So last night I decided that maybe I would take a look at Andrew’s CD collection and explore the world of progressive rock. Now I knew that in the past I’ve listened to some of the bands in his collection and liked groups like The Flower Kings, Dream Theater and Evergray. First I did Google “Best progressive rock bands”. The results turned up a site with the 100 Greatest Progressive Rock Artists , So looking at the list and comparing the list to bands in my music collection. King Crimson (2), Emerson, Lake and Palmer (4), Jethro Tull (7), Traffic (11), Moody Blues (15) and The Soft Machine (24) are all in my collection so I guess I like ProgRock!
So I listened this morning to both The Flower Kings The Road Back Home Discs 1 and 2 and Dream Theater’s 
Black Clouds and Silver Linings. Now I already knew I liked Dream Theater having taken Nick and Andrew to see them many years ago! When I came out of that concert I thought it was one of the best concerts I had ever seen. The reasons that I liked the concert and Dream Theater in general is that their music is interesting both lyrically and musically. John Petrucci is a wizard on guitar and Mike Portnoy (who just left the band) is equally adept on the drums. Add Jordan Ruckess on keyboards and James Labrie’s great vocals and you have a great band that been making great albums for the last 25 plus years! I really didn’t listen to their album much today but I will over the next couple of weeks as I continue to explore!
The second band The Flower Kings, I did listen to a little more than Dream Theater. Disc 2 of The Flower Kings album The Road Back Home became the soundtrack for my five mile run this afternoon. Now that’s the good thing about ProgRock I think I started on about track four and 49 minutes later I was just finishing the album at track thirteen. The Flower Kings are listed as the 32 best progressive rock band. They are a Swedish band led by their guitarist Roine Stolt. From their website :
‘……. the essence of the textural and emotional offering that is now the trademark of The Flower Kings and shows that this is a band that probably has as much in common with Mozart, Debussy, Andrew Lloyd Webber or Miles Davis as with Pink Floyd, Beatles, Bowie or Yes. There is always an element of soulfulness and drama and the richness of moods and inventiveness has to be heard to be believed. Flower Kings signed to German label in 1999.
The rest of The Flower Kings include:
Marcus Liliequist: Drumkit
Jonas Reingold: Basses
Tomas Bodin: Grand Piano & Electric Keyboards
Hasse Fröberg: Vocals & guitars
Hasse Bruniusson: Acoustic & Electric percussion
Like Dream Theater all these guys can play. I’ve listened to a solo album by Tomas Bodin and really enjoyed it. Listening today the band reminded me at times of The Moody Blues! While I did listen to quite a bit of The Flower Kings it’s still not enough to say more than I liked what I heard and I will continue to listen and check out more of thier work!
Here are The Flower Kings with “Church of Your Heart” A song that I liked from the album!
