Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not very useful, not very informative, July 29, 2001
By A Customer
I have to agree with the negative reviewer who said words to the effect of, 'I hate to give a negative review to a book about prog but I have to.' Having read considerable progressive rock internet information and reviews for the last 6 months, and almost exhausted that source (except for the hard-to-read Gibraltar Encyclopedia) I picked up the book looking for a little more in-depth info on history and bands, but there was little of either. Before buying this book you should really be aware that the history is very brief, simplistic, and repetitive, and is really informative only to a complete novice in prog or even rock history. Some of the statements, such as that "Days of Future Passed" is the first progressive album, are quite silly. Because of the layout of the pages in this section, for some unfathomable reason only about two-thirds of each page contain text, the rest highlight names, thus reducing drastically the information content. The band reviews at the end are equally laughable since they consist of at most two or three sentences, most of which believe it or not are a sentence of the nature, "sounds like Genesis." In fact those three words are repeated probably four times per page in the last 50 pp of the book!! Without a downloadable mp3 site like audiogalaxy it would be absolutely hopeless to weed through the hundreds of entries about prog bands in the reviews section since the music is described so unimaginatively and without any kind of indication of the overall quality or status of a given band. God help the unfortunate individual who buys a CD based on Jerry Lucky's [...]reviews! Anyhow, there being so few books about prog, it's really disappointing to say this one is so awful, but it is. Don't buy!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More fun than useful - dubious assumptions abound, July 16, 2001
Jerry Lucky's approach to this complex subject is to give his opinion without backing it with facts, examples, or offering counterpoints. Some of his assertions are downright wrong and embarrasing, i.e. that contrived, pretentious, and self-indulgent are good things to be. Doesn't Lucky own a dictionary? Or does he choose it ignore it? A reader won't get any good information from this book. Compared to other writers on the subject, this fan's outporing is sophomoric, inessential, and unenlightening. I'm sorry to give a bad review to one of the few books on Prog, but this one is at the bottom of the heap. Read Stump, Macan, or even Martin for an intelligent assesment of the genre and its meanings.
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A waste of space-the Progressive Rock Files, June 16, 2001
This book was a complete joke. I was excited to see info on 1,400 bands when I ordered it and then I saw that they were spoken of in about 2 sentences each! I mean, c'mon! I know there are space limitations, but it's such a hatchet job. Years are wrong, some bands have no years listed for their albums (yeah, I know he states that prior to this section, but if you have no info-don't put the album or band in!). And, to list only 3 albums from a band as legendary as Uriah Heep is a disgrace! as for the rest of the book, what prog fan wouldn't know what's in it? Lucky's "history" of prog-rock is a joke (only a total novice would find it useful and they wouldn't be reading it anyway) and so is this book. What a waste of my money and time. Also, he mocks Asia which is just what a pretentious [person] would do. Hey ... they didn't want to do 20-minute epics anymore-why do you think they were one of the biggest bands in the world? Beacuse they wanted to write SONGS! And, of all Yes albums to put covers of he chooses "The Yes Album" and "Open Your Eyes"? Great choice,pal.
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