1-2-3, still missed the point. They seized on the musicianship, the tempo changes, the imagination of the arrangements, but they forgot to include taste and songwriting sensibility. Musicians - even, or perhaps especially - great ones, tend to think of everything from the aspect of brilliant technique and virtuoso playing. They (generalising, obviously) don't pay much attention to melody and meaning of the song itself. In that sense, 1-2-3 would still sound very radical, even compared to the Prog heroes who followed.
What I find amusing is that prog-haters actually take the music far more seriously than we prog fans typically do. They clearly perceive prog as such a major threat that it must be unrelentingly put down even 45 years after its brief heyday. One wonders what causes such tense insecurity over a musical style? I enjoy prog AND punk, and I enjoy their differences.
Is the problem in the name 'Progressive Rock' - leading the bands being compared to rock? If the name had been 'Progressive Music' could it have been left to go on its own way, away from rock. With the two never meeting.
Because deep down, they know the Prog is mighty!
People tend to attack stuff that they don't understand as a defence mechanism
l,m 68 and remember the Prog days well . Listening to" Court of the Crimson King "in the music room at school when l was 15 , listening to my mates older brothers albums and on leaving school getting into collecting L.P.'s . Also remember listening to Kid Jensons "Dimensions "on Radio Luxemburg and hearing Soft Machine and Van Der Graaf Generator for the first time both of which became my all time favourite bands (along with Caravan ) . Still collecting and still very much into Prog all these years on . Sounds of the '70's on Radio 1 was a must for prog on weekday evenings , Mike Hardings show from 6 to 7 Tuesday evenings was a must listen too also . On Sunday evenings "ln Concert " featured prog bands too both popular and little known . Great days the early '70's when Progressive Rock was new , exciting and at it,s best . Glad l managed to see most of these great bands live too .
This was a great little film. I really enjoyed it ,thanx.
Great, interesting - I had also never heard of 1-2-3?Clouds until this. Thank you for this video!
Wonderful. Thank you. I grew up with these guys. Thank the gods they carried on the tradition that Bach and his able successors began.
I can assure all viewers that Supper's Ready is not where prog 'went wrong', it's a masterpiece.
Some people seem to think a band called Touch was the first prog rock band but I think it was 1-2-3/Clouds.
Excellent!!!!
I loved prog when it was happening..thought it was blinding!
very very well.. to all...........................................................................................................
Nice upload, and I sure learned something I didn't know before; I never heard of 1-2-3 or Clouds until I watched this. A little editing of the video would have done though.
1-2-3 and Couds? Why havent i heard of this guys before?
I recall reading about Clouds in Rolling Stone magazine in the early 70s and was too young/foolish to grab their album back then.
Surprised there was no mention of Procol Harum. Are they classified more Art Rock than Prog?
Yeah but them and Arthur Brown got their due in Prog Britannia
Clouds sadly broke up in the early 70's without having achieved any mainstream success,like a lot of artists.of course Family aren't mentiones as well as a multitude of other bands who brougfht music forward in the 60's and 70's
We Americans went a different route. Fusion, funk. The fact that Stevie Wonder used the synthesizer as a bass was amazing in 1971, 1972
We tried Prog... but Americans sucked at it.
Loving the VDGG on this.
Hilarious story by Rick about the 16 year old kid But he's right it's always gonna be new to those that weren't around when the music became the main focus & those that were good enough to not just get it but to play it. Case in point ,I've been playing guitar since the late 60s & even today when i hear Steve Howe as he plays today & the mind warp style he played in YES & Close To The Edge still floors me & i hear it as it was & felt in 71. We love the Punks only cause they made us laugh at just how terrible their musicianship or total lack of it was so of course they hated the music , hell nothing on Earth could have given them the capacity to as they say Get IT !!! To them they could barley tune their own instruments let alone play them. It was the later excess that took Progressive music out not so much the music even if it was music for musicians & folks with open minds.
The vast majority of progressive rock fans tend to be musicians, mainly because I think it is far more interesting than three chord three minute pop songs. I think Yes had already stolen the mantle of prog-rock's first supergroup when Rick Wakemen joined.
Prog fans tend to be musicians OR people who wish they were musicians. And they tend to be slightly alienated suburban middle-class white males, for whatever reason.
As usual Rick Wakemen's comments are hilarious. I don't understand why he didn't become a comedian and join Monty Python.
So true! He's one of the funniest musicians I am aware of.
Read Steve Howe's book for an entirely different viewpoint on "the comedian".
His synthesizer manual bit took me out
Rick Wakeman's infamous or famous stand-up routine at induction of YES into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame :th-cam.com/video/oYnOZHxtGG4/w-d-xo.html and his justification:
soundcloud.com/siriusxmentertainment/rick-wakeman-reveals-reasoning-behind-his-infamous-rock-hall-acceptance-speech
What a stupid remark!!!
This is a great!
Bram stoker heavy rock spectacular is vintage prog
Caravan in the land of Grey and pink
Gong
I have scrapbook and watercolor days from the clouds
One track from Clouds that reeks of prog for me is "Waiter". It's got all the elements right there. A little rough compared to the extreme virtuosity playing that defined the genre five years later. Great musicians nevertheless.
Nice to see the understated majesty of Bob Stanley on this too ... you must check out his (and Pete Wiggs) compilations, if you have not already! Oh, and while I'm here, check out "Crack The Sky" ... the best prog band that you've never heard of!
Love and Light folks.
Good post, Marc; "Waiter" IS the nearest thing on record to 1-2-3; the main reason it's a little uneven on the recorded version is that it was the very early days of Chrysalis, and they couldn't afford to keep the 'live' orchestra there for longer than two takes. David (Dee) Palmer (who later became a member of Jethro Tull) was conducting the orchestra, and because of the complex nature of the song, he asked Terry (Ellis) to get the band to stand down for this track, thinking it best the orchestra used their own organist, drummer, and bass player - not because he thought the musicians weren't good enough, it was cost and continuity he was thinking of - but of course, the band utterly refused and played the two takes 'live' with the orchestra just the same.
This is the lost chapter of Prog Britannia
Every time I hear "Woah, this is out there!" and "What in the world are they doing?" and "Well we just wanted to do something different" and every time I hear Rick Wakeman say anything at all, I feel like I'm right where I belong. Oh, and look: Here's a whole documentary about it.
Ok, now don't bother me for a while. I'm watching a great documentary, and it takes as long as it takes.
"It's like musical masturbation. It's just completely self-indulgent. I mean, no one else wants to listen to it".
Damn I'm sick of that tired, sour grapes trope. So, then, what was *done* with the multiple millions of albums that they sold and have *continued* to sell decades later? What was everyone *doing* with all that vinyl that made it worth buying?
"Dude! I got the new release! What? Well, no, I'm not gonna *listen* to it. It's just completely self-indulgent"
As a kid, I thought long and hard about how I was going to spend the little I had.
Yeah. I must be the only one who "wants to listen to it."
I don't know why they always wheel out the likes of Nightingale and Hewitt for this type of programme when you know exactly what they're going to say.
Well I for one do think Mars Volta, Radiohead and also Tool are Progressive rock and Florence and the Machine too.
Is that Noddy Holder narrating? 👍🏼
Yes, it is indeed
The criticism sucks. They just ran out of fresh ideas and couldn't out do themselves doing similar things. The fault was in not pushing beyond what they had done before. Commercial considerations was what killed it. The capitalist need to make more money than before. The record companies said they needed sell platinum, gold was not enough anymore. The best scenario in the perfect world would have to do MORE experimentation rather than less but that's not financial feasible, sadly. Nobody asked Mozart to dumb his music down.
King Crimson and Peter Hammill never sold out. Neither did they become rich, but by handling their careers with intelligence and creativity, they made enough money to at least survive comfortably. And that is enough for anybody.
i live about 4 miles from billy
Noddy is cool.
Some interesting new info, plus some distorted opinions ...even from those who were there at the time.
I was aware of Clouds ´69, ´70 and ´71 albums but from what i´d heard of them they failed to impress anywhere near as much as The Nice or Van Der Graff Generator etc..
Mark Woollon, There’s a house with no room...
They were a million times better than The Nice..
Are there more episodes from this Sky Arts series out there? Who were the other bands featured?
There are 19 episodes of "Trailblazers..." covering most genres.
I pity Paolo Hewitt, he will never know the quiet power of Moonmadness, or the wry joy of 'In the Land of Grey and Pink'.
No BJH ?
That would be an example of a band that would be seen as in the 2nd or 3rd division, there were lots of them to be honest. They even did a track "Poor Man's Moody Blues" which must have come from some critic.
True. But they sold a lot in Germany and Austria.
Nothing on Gentle Giant, i consider them and Genesis the greatest prog rock bands ever.
Bit of a misnomer I think that tag Progrock. Has nothing to do with rock.
Who the fk is doing the narration? Sounds like they just grabbed some random Brummy off the street.
Noddy Holder from Slade.
ummm maybe prog was on its way out... but any music critic that thinks the sex pistols are musical art... imo... its equal to the artist that put a crucifix in jar of urine and called it art...
Lost in time: "Progressive rock" was the name given to post-psychedelic, post-acid rock. Even Led Zeppelin was progressive rock. The term "Prog rock" arrived soon thereafter, a journalistic designation and partly tongue in cheek, to categorize what we now consider prog. The latter is a sub-category of the former. To use the terms interchangeably is sloppy history.
Paolo Hewitt talks bollocks (again); there are plenty of prog love songs, if you care to look
Even ELP had one: C'est La Vie.
I had a friend who knew Paolo Hewitt at school and would go on about Paolo's role as an early punk scene critic... what gets me is my friend kept mentioning his association as though it reflected well on him rather than badly.
Dreadful narrator, avoid. Shout and grating.