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moshkito

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Topic: The myth of the 1990's prog resurgence
Posted: December 13 2017 at 20:08

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

...
Prog was dying.

They only needed the death certificate.

BTW: Some genres die, a good example is Disco Music.

Punk changed so much that it became another genre after 2 years

Prog was NOT dying. It was always there, but had no media attention whatsoever, which made it look like it was not active. Please take a stop at EUROCK and read these years ... just as active as any others.

But we can't let go of our "gods" Ivan ... that's the real issue in the end! And they were being laughed at in the media.

And for my tastes, the Internet kinda stopped that ... COLD. There were too many folks that liked it and kept writing about it. These fans, were the ones that created things like ProgArchives and many of the "progressive" websites. They did not believe that sick media any more than you or I ... and the Internet was proving us right ... these people existed and the bands were being talked about.

DISCO didn't die!. It kinda changed into a different scene, and it became the RAVE thing for a while, and then something else ... it might have died in Peru on top of the mountain, where that music might not even be appropriate, but it's still around ... with a slight different bend ... this is the case in all music. The punk change is pretty much how music changes ... but the Internet, these days, will likely keep a lot of things from dying out ... there are way too many people that love too many things, and they still sell. Heck, now it's a movie about the Gibb brothers and the success ... and they were not "disco" when they started ... like many artists they morphed to stay alive.

It's still ... kinda the same music. The same thing with "progressive" because most you folks do not like to listen to the really far out and out there folk, rock, and other bands that are way and far more miles ahead of most bands mentioned here as "progressive", but because you can't define it ... it ain't progressive!

Go ahead ... tell me that Vivaldi is dead ... or Beethoven ... or Mozart ... MUSIC NEVER DIES ... it does not matter what its "style" or "kind" is. It will have different instruments that make it sound like something else, but its basis is the same. Mechanical, mathematical ... and not progressive, because those two bits are NOT progressive. Maybe in the far elements and the idealistic quantum sciences, but those are so far out there, few can actually read them and appreciate its discussion or create music for them!

Same thing here. And some of us, who should show a much better appreciation and understanding for the whole earth life and changes, including the Internet and how it changed the arts at that very valuable time, specially ... would really help what you write ... but you don't believe in the arts ... how can you possibly believe in the music except your favorite bands?

Most of those festivals might not have made it as well, without their ability to get to folks on the Internet. De Luca would not have the time and money to pass out so many postcards and addresses ... neither would Nearfest and anything else. Without it, these folks would not have had as large of a response as they did.

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Posted: December 13 2017 at 19:03

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Festivals by themselves don't mean a whole lot though if only two hundred people show up and they are mostly guys with beards wearing scrappy old Nektar t shirts. Not that I'm judging them but they are fans from the old days obviously.

Where you there?

I was in 1994.

It was a small festival, planned for a hundred people and the show was full, most people was young, I honestly didn't cared about how people was dressed, I went for the music from Perú (Like 5 Peruvians went) and all were very young, I was in my late 20's

But that was the starting point, this festival encouraged promoters to hire new bands and start events like this one, everything that happened in the 21st century started there.

It meant a lot, Anglagard and Anekdoten became two legendary bands in USA with just one festival, and for the nostalgic, Giraffe played The Lamb complete.

People went from around the world to see them, not massive, but it was the resurrection of Prog...And this means a lot.

Was I at Progfest? No I already said I wasn't but I heard they had maybe 3-500 people in a venue that held 1300 or so based on what I've read.

My point is prog was still very small and underground in the 90's. Maybe it still is small compared to the larger population and unless you are big music fan you still might not know what it is but it sure is a heck of a lot bigger than it was back then. I'd say there are at least thirty times as many people into prog now as there were back then(and that's being conservative).

Yes, the 90's were a very important decade but really it was when Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta entered the top 100 album charts where prog got to where it is now and that happened a little over ten years ago.

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 13 2017 at 19:08

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Posted: December 13 2017 at 08:55

moshkito wrote:

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

...

People went from around the world to see them, not massive, but it was the resurrection of Prog...And this means a lot.

How could it be "resurrected" if it never died?

What kind of editorial comment is that which makes no sense whatsoever for an artist?

The arts NEVER DIE ... your perception and mine, DO! Why can we not accept the fact that the arts are not the issue ... our perception and how we get to it, is the issue?

Prog was dying.

They only needed the death certificate.

BTW: Some genres die, a good example is Disco Music.

Punk changed so much that it became another genre after 2 years

moshkito

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Posted: December 13 2017 at 07:46

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

...

People went from around the world to see them, not massive, but it was the resurrection of Prog...And this means a lot.

How could it be "resurrected" if it never died?

What kind of editorial comment is that which makes no sense whatsoever for an artist?

The arts NEVER DIE ... your perception and mine, DO! Why can we not accept the fact that the arts are not the issue ... our perception and how we get to it, is the issue?

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Ivan_Melgar_M View Drop Down

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 23:17

Where you there?

I was in 1994.

But that was the starting point, this festival encouraged promoters to hire new bands and start events like this one, everything that happened in the 21st century started there.

It meant a lot, Anglagard and Anekdoten became two legendary bands in USA with just one festival, and for the nostalgic, Giraffe played The Lamb complete.

People went from around the world to see them, not massive, but it was the resurrection of Prog...And this means a lot.

AFlowerKingCrimson View Drop Down

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 21:20

Well, you said 1993 if you weren't wrong as though you might not be sure(maybe just not sure of the year). I can at least confirm it was 1993 though. I can also confirm that Progday was 1995(at least as far as when the first one occurred). I think what is important is when the festival happened. Festivals by themselves don't mean a whole lot though if only two hundred people show up and they are mostly guys with beards wearing scrappy old Nektar t shirts. Not that I'm judging them but they are fans from the old days obviously.

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 17:21

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Well, in that case Progfest was probably created before 1993. Usually the planning takes place at least a year before the festival is put on.

Nope, Progfest was created two months before, it was supposed to be something small, probably a one time event, they didn't expected the success created by Anglagard

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - December 12 2017 at 17:22

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 14:30

Well, in that case Progfest was probably created before 1993. Usually the planning takes place at least a year before the festival is put on.

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 12:48

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Also, some of your dates are wrong. I don't know about Baja Prog but Progday's first festival was in 1995 and Nearfest's first one was in 1999(I was there!). They might have got the funding they needed or started planing in the year's you started though. That may very well have been the case(actually I know it was for NF). Yes, Progfest started in 1993. IQ played but apparently it was Anglagard who brought the house down. I didn't go since that was on the west coast and I'm an east coaster. ;)

I'm talking about the year of creation:

The festival was founded in the spring of 1998 by Robert LaDuca and Chad Hutchinson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEARfest

lazland

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 12:36

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

progaardvark wrote:

^And to add to what Ivan said, before Prog magazine was Progression, dating back to 1992. I discovered that in a Borders bookstore (no longer in business, but was Barnes & Noble's biggest competitor until Amazon came around) and subscribed to that well into the 2000s. Before Prog Archives was GEPR, ProgressiveWorld.net, DPRP, Sea of Tranquility.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

In my mind resurgence kind of implies a lot of people suddenly discovering something for the first time not something that they already knew about but found out is still around. To me that's what happened with prog in the 90's. It was mostly older fans rediscovering prog not younger fans discovering it for the first time. There has been a resurgence in prog but in my opinion that didn't happen until a larger number of younger fans discovered it for the first time and that didn't really start to happen until at least 2005 or so with Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta being possibly the biggest catalysts for that. There were other factors also such as the appearance of this website, the growth of prog festivals and social media but none of those were around(except for the prog festivals which were still very small at that point)in the 1990's.

Let's look at definitions of both terms, via Google define:

rediscovery: the action or process of discovering again something that was forgotten or ignored.

resurgence: an increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence.

I think this whole conversation stems from the confusion of what these two words mean. Both rediscovery and resurgence could be applied to the 1990s. There is a subtle difference between the two and it depends on what context they are used. What happened in the 2000s (and to this day) was the continuation of what began in the 1990s. The 2000s couldn't be considered a resurgence because of the amount of activity that happened in the 1990s. If the 1990s were like the late 1980s, then yeah, you could call the 2000s as such, but that's not the case.

For what happened in the 2000s, maybe "expansion" might be a better word, or something similar.

Yes, but the 90's were really just an expansion of the eighties. Because using your argument you could say things were starting in the 80's with the neo prog "revival." It doesn't take away from the fact that the larger public was mostly completely unaware of prog in the 80's and 90's. Sure, stuff happened in the 90's but stuff happened in the 80's too. The important thing is the audience. Like I said it was mostly people rediscovering the genre in the 90's. More people actually discovered prog in the 80's then the 90's because bands like Yes, Genesis were still pretty big then and enticed a lot of younger fans(such as myself at the time)to go backwards in their catalogs and discover the "good" stuff. You can call it a resurgence if you want in the 90's but the big question is a resurgence for who? My answer would be those who were already fans(for the most part)unlike the following decade were prog's audience probably tripled if not more so. So if the market is appealing to those who are already fans but just don't know the newer stuff how is that really a resurgence and not a rediscovery? Imo, it's a rediscovery much more than a true resurgence. If a bunch of people who collected stamps and coins as kids all of a sudden discovered a big warehouse that was full of old stamps and coins and that got them into it again does that mean there was a big resurgence in collecting stamps and coins?

In fact, during the 1980's, the "neo prog revival" was very much in the public consciousness. Marillion sold albums and singles by the truckload.

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 11:02

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

In my mind resurgence kind of implies a lot of people suddenly discovering something for the first time not something that they already knew about but found out is still around. To me that's what happened with prog in the 90's. It was mostly older fans rediscovering prog not younger fans discovering it for the first time. There has been a resurgence in prog but in my opinion that didn't happen until a larger number of younger fans discovered it for the first time and that didn't really start to happen until at least 2005 or so with Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta being possibly the biggest catalysts for that. There were other factors also such as the appearance of this website, the growth of prog festivals and social media but none of those were around(except for the prog festivals which were still very small at that point)in the 1990's.

Let's look at definitions of both terms, via Google define:

rediscovery: the action or process of discovering again something that was forgotten or ignored.

resurgence: an increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence.

I think this whole conversation stems from the confusion of what these two words mean. Both rediscovery and resurgence could be applied to the 1990s. There is a subtle difference between the two and it depends on what context they are used. What happened in the 2000s (and to this day) was the continuation of what began in the 1990s. The 2000s couldn't be considered a resurgence because of the amount of activity that happened in the 1990s. If the 1990s were like the late 1980s, then yeah, you could call the 2000s as such, but that's not the case.

For what happened in the 2000s, maybe "expansion" might be a better word, or something similar.

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 12 2017 at 11:08

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 10:56

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Revival or resurgence are not good terms to use in my opinion though. Resurrection or rediscovery is more appropriate. You guys can cite all the bands and fan clubs you want but it wasn't until this century when you had things like this site, prog magazine, the major prog festivals and prog albums making the top one hundred in album charts. Plus like I said not many people discovered prog for the first time. It was mostly older fans discovering the genre never went away. To me this is not a true "resurgence" but more like a "rediscovery."

The major Prog Festivals?

- ProgFest: 1993 If I'm not wrong, and precisely with Anglagard and IQ

- NearFest: 1998

- Baja Prog: 1997

- Progday: 1994

In the 90's, everybody thought Prog was dead, but the Swedish resurgence save it from oblivion.

Older people?

I believe all the Anglagard members were between 16 and 20 years

Most of the Swedish and East Europe Prog band members were between 20 and 30.

It's a new generation

I agree with your statement about the 90's but the Swedish "resurgence" wasn't the only thing that saved it from oblivion as you put it.

At this point a lot of my disagreements on here are about semantics. I'm definitely not saying something wasn't going on in the 90's and the point of 1991 is important because that's still pre internet. A lot of people think it was the internet that saved prog and that's really not true either. If anything it was band's like Marillion(and possibly Dream Theater).

moshkito

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 09:39

The Dark Elf wrote:

The 1990s were a myth. The decade never existed. Any record of musical achievement in those missing ten years has been eradicated.

Nahhhh ... you would not have missed the Internet coming up ... no way in heck!

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moshkito

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 09:36

Hi,

Folks .. this is ridiculous ...

The so-called "resurgence" or "reinvention" or re-appearance" of progressive music was not an "accident" ... it was, more than likely always there and it was the Internet, that started making it to people's homes between 1988 and 1992 more or less ... that helped get the style better known and appreciated.

No one, here, is capable of putting it in the proper perspective.

The music never died ... but your perception of it, got a nice burst of emotion and energy with the new Internet, and all of a sudden someone else was discussing this and that band, and the new this and that ... and giving some older works a new dimension that was previously ignored by the "rock press" (I call it the rock toilet paper! Or worse ... the rock database!) ... because it was not a top ten kisser! And Chris Squire would likely kick their butts out anyway with those huge boots!

It's bizarre to me, that no one notices that what we use today ... the internet ... was not around in anyone's computers ... maybe only a handful of us had one in 1989 ... when I got my first one ... as opposed to today, when everyone of us has likely more than one of them ... heck, I got 4 of them!

The immediate effect and knowledge of all the material and stuff out there ... that was mostly hidden from the media ... is all of a sudden alive ... (do you have any idea how many countries tried to suppress the internet and some still do? AND why?) ... and this was the case with the new "resurgence" ... and the idea that it was dead before, is totally ridiculous, since it had never died ... it finally, got the attention it deserved ... and you all still talk like it was some kind of a miracle that some savior was reborn ... we must like our fairy tales a lot!

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 06:27

^And to add to what Ivan said, before Prog magazine was Progression, dating back to 1992. I discovered that in a Borders bookstore (no longer in business, but was Barnes & Noble's biggest competitor until Amazon came around) and subscribed to that well into the 2000s. Before Prog Archives was GEPR, ProgressiveWorld.net, DPRP, Sea of Tranquility.

Let's look at definitions of both terms, via Google define:

rediscovery: the action or process of discovering again something that was forgotten or ignored.

resurgence: an increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence.

For what happened in the 2000s, maybe "expansion" might be a better word, or something similar.

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 19:04

The major Prog Festivals?

- ProgFest: 1993 If I'm not wrong, and precisely with Anglagard and IQ

- NearFest: 1998

- Baja Prog: 1997

- Progday: 1994

In the 90's, everybody thought Prog was dead, but the Swedish resurgence save it from oblivion.

Older people?

I believe all the Anglagard members were between 16 and 20 years

Most of the Swedish and East Europe Prog band members were between 20 and 30.

It's a new generation

moshkito

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 18:44

Hi,

alt.music.progressive
alt.prog
alt.new age
... some other groups in Intelec's listing ... and I added progressive themed group to a couple of other places, including the original group that became solidified into the Ygdrasil Journal of Poetic Arts. In that board, I talked foreign music and also foreign film, both of which I still review!

The idea/fact that Par Lindh helped create a group that flourished was a nice gesture (discussed in Eurock at the time), however, what it did show, was that there was a very wide/large interest in music that was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more interesting and educateddddddddddddd than most of the pop music ... thus, the title "The Art Rock Society" reflects a lot more than just 3 bands that have some inclination to the sound of King Crimson ... we won't discuss the other bands it had that didn't ... from the area and neighboring countries, and even the jazz scene that ECM had shown folks so well and so much for quite a few years ... so anyone thinking that creativity did not exist, until the day that someone had a cup of coffee and they wanted to copy KC and YES and ELP ... they are still asleep.

Europe, has been an artistic house for many years, most of it surviving what the church could not kill even after 1000 years ... so us thinking that nothing happened ... is like saying that there was nothing in the "underground" that helped the whole thing, one day, come alive ...

Look folks ... this is not magic. This is not a mystery. It was always there ... go read the literary lives of things (specially Bunuel's) of things in Spain, France and Italy in the 1920's and 1930's when many of these folks were not "known" ... and one day ... they are huge, although they probably did not sell a million like we think is some kind of gold standard for success.

Please go spend some time reading EUROCK ... and each year ... and learn that things were happening in many countries ... most of which we are still ignoring, because we are so keen on protecting the same sound, bands, and ideas ... that supposedly "drove" the new music ... the new music was a factor of many things, including political so much that we are not big enough to say anything about ... because we can only believe in the rock'n'roll fantasy ... and the rest is total crap ... you can not make "meaningful music" ... because some folks in PA and other places are afraid to find out they are incorrect ... THERE IS A WORLD OUT THERE ... and music was there the whole time ... again ... you ears were not tuned to that world.

Btw, one listen to ECM during that time, will show you that some incredible new things were coming up that defied description ... but somehow, they were a better fit on a "jazz" label, than on a stupid "rock" label.

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 15:16

Revival or resurgence are not good terms to use in my opinion though. Resurrection or rediscovery is more appropriate. You guys can cite all the bands and fan clubs you want but it wasn't until this century when you had things like this site, prog magazine, the major prog festivals and prog albums making the top one hundred in album charts. Plus like I said not many people discovered prog for the first time. It was mostly older fans discovering the genre never went away. To me this is not a true "resurgence" but more like a "rediscovery."

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 11:58

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

So, in conclusion there was a major rediscovery of prog in the 1990's mainly due to newsgroups such as alt.music.progressive and the ability to search for prog websites, if you happened to already know what prog was, but even with the popularity of Dream Theater the real prog resurgence didn't happen, in my opinion, until the new millennium.

No, it's not a myth.

In 1991, a group of friends formed The Art Rock Society with the virtuoso multi instrumentalist Pär Lindh as chairman who presented the first Festival with ANEKDOTEN, LANDBERK and ANGLAGARD.

That year a group of Swedish bands rediscovered 70's style Prog and this movement spread tro Europe.

But that's not all, the same year the classically trained musicians from Eastern Europe who were repressed by the USSR and the satellite countries of the Iron Curtain, started to release Symphonic Prog and in Poland Neo Prog.

So yes, the 90's decade marked the resurrection of Prog.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - December 11 2017 at 12:08

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 11:54

progaardvark wrote:

I think it depends on what you define as "resurgence." It may be that older prog fans were rediscovering the genre in the 1990s, but the 1990s spawned what is sometimes called the "third wave" of prog rock. This includes bands like Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, Glass Hammer, Magellan, Cairo, Porcupine Tree, Anglagard, Anekdoten, and probably many others. I always thought the term "resurgence" applied to this increase in the number bands making this music. The 1990s were also the time when I started seeing more of this stuff in record stores and new record companies appearing that focused almost solely on this genre (like Magna Carta, Lasers Edge, Kinesis, Mellow Records, Musea, Inside Out Music, etc.).

Bingo. It was also a big decade for progressive metal. Back then I listened to the likes of Dream Theater, Eternity X, Fates Warning, Lemur Voice, and Symphony X, along with a crop of neo bands out of the UK, and homegrown prog like Magellan, Glass Hammer, Cairo, Deadwood Forest, Mastermind, Enchant and Spock's Beard. There were a ton of reissues, too.

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