The Grammy Awards were Feb 8th and of course it featured the usual absence of any Prog acts. In fact, historically there have been very few Prog winners or even nominations. Many of the all time great rock albums that might qualify as Prog (Dark Side of the Moon, Moving Pictures, Close to the Edge and a hundred others) did not even get nominations. Rush, Queen, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, Queensryche, ELP, Opeth all with no Grammys. So we decided to see if we could find if there were any winners. Here are the ones we found:
1987 – Genesis – Land of Confusion (Best music video)
Genesis won their only Grammy for this great video for “Land of Confusion”. This was not during their Prog era but it still is Genesis and it was a good video. None of their landmark albums won any Grammys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pkVLqSaahk
1984 – Yes – Cinema (Best rock instrumental performance)
Yes won their only Grammy award for the instrumental track from their mega-platinum 90125 album. The band were ignored for their early masterpieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU3qNi8UaQY
1994 – Pink Floyd – Marooned (Best rock instrumental performance)
Pink Floyd won their lone Grammy for this great instrumental track from ‘The Division Bell’. It’s hard to believe but ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ didn’t even get a nomination.
1988 – Jethro Tull – Crest of a Knave (Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance)
Probably one of the most controversial awards in the history of the Grammys, Jethro Tull won in the Hard Rock/Metal category for their album ‘Crest of a Knave’ over favorites Metallica who were riding the success of “One”.
2001- Tool – Schism (Best Metal Performance)
Not necessarily considered a Prog act, Tool do share a similar fan base as Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater and others. The band actually has 2 Grammy awards. They also won in 1997 for “Aenema”.
About Tool not considered a prog act… I actually think it’s one of the few truly progressive modern acts and it’s even more true among the metal scene. They are in a league of their own for sure but they symbolize perfectly for me the “progressive and creative spirit” 🙂
Yeah I agree just they are not Prog in the traditional sense like Yes or Genesis. But they are on the list 😉
I knew the Grammys were full of crap when the wife (I don’t even remember her name and I don’t care) of Herb Alpert won the thing for “Best Latin” album of the year, having nominees with long and successful careers in Latin music as nominees.