MEJORES DE 2009 EN LA DPRP(Holanda):

Biggest Happening

As a balance to 'Biggest Disappointment' we asked participants what they thought was the best thing to happen to prog in 2009.

#	Happening	Votes	Percentage
1	Transatlantic Reunion & New Album	228	27.77%
2	Night of The Prog IV Festival, Loreley, Germany	31	3.78%
3	Porcupine Tree - The Incident Album & Success	17	2.07%
4	Progressive Nation Tour	14	1.71%
5	Classic Rock Presents Prog Magazine	13	1.58%

One event swept the board as biggest happening of 2009, the reformation and new album by Transatlantic, something that gathered more than a quarter of the votes cast. One wonders how much bigger that percentage had been if so many people hadn’t considered the album to be a disappointment? Other events of the year pale into insignificance really compared with the Transatlantic vote, although somewhat inevitably Porcupine Tree claim #3 spot whilst a festival and a tour take up the second and fourth spots. After years of being ignored by the media, the arrival of a dedicated progressive magazine – Classic Rock Presents Prog – was the fifth biggest happening of the year, an impressive result considering it’s high price in the UK and even higher price in other European countries. Nice to also see Esoteric Records polling a number of votes to reach #20, proving that good quality re-issues of long-lost albums will find favour with fans.

In total 103 entries were submitted for the Biggest Happening of 2009.

Best Individual Performances

In this section we asked people for what they thought was the best musical performance on a studio album. There are too many results to evaluate into detail here, so therefore we have only printed the top result for each of the five section in this page, and you can view the rest of the results in the database tables using the links below.

Title	Musician	Band	Album	Votes	Percentage
Best Guitarist	John Petrucci	Dream Theater	Black Clouds & Silver Linings	80	9.74%
Best Keyboardist	Mark Westworth	IQ	Frequency	55	6.80%
Best Vocalist	Peter Nicholls	IQ	Frequency	54	6.58%
Best Drummer	Gavin Harrison	Porcupine Tree	The Incident	96	11.69%
Best Bassist	Pete Trewavas	Transatlantic	The Whirlwind	125	15.23%

IQ round off a good year with two top performances for Peter Nicholls (vocals) and Mark Westworth (keyboards) on the album Frequency. Indeed, all of the musicians on the IQ album finished in the top four of their category. After being knocked off the top spot last year, John Petrucci reclaims the title for best guitar performance and, likewise, Gavin Harrison reinstates himself with best drumming performance. Finally, Pete Trewavas can console himself over Marillion’s relatively poor showing in this year’s poll by celebrating his celebrated bass playing with Transatlantic.

Best Albums

In total 683 different albums were voted for. Below you will find the Top 25.

We have provided links to the DPRP reviews of these albums.

Nr	Band	Album	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
01	Porcupine Tree	The Incident	421	51.28%	2983
02	Transatlantic	The Whirlwind	430	52.38%	2914
03	Iq	Frequency	380	46.29%	2698
04	Riverside	Anno Domini High Definition	299	36.42%	1899
05	Gazpacho	Tick Tock	240	28.23%	1815
06	Dream Theater	Black Clouds & Silver Linings	253	30.82%	1697
07	Big Big Train	The Underfall Yard	144	17.54%	1023
08	Phideaux	Number Seven	129	15.71%	798
09	The Tangent	Down & Out In Paris & London	122	14.86%	693
10	Muse	The Resistance	117	14.25%	681
11	Guilt Machine	On This Perfect Day	122	14.86%	658
12	Agents Of Mercy	The Fading Ghosts Of Twilight	100	12.18%	617
13	Sylvan	Force Of Gravity	97	11.81%	490
14	Marillion	Less = More	95	11.57%	458
15	Shadow Gallery	Digital Ghosts	90	10.96%	449
16	Beardfish	Destined Solitaire	86	10.48%	436
17	Steve Hackett	Out Of The Tunnel's Mouth	73	8.89%	426
18	Knight Area	Realm Of Shadows	71	8,65%	400
19	Eggs & Dogs	You Are	51	6.21%	366
20	Redemption	Snowfall On Judgement Day	61	7.43%	364
21	Airbag	Identity	53	6.46%	330
22	Mastodon	Crack The Skye	48	5.85%	315
23	Satellite	Nostalgia	63	7.67%	300
24	Steven Wilson	Insurgentes	52	6.33%	295
25	Izz	The Darkened Room	50	6.09%	277

Some quick explanations about the calculations. 'Votes' are the number of people who voted for a specific album, regardless if it was their number 1 or number 10. 'Percentage' is the percentage of all participants that voted for an album. The 'Weighted Points' are calculated based on the ranking of the (max) 10 albums the participants voted for; their number 1 got 10 points, number 2 got 9 points, etc. 'Weighted Points' is the sum of these points.

Following on from top spots in the 2005 and 2007 polls, Porcupine Tree claim their third Best Album of the Year with The Incident. However, it was a close run thing with Transatlantic’s ‘comeback’ album The Whirlwind being pipped at the post despite receiving more votes, albeit at a slightly lower overall rating. Interestingly, neither of their albums earned a coveted 10/10 rating and in both cases one of our round table reviewers deemed the album unworthy of a DPRP recommended tag.

Once again, less well established bands fared well with Gazpacho, Big Big Train and Phideaux all making the top ten. Surprisingly, Dream Theater, who normally reap in the plaudits, stalled at number 6 in our poll and Marillion failed to make the top ten, although the fact that Less = More is a collection of acoustically re-recorded old songs probably had an influence on the voting.

The almost 700 different albums that were voted for displays the wide range of musical interests displayed by our readership and contained a large number of bands that even the most ardent of prog fans would most likely be unfamiliar with. Good news for the genre if even only a small number of these groups manage to break through to a wider audience. We were, however, unsure as to if the single votes polled for Lily Allen and Robbie Williams were representative of pollsters with very wide musical tastes or slightly strange senses of humour!

Click HERE for the entire list of results.

Best DVDs

Nr	Band	DVD	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
01	Pendragon	Concerto Maximo	152	18.51%	370
02	Kansas	There's Know Place Like Home	67	8.16%	142
03	Jethro Tull	Live At Madison Square Garden 1978	24	2.92%	58
04	Shadowland	Edge Of Night	24	2.92%	50
05	Overhead	Live After All	20	2.44%	46
06	Marillion	This Strange Convention	17	2.07%	41
07	Oceansize	Feed To Feed	16	1.95%	38
08	No-man	Mixtaped	9	1.10%	23
09	Iron Maiden	Flight 666	11	1.34%	22
10	Lazuli	Six Frenchmen In Amsterdam ~ Live At Paradiso	12	1.46%	20

The clear winner in the Best DVD category was Pendragon’s Concerto Maximo, perhaps understandable given that Pure was voted as the best album of 2008. With less than two-fifths of the number of weighted votes of Pendragon, Kansas were probably a surprising second place for many people, although it shows that good musicianship and great songwriting stand the test of time. And back in time some 31 years for the third placed DVD, some classic Jethro Tull recorded at Madison Square Gardens. Interestingly only nine DVDs received 10 or more votes, a comment on the popularity of DVDs in general or people sticking to the bands they like best?

See the full results HERE.

Best Tracks

Before we go to the list of best individual tracks, let's see which 5 bands got the most votes, regardless of which track.

#	Band	Votes	Percentage
01	Porcupine Tree	217	23.43%
02	Iq	182	22.17%
03	Dream Theater	147	17.90%
04	Transatlantic	124	15.10%
05	Gazpacho	100	12.18%

Now let's look at which of the 536 individual tracks proved most popular.

#	Band	Track	Votes	Percentage	Weighted Points
01	Porcupine Tree	Time Flies	131	15.96%	288
02	Dream Theater	The Count Of Tuscany	77	9.38%	177
03	Iq	Frequency	71	8.65%	151
04	Transatlantic	Overture / Whirlwind	45	5.48%	100
05	Big Big Train	The Underfall Yard	42	5.12%	100
06	Gazpacho	Tick Tock	45	5.48%	93
07	Gazpacho	The Walk	36	4.38%	91
08	Iq	The Province	40	4.87%	87
09	Iq	Ryker Skies	26	3.17%	61
10	Porcupine Tree	I Drive The Hearse	26	3.17%	59

With the editorial decision that the Porcupine Tree and Transatlantic albums were not eligible for inclusion as a single track, there were a lot of split votes for individual tracks on each of these albums. Despite this, Porcupine Tree still won through with Time Flies being deemed the most popular song of the album and of the year! Despite a relatively poor show in the overall album category, Dream Theater claimed second place with The Count Of Tuscany. All seven tracks from the IQ album were voted for in this category, with three making the top 10. An indication of the consistent nature of one of the band’s finest efforts.

See the full Track results HERE.

Best Artwork

#	Artist	Band	Album	Votes	Percentage
01	Per Nordin	Transatlantic	The Whirlwind	65	7.92%
02	Hugh Syme	Dream Theater	Black Clouds & Silver Linings	45	5.48%
03	Lasse Hoile	Porcupine Tree	The Incident	38	4.63%
04	Tony Lythgoe	Iq	Frequency	26	3.17%
05	Antonio Seijas	Gazpacho	Tick Tock	22	2.68%

With the return of Transatlantic also came the return of Per Nordin's blimp, which sees Nordin appear at the top of the Artwork poll for the third time.
Seems that black is the new, er, black with the largely monochromatic covers by Hugh Syme (Dream Theater) and Lasse Hoile (Porcupine Tree) achieving second and third place, respectively. Good to see Gazpacho's unconventional white and gold cover provide some balance to that.

In total 126 different albums got voted for in the 'Best Artwork' category.

Click HERE to view the full Artwork results.

Best Concerts

The participants of the poll voted for 342 different concerts in 2009. To get a clear picture of which bands did best on the stage last year, we'll first have a look at the ones that got the most votes, regardless of which concert.

2009	2008	Band	Votes for Best Concert	Percentage
1	1	Porcupine Tree	81	9.87%
2	5	Dream Theater	31	3.78%
2	3	Marillion	31	3.78%
4	2	Pendragon	25	3.05%
5	11	Gazpacho	24	2.92%

Now let's have a look at which of these 342 gigs got the most votes for Best Concert 2009.