Album of the Day

Flower Power, by The Flower Kings (1999): For a genre that thrives on spiraling instrumental workouts, 20-minute LP side-long suites, and albums with just one song on them, you'd think there's never be a "too much of a good thing" with progressive rock. Well, for exhibit A against that proposition, I present Flower Power, nearly 2 full CDs of music, out of which one CD could be constructed. In fact, back before I changed computers at work I had an edited 1-disc version of this album on there, but it's lots to the mists of time. Basically, about half of "Garden of Dreams," the hour-long epic on disc 1 (and there are 3 other tunes on that disc!), made the cut, as did about half of the tracks on disc 2. That stuff was a really good selection of modern symphonic prog. The rest, however, ranged from simply uninspired to head scratchingly bad. When your prayer that "Magic Pie" is some sort of poorly conceived sexual reference is not answered, you know it should have ended up on the editing room floor.