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In Defence of Prog

00:09 / 05.01.03

In columns on this very forum; in roughly every other edition of NME; and in countless other media sources, the word "prog" is used as if you wouldn't wipe your own arse with it.
I concede that a lot of progressive rock was overblown crap.I will also state my opinion that a lot of punk and other more contemporary movements since, also on the whole consist of overblown crap.This is just an opinion of mine,so take it or leave it.
Punk, I feel was a necessary reaction to the navel gazing, overcomplicated 10 minute guitar solos of certain "progressive" bands. Many were just really boring. The way this style of playing dominated the charts must have been quite off-putting to those who wanted to form bands and all that goes with that particular game.
Then punk came round, and the three chord song was back. Good. It was healthy. This kind of change, evolution if you like, was and is healthy.
However, and this is a big however, it would be a terrible and foolish mistake to dismiss your past, musical or otherwise. Some truly great bands came out of the progressive age, those that actually "progressed" at any rate, rather than becoming niched in middle earth.
Anyway, what I would like to say is that both movements were progressions in music. Most prog was shit, most punk was shit, most of pretty much every movement was, is, and will be shit. So, please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Brigade du jour

03:49 / 05.01.03

Um ... I've got a few early Genesis albums.

A

10:39 / 05.01.03

Okay, but I think we're going to need some examples here. We don't yet know exactly which prog-rockers you think are among the non-crappy minority. Enlighten us, come on. What is the baby among all that bathwater?

15:04 / 05.01.03

King Crimson sound like a bad English theatre musical about goblins 'n' shit, so it can't be them.

Rush? No.

Toto? I think not.

My friends have (some of them) started buying into this shit. It must stop now, before it's too late.

On the other hand, Tool could be described as 'prog-metal' and are, undeniably, the greatest 'metal' band ever to have existed.

Make of that what you will.

15:35 / 05.01.03

15:37 / 05.01.03

i always see the killing of prog and stadium rock with punk rock as similar to the slaying of baroque 'classical' music with the snappier, more layman friendly sonata form.

its not that the ideas were bad, per se, just that they had really run their useful course and used up all their novelty.

novelty is very important in music, i feel.

hocus pocus, by the rock legends focus, is a prog masterpiece. especially for their radio edit, in which they wittle a twelve minute epic down to a three and three quarter minute single.

they dont cut anything out, they just play it faster.

genius.

16:23 / 05.01.03

Fuck!

WYTIC - Goblin fukkin rulez!!!

Witch! Bonus points for soundtracking Argento films.

But is it prog-rock? My brain does not have a mnemonic link between the two - should it?

Likewise Can, or Faust, or Kraftwerk. Or Stereolab, or Tortoise.

16:44 / 05.01.03

My apologies for not giving any examples of any progressive bands. This was deliberate, for fear that the thread would just end up with people slagging off each others particular tastes. However I must growl at Falconer. (Yes, I am a terrible hypocrite)

"bad english theatre musical about goblins 'n' shit"!!!

I'm afraid they are a band I rate very highly, if only because they actually did progress, still are progressing, and so on. True, Court of the Crimson King is very trolls and goblins, but compare that to Red, or The Construktion(sic) of Light, and I must take issue with your judgement.

16:51 / 05.01.03

I was so into prog music some -- erm, 20 years ago, but now I never ever listen to it. However, some examples of things I guess still are somewhat listenable would be King Crimson, early Genesis, some Van der Graaf Generator, and maybe Emerson Lake & Palmer.

18:08 / 05.01.03

And definitely Marillion

18:31 / 05.01.03

The bands I referred to are definitely Progressive rock, just not teh poor excuses that emerged. Like Romantic Art, Britain had a tendancy to get very fixated with Fairies and Pixies.
Electronic forms took over once punk killed the guitar. Many Prog acts went into soundtracks.

20:32 / 05.01.03

There's nothing fucking wrong with a ten minute guitar solo as long as it's interesting. It's one thing when it's an integral part of the song. Remember, at one point in history, doing a giant solo with classical pretensions was new, bizarre, and pushed the limits of what a rock band could do. Like anything else, it got to be a convention within a certain sort of music, and then everybody had to start hating it. As has been said, it ran it's course and then it went away.

Of course, few in popular music today can manage a ten SECOND guitar solo, because musicianship is in a coma and it's pulse is getting weaker every year. You want a good guitar solo, ya gotta get down with the jazz. The jazz guys could always outplay the rock guys, anyway.

I used to dig the prog-rock, or "art-rock" as we called it, but my tastes have changed.

I do love Gong, though. Their pixies were at least Pothead Pixies, riding 'round in Teapot Taxis...

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:21 / 06.01.03

Surely one of the problems with people's perception of prog rock is that they associate it with statements like "musicianship is in a coma and its pulse is getting weaker every day", of which all decent human beings are rightly suspicious? However, I'd argue that there's currently a fairly sizeable sub-genre of music that's hugely influenced by and could actually be defined as prog - Mogwai, Godspeed You! Misplaced Exclamation Mark, arguably Lift To Experience, Radiohead, definitely Sigur bloody Ros... This is actually pretty fashionable music, and a lot of it is very good, so I'm not sure how neglected prog rock is these days...

11:12 / 06.01.03

On the whole, I wouldn't say that post-rock (for want of a better term)is directly inspired by 70s prog .. most of the people involved seem to have a punk/indie background and kind of just naturally grew into making longwinded instrumental/experimental music.. (possibly via jazz and krautrock and avant garde stuff).

I don't think any of the bands mentioned by Flyboy exactly sound like they dig Rush anyways..

So anyway, after hating it by default for years, I'm actually getting kind of interested in the weirder excesses of 60s/70s rock.. possibly trying to reject punk programming and look at it objectively.

What I have so far established:

The Moody Blues, post-Syd Floyd, Deep Purple and EL&P are bloody terrible! (Thanks to my mum's record collection for helping me with that one).

Soft Machine sound quite interesting .. Pentangle I have a bizarre liking for.. Mannfred Mann's Earth Band positively kick ass.. as do Hawkwind, obviously..

King Crimson do my head in.

I was thinking of starting a thread one of these days dedicated to dredging up odd information about, and pictures of, obscure, forgotten prog rock bands like Henry Cow and Magma and so on - "The graveyard of forgotten Prog-rockers".

12:26 / 06.01.03

Firstly: Loved the abstract.
Secondly: I don't know nothing about progressive, Pink FLoyd being the only ting that comes a little bit close to it. You guys really should check "A Saucerful Of Secrets", the album, it's really strange and beautiful.
Anyway, what about Univers Zero? they're proggy and they're scary (this band just oozes lovecraftianism).

12:59 / 06.01.03

Yalking of labelling and concepts of cool, has anyone heard any stuff by the more obscure Kraut bands like Cluster, or Amon Duul (maybe not that obscure but I've never heard 'em). Does this just have vauge connatations of being okay in my head 'cos I associate them with fantastic bands like Can or Neu! or are they actually worth listening too? Should we all go Krautprog in '03?

14:04 / 06.01.03

Apologies 48.

'Crimson King' is my main experience of the band, and I do a stupid interpretive dance (which I may call 'Shimmering through the vale of Transcendence') every time I have to hear the title track, in order to emphasise how stupid I think it is.

I've heard some of 'Red', but I don't recall being impressed.

Also, I fucking really don't like any Pink Floyd. Much of their stuff seems to be songs about taking too much in the way of drugs, and then complaining about it.

16:22 / 06.01.03

FLOYD IS GOOD TO YOU.

18:40 / 06.01.03

I rarely speak up here anymore- primarily due to solicitations for contributions: I am broke, thus I am silent. But this- THIS- is dear to my heart. I love progressive music. Ultimately, it just means 'music outrside of the parametes of expectation.' It's like 'avant _.'
In the early days (rock 'n' roll-wise), a lot of prog was blues influenced. FZappa, some Floyd, etc, etc. Then, in the 'senenties, it sort of got either classical, theatrico-operatic, or folkey. Thus, in order of reference, the Moody Blues, Yes and early King Crimson, and Jethro Tull.
But- and here's my only real contribution- modern prog rockers, among which I include Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Sigur Ros, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.... come out of a punk music background. Less so Sigur Ros than the others, but no-one could deny the attitude of SY, R, AYWKUBTTOD....
Another trend is free-jazz. King Crimson today, Oh Falconer, is a very, VERY different beast than the early stuff. I love 'A Beginner's Guide to ProjeKts.' Compare this album to 'In the Court of the Crimson King.' Fripp (and Bruford, Belew, Levin, etc,etc) are building off of a free jazz thing- as did later Frank Zappa.
That is all.

lord nuneaton savage

19:44 / 06.01.03

These days there is as much of a punk orthodoxy as there ever was around prog in the early 70's. It's almost embarrasing to be able to actually play your instrument (I'm still a shit guitarist though). Anyway here are some prog albums I can wholeheartedly reccomend;
Gandalf: s/t; Gorgeous mellotron swathed late night treat features a cracking cover of "Hang on to a dream"
Amon Duul 2: Yeti; Anyone who says these guys are a Kraut band is lying, they're prog as buggerit. Check out "The eye shaking king" for one of the scariest tracks ever. They got a dalek to sing it!
Titus Groan: s/t; Crap album but check out the last track "Liverpool" for an example of how funky prog could get.
Spring: s/t; Two mellotron players! I shit you not! Enormous prog dioramas! Hooray!
There you are this reply was sponsored by Mojo magazine. seriously there is some fackin' corkin' prog out there and not an elf in sight.

Locust No longer

21:37 / 06.01.03

Speaking of prog, who's going to see Magma at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in a few weeks in London? I seriously debating going but the tickets are £19 or something. I'm sure it would be a cool show....

22:03 / 06.01.03

So then, where would you place the dividing line between avant-garde progressive rock, "music outside the parameters of expectation", and hack "progressive" rock. All claim to progress, but which are genuinely worthy or respect?

P.S. Has anyone heard The Talking Drum by King Crimson, if only because I just want to rant and rant (in spirit of course) about its hypnotic....erm....ness.

22:40 / 06.01.03

I like Labradford.

Ummm.

Don't even fucking start on Zappa. I'd rather floss my ears with some really abrasive sandpaper.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

01:30 / 07.01.03

I grew up playing D&D, reading comic books and started listening to RUSH when a girl played it for me and told me how cool they were. I was already into punk and hated the "Classic Rock" stations because I didn't need to hear "Lucky Man" ever again as long as I lived...

But I liked Rush.

Still do. Can't defend them other than the fact that I like them. I also like Jethro Tull, Peter Gabriel at his most pretentious, Pink Floyd until The Final Cut's last chord and, may Joey Ramone Forgive me, Rick Wakeman's stuff.

Don't listen to it all the time, and find I have to be in a very specific mood for it, but it does reach a part of me that thinks that rock music can be pretentious and overblown if it wants to be. I think what I like about it is that the people who make it BELIEVE in what they do...and that excuses a lot in any ki8nd of music or art form for me.

Come on, it's not like Neal Peart was told by a record company that they needed a 3 and a half minute single with 120 beats per minute for the third quarter, which a lot of music sounds like to me anymore. I think the Prog people were just as passionate and believed just as much in their music as the punks did.

03:45 / 07.01.03

Surely one of the problems with people's perception of prog rock is that they associate it with statements like "musicianship is in a coma and its pulse is getting weaker every day", of which all decent human beings are rightly suspicious?

Bwahahaha! I am not a decent human! I am not human at all ! I am a frog! A Prog Frog! Bwahahaha.

Still...

These days there is as much of a punk orthodoxy as there ever was around prog in the early 70's. It's almost embarrasing to be able to actually play your instrument

A

05:22 / 07.01.03

Lord Nuneaton Savage- Most of the highly-popular punk rock groups of today feature technically shit-hot musicians. I can't think of a single one that aren't at least highly competent. Without further evidence, I'll be forced to assume that this "punk rock orthodoxy" idea was pulled out of your arse.

Regrettable Juvenilia

06:58 / 07.01.03

Hmmm - it appears people see musical orthodoxies everywhere, of different and even directly contradicting kinds - see the Girls Aloud thread...

14:13 / 07.01.03

prog versus punk

"its not prog, its punk."
"its not punk, its prog."

16:30 / 07.01.03

The thing about Crimson is that they ("they" being Fripp and whoever his current cronies at the time were) reinvented their sound every couple of albums. Now that is progressive, experimenting with different approaches to music from the classical to the jazzy to hard pounding guitars. They keep moving forward, which I think is the essence of prog. Its the lot who milk the same sounds for cut after cut that fail at it. Tis why I don't care so much for Jethro Tull. Some of Tull is amazing. Most of it sort of runs together for me.

It seems to me that there was an explosion of innovative prog in the early to mid '70s that was just out of this world. Then it all sort of ran downhill rapidly from there. Some got progressively poppy like Rush, some lost their soul with band breakups like Genesis and Yes. Most sank into obscurity or turned into neo-prog, which does suck.

I think there is a slim subset of the lot that is absolutely amazing if you can dig it out. Supper's Ready from Genesis is still one of the most powerful epics ever. Yes's Close to the Edge ranks up there too. Rush even managed a couple of goodies in there, the Signus X-1/Hemespheres story being my favorite. That's the stuff I think really made it all worth while. 10 minute guitar solos? Pass. Well, cept maybe for Manowar, anyway.

18:15 / 07.01.03

Anyhow, who else thinks the FLoyd were hinting at Barbelith when they told us that they would "see us on the Dark Side of the Moon"?