Cast your mind back over 30 years. At the time, progressive rock was a couple of decades past its heyday. After a brief revival in the 1980s, spurred on by bands such as Genesis and Yes releasing overtly commercial material, by the early 1990s prog was once again relegated to being a minority interest at best, or the object of scorn and downright opprobrium at worst. While a handful of bands worldwide sought to keep the progressive flame alive, the prog scene in the United States was decidedly moribund.
Against this unpromising backdrop, brothers Neal and Alan Morse quietly founded Spock’s Beard in their native Los Angeles in 1992. Their expectations of success for their band were not high. In fact, had they been higher, the brothers might have selected a name for their band less flippantly. In any event, the band’s 1995 debut album The Light was released without fanfare, initially on a small American dedicated prog label.
