I like this list much better...know and like all but 2.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/11-best-prog-rock-tracks-to-test-your-hi-fi-system/ar-BB1hYFxc?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=6cd5be4c9b224a3890157f6a71b3a76c&ei=75
I'd submit that "Dust in the Wind" is not really prog, and "Red Rain" is a severe stretch.
Just because an artist is or has done prog doesn't make any particular song they did progressive. That would be a Genetic Fallacy.
"Dust" may have an incidentally Baroque structure, but so does most folk music, and the song owes more to the Beatles - specifically "Yesterday" - than to any classical or romance composers. It's beautiful, but it's pop. It's exceedingly good and clever pop, on the whole, but it's pop. Nothing about it challenges the ear, the mind, or one's expectations, which is the defining characteristic of prog.
I believe you. But I had to read this twice because I wasn't sure I understood you.
Heh. Sorry.
"Dust in the Wind" began life as an acoustic guitar fingerpicking exercise that Kerry Livgren devised for himself. It was a pattern common in folk music. Theoretically, which is to say, "according to music theory," it has a chord structure akin to music by J.S. Bach. Bach was the first prominent composer of the "classical" period and represents the major transition point from the Baroque period to the Classical period, in the same way Mozart and Beethoven ushered in the Romantic period.
But Baroque music persisted in "folk" songs for centuries, including the "folk revival" of the late 50s and early 60s in the US and Great Britain. That folk revival produced such pop and rock luminaries as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Neil Young, David Crosby, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Grace Slick, John Phillips, Joni Mitchell, and others in North America, and birthed the careers of the Beatles, Donovan Leitch, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck in England (in the form of Skiffle).
Paul McCartney's classic songs "Yesterday" and "Michelle" both represent a folk influence, and are, incidentally, Baroque structures. So was that fingerpicking drill that Kerry Livgren created for himself, and at his wife's urging wrote lyrics for.
Prog music frequently makes use of Baroque, Classical, and Romance music theory. And Kansas was definitely a Prog band. But Prog music deliberately avoids or restructures pop music forms to challenge the listener. It was the Beatles who created the first progressive rock music, though they never defined themselves by it.
In my opinion, "Dust in the Wind" comes to its Baroque form by accident, and in any case doesn't remotely make the listener become versed in any particular music theory to understand it. It's just a beautiful song inspired by folk music. It's not "Prog."