And now for all you British Progressive Rock Fans Echoes, Suppers Ready
Karn Evil 9 or Close To The Edge and once again, why?
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The best thing EL&P ever did. Tremendous, memorable music that was highly varied in style, Pete Sinfield's elliptical and inscrutable lyrics and the sheer force of band at the top of its game. The line "Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends" still gives me a thrill whenever I hear it. And let's face it, Brain Salad also had the advantages of Emerson's gigantic and majestic arrangement of "Jerusalem" and that stunning/scary H.R. Giger album cover (though considering those is cheating 
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"Supper's Ready" never had the sheer force that KE9 had. Now The Lamb is another issue entirely, though my all around favorite Genesis album is Selling England By The Pound. CTTE is a close second to KE9 as a stand-alone piece of music. "Echoes" really stands by itself and is much more pastel in mood. It is by far the druggiest of the four and was the backdrop for much toking back in the 1970s. In the right state of mental adjustment, it has no equal. Almost forty years lated, Echoes and KE9 are definitely the ones I listen to the most often. I think I burned out on CTTE when I was in my late teens. I learned the entire thing on bass - which required countless dozens of listenings - and memorized the whole thing in the course of a month or two.
Saw the Brain Salad Surgery tour - the one with the quadraphonic sound system - at the old Met Center (now the site of the Mall of America) back in 1974. I don't think I came back down to earth for a couple of weeks.
And Renaissance's "Ashes Are Burning" is pretty damned extraordinary, too, though it's a comparatively paltry 13 minutes. The live version is 24, but no Andy Powell guitar solo. 
Or Gentle Giant's concept album, 'Three Friends'?
Anyway, there are too many great prog epics to just have one favorite. At least for me. 
