When I try to imagine our collective understanding of classic American (60’s-late70’s) prog, I assume our minds go pretty much straight to Frank Zappa. He’s the most widely known and basically ONLY easily singled out U.S. musician who veered into what’s now labelled “prog”. At the time though, maybe he was just considered an ambitious, artsy pop composer, with funny lyrics. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I imagine if he didn’t have songs about yellow snow, no one would give a shit about him. He’d be about as celebrated as the D.C. band the Muffins, which is to say, highly respected among music nerds and that’s it. <\/p>\n