Vultraz's List of Exciting Music Moments

"Wait, what do you mean, there was music in the 70s other than disco?" --An actual person

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part I: 4:49 to 6:01

There's a reason Robert Fripp once likened Bruford and Wetton to a "flying brick wall".

King Crimson - Easy Money (live 1973): The whole thing.

Ditto.

Brand X - Nuclear Burn: 5:18 onwards.

People like to make jokes about Phil Collin's drumming skills just because he became a crap-candy pop singer in the 80s playing for a band that was titled "Genesis". They have obviously never heard this, or the original Genesis of the 70s.

King Crimson - Deception of the Thrush: 2:26 to 4:37

All of King Crimson's experience and continual work demonstrates itself after forty years... Hard dissonance, slammin' electronic percussion, hell-raising guitar tones and earthquake bass. You don't need to be as young as twenty, thirty, or even forty to hit this hard, as Robert Fripp clearly demonstrates.

King Crimson - Indiscipline - Live: The whole thing, but especially the intro.

Tension and release. Tension and release. A drum fill is akin to throwing a ball in the air and anticipating its fall. Bruford said something close to that one time or another; I'm sure. He never said anything about syncopating triplets or playing them in 5/8 over 4/4 in swing, unfortunately.

Yes - Endless Dream 0:00 to 3:20. If you want to hear guitar vomit, listen to 5:18 through 6:37.

Anybody who says that Yes didn't make any good music after Steve Howe's departure has simply not looked enough into Yes's later catalogue. Rabin can hold his own as a guitarist, and unlike Howe, also as a vocalist. It took me a few years alone just to comprehend the (actually not very complicated) time signatures to the opening section (granted most of those years were spent procrastinating, but still it's a pretty long time to want to know something without ever figuring it out). If anybody wants to know, it's something like:

20/16 piano intro

When the main groove kicks in:
10/8 -> 5/4 x3 -> 13/16 -> 10/4 x2 -> 10/16 x2 -> 10/8 x2 -> 10/4 x2 -> 10/16 x2 -> 10/8 x2 -> 10/8 x4 -> 5/4 -> 11/8 -> 9/8 -> 5/4 -> 10/16 x2 -> 10/8 x2
So basically, if you can count in 5/16 and count two bars of 13/16 you're pretty much set. Yeah. (Here's a hint: It's easier to subdivide anything in 5 into 3's and 2's.)

Now, even though there's a lot of cheesy world-power-rock in the middle of these sections, you cannot deny the badassery of each of them separately. I could even compare the guitar-vomit section beginning around the 5 minute mark, when the bass and drum kick in later on, to early drumstep.

Yes - Mind Drive 1:58 to 5:15 and interspersed onwards.

That 7/8 riff was cooked up with the help of J. Page, by the way. Yes, the J. Page of LZ. It's one of my favorite buildups in rock, behind the entry following this one, of course:

King Crimson - Starless: 4:26 to ending.

Listening to the entire buildup is mandatory. See, when bands are given over 5 minutes to work with when they're doing a song and they can exercise some musical maturity, you turn out with one of the most badass yet spiritual moments in proto-metal history.

Genesis - Fly on a Windshield: 1:08 to 2:44.

You see, before Genesis was an 80's pop band, they used to make impactful prog rock. Not that very many people know about this.
Oh, and by the way, this is a perfect demonstration of how to effectively use a minor-major-7 chord to create tension. Apologies to Peter Gabriel for what I'm about to say next—I don't really get the impression here that I'm like a Fly being smashed on a Windshield. More of a human being hurled into the no-man's-land of an intergalactic battle between beings whose power and technology are beyond my comprehension, to whom we are little more than flies—not even worth moral consideration.

Genesis - Firth of Fifth:: 5:45 to ending.

A song about the "demoralization" (as Yuri Bezmenov used the term) of the English people (or the people of any free country), with a fittingly tragic melody first occurring around the 6:52 mark. Just listen to that fucking bass pedal and the guitar chorus.

Genesis - Dancing with the Moonlit Knight: 1:55 to 4:58.

The nice part about this piece is that I get three intense musical moments in a little snippet for the price of one video slot. When Collins starts to roll and Gabriel starts to yell into that anthemic "DANCE RIGHT ON! THROUGH! THE NIGHT!"—once you know that part, you'll sing along to it every time. And then we have one of the most iconic sections of guitar tapping in rock history by Steve Hackett, basically the founder of modern tapping—basically proto-metal but slightly less heavy than King Crimson, but no less intense.

King Crimson - FraKctured: 5:10 to 7:02.

Listen to those ostinatos! Robert Fripp has some of the best picking technique I've ever seen in my entire life.

Genesis - The Musical Box: 3:38 to ending.

More English folk rock goodness from Genesis! Honestly, one of the parts I find most intense about this section is when Collins starts playing the hi-hat in the middle while Gabriel recites "Old King Cole".

The New Tony Williams Lifetime - Red Alert: The whole thing

Tony Williams drums on this. What more do you need than those kick-snare flams? Octaves and hard dissonance? An Allan Holdsworth solo?

Genesis - Watcher of the Skies: 1:41 to 2:39; 5:52 to ending.

When people talk about the Mellotron, people usually think about The Court of the Crimson King or And You And I, but I don't hear this name being tossed around nearly as much. Which is a shame, because I absolutely love the intro (even though that's not the focus here). The focus for this list, however, will be the 6/8 rhythmic riff that's repeated through the whole song, especially when Hackett kicks in with the distortion on guitar.

Yes - Sound Chaser: The whole thing. Highlight moment is 3:01.

I've heard a lot of complaints from people about this song before. The drumming is too loud and too fast. Everything in the beginning sounds dissonant even though it can basically be contained within multiple blues scales. Regardless, Steve Howe's solo at 3:00 is one of my favorite of all time, and is why I shall hold him in ever-higher regard than Trevor Rabin.

Yes - Awaken: 1:31 to 6:33. Highlight moment is 3:29.

This song is actually a spiritual experience. Written and played by hippies. It has one of my favorite riffs in the world—the way Steve Howe plays those octaves on that 12-string Telecaster, I could listen to that riff over and over again and it wouldn't piss me off, ever. Oh, and it even has Rick Wakeman playing a MOTHERFUCKING PIPE ORGAN over it. The organ was literally phoned into the recording over the Switzerland (I think) phone system (because you can't drag a real church organ to a recording studio).

Yes - Close to the Edge: 12:13 to ending.

Same goes for this one. It also has a pipe organ in it—let me just reiterate. A PIPE ORGAN! You don't understand what true awe is until you've heard a real pipe organ, let me tell you. And no better way to follow it up than for Wakeman to break into that phrygian Hammond (I think) solo in B.

Jethro Tull - Locomotive Breath: Anytime Ian Anderson sings "Ol' Charlie stole the handle..."

Brakes screeching, howling, and hissing on the precarious rails of life—all you can do is scream like those guitars and keep that runaway train on the tracks.

Led Zeppelin - In My Time of Dying: 3:42 onwards.

Before I was a fan of prog, I was a fan of Billy Joel. Then I discovered Led Zeppelin. I can tell you with confidence that nobody will ever again be able to beat sounds out of a drum kit like John Bonham did. That triplet fill on the toms in the ending jam was one of the most liberating, exciting things I'd ever heard in my life.

ELP - Knife Edge: 2:31 to ending

This is the other best organ solo in early prog history. Bonus points for quoting Bach. Oh, and when Carl Palmer kicks in with that snare, you know it's time to rock.

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic Part I: 6:01 to 8:55

This section is so different it deserves to have its parent piece shown twice. Want to know what two drummers sounds like? Keep listening after 6:01 and make sure you listen to the dual-drumming section at 7:25. That trashy china-cymbal is one of the best sounds I've ever heard in my life.

Yes - Gates of Delirium: 6:20. Highlight moments are 10:21 and 12:37 (Listen to the whole thing though.)

I will admit that I have fapped to this song before. 12:37 is my point of no return; the vinegar stroke is the synth solo starting at 12:49. Have you ever listened to sci-fi fantasy hippie-rock before? You probably haven't, but you should.