 Trade In this Item for up to £2.55
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Mountains Come Out of the Sky: The Complete Illustrated History of Prog Rock for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £2.55, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
...a riveting read, with the King Crimson chapters proving particularly insightful. --Record Collector, January 2011
Product Description
From its artful beginnings (Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, the Mothers of Invention, and those progressive forebearers, the Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles), through the towering guitar solos, monumental synthesizer banks, and mind-boggling special effects of the Golden Age of Prog (Rush, Pink Floyd, Yes, ELP, Genesis, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, UK), through the radio-friendly pop era (Asia, the Phil Collins-led Genesis, and a reformed Yes), and right up to the present state of the art (Marillion, Spock's Beard, and Mars Volta), this is a wickedly incisive tour of rock music at its most spectacular. This is indeed the book prog rock fans have been waiting for, the only one of its kind, as fantastic as the subjects it covers.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
All in all a good effort to extract the essence of progressive rock, from the golden era och the 70's until today. Die hard fans of Yes, Genesis, ELP, Dream Theater etc will probaly not find anything they don't already know about their favorite bands, but perhaps they will make new acquaintances, since there are chapters also about more obscure parts of prog rock like the german kraut rock scene and the italian scene. The book is intelligently written in a biographical style and there's plenty of photographs to lighten up the layout. The title and the cover of the book is perhpas a bit misleading; the title is indeed a quote from a Yes song - Roundabout - but it really associates more to psychedelia than to progressive rock and the Roger Dean-like typeface underlines that assoiciation. Now, prog and psychedelia did indeed to a certain extent go hand in hand back in the days, the prog rock kind of built on tha map drawn by the late 60's freeform rock music for pot-smokers and trippers that said a song could be 20 minutes long instead of 3 and didnt have to follow the pop-radio formula of verse, chorus, bridge etc, it didn't even have to be vocal music. But personally I don't regard ambient psychedelia like Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun from Pink Floyd Umma Gumma as progressive rock, to me prog rock is more equivalent to more elaborate, symphonic rock and technically accomplished composing and playing, like the Karn Evil 9 Suite by ELP or Thick as a Brick by Jethro Tull. But this may not be the definition of others. In this book you don'thave to choose, you get it all, from far out kraut-rockers and Pink Floyd to technical show-offs like Rush and Dream Theater. I recommend it. It's not the ultimate encyclopedia of progressive rock, but a nice compilation to capture the essence of the genre.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The world did not need this book, ... but if you were taken close to the edge for some karnevil in the seventies and you felt you had a saucerful of secrets when your supper was ready, you want it!!! Like you wanted that Minimoog instead of your first own car back then. The book looks and feels good, colourful and informative (hey, you knew all the facts and stories already, did you!? But nice to see it wrapped this nice way again), and when you flip and read through it, it confirms what you knew anyway all those past 40 years: that life holds more than a 3:15 pop song, but can be a full-fledged 360-degree-quadrophonic-70mm-technicolour-supermarionation-120track-sensurround-flight over topographic oceans, yep! Satisfying, good fun for the money, ... and were and how often do you really get this these days ??? ;-)
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a large format full colour size guide to prog rock past and present. Most of the bands featured in the book the diehard prog afficionado will know and love but there are sections on Kraut Rock, The Canterbury Scene, Italian Prog and Prog folk.
The book is well written and has a wealth of information on all bands included. Each bands history and recorded output is discussed and reviewed. As well as an interesting piece on the roots and beginings of the genre.
There is a section on American bands Kansas and Styx which I personally consider to be AOR rather than prog. This being said both bands have produced some good music. The same applies to a section on Rush who I think have become a really good all round rock band (rather than a prog band).
Genesis, King Crimson and Pink Floyd each have two sections Gabriel & post Gabriel, Waters and post Waters and the 70s Crimson and the 80/90sCrimson. These I feel could have been discussed in a single section and space given to other bands.
There are a few errors in the naming of album covers which are shown at the foot of each page. In one section Porcupine Tree's albums are named but Pink Floyds album artwork is shown. In the second article on Genesis, albums are incorrectly named and Voyage of the Acolyte by Steve Hackett is named Invisible Touch (confusing to a newcomer to prog ? not arf).
These errors aside the book is well worth a read, the quality of the pictures is good, articles on IQ, Gentle Giant and The Alan Parsons Project are most welcome but why no Van der Graaf Generator ?
The book is well written and has a wealth of information on all bands included. Each bands history and recorded output is discussed and reviewed. As well as an interesting piece on the roots and beginings of the genre.
There is a section on American bands Kansas and Styx which I personally consider to be AOR rather than prog. This being said both bands have produced some good music. The same applies to a section on Rush who I think have become a really good all round rock band (rather than a prog band).
Genesis, King Crimson and Pink Floyd each have two sections Gabriel & post Gabriel, Waters and post Waters and the 70s Crimson and the 80/90sCrimson. These I feel could have been discussed in a single section and space given to other bands.
There are a few errors in the naming of album covers which are shown at the foot of each page. In one section Porcupine Tree's albums are named but Pink Floyds album artwork is shown. In the second article on Genesis, albums are incorrectly named and Voyage of the Acolyte by Steve Hackett is named Invisible Touch (confusing to a newcomer to prog ? not arf).
These errors aside the book is well worth a read, the quality of the pictures is good, articles on IQ, Gentle Giant and The Alan Parsons Project are most welcome but why no Van der Graaf Generator ?
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
It was no disgrace
Progressive rock has always divided opinion, so no wonder that this book seems to do the same. If you already know about Prog this book won't tell you very much that you don't... Read more
Published 3 months ago by on the corner
Save your money. Buy the music instead
My expectations were high before I set out to read Mountains Come Out of the Sky by Will Romano, just as they would before listening to any of the musicians written about therein. Read more
Published 7 months ago by jonm
Great title, great book.
As someone who was brought up on Prog Rock, this is a great book. The information here jogs the memories and leaves me reaching for some of those CD's that I have not touched for... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Pigmac
Journey to the Centre of My Bin
Taken in by the image of Rick Wakemen, the Roger Dean style title and the promise of an "Ultimate History" of prog rock I foolishly bought this book in Waterstone for more than the... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Greg Boyd
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Search Customer Discussions
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
