Classical Prog

Hi,

Taking a course in music appreciation at your local city college, would be a good start. Most classes on this call is "modern music" or "western civilization music", although we really do not have enough clear ideas about music before Vivaldi, Albinoni, Bach and such ... and we think that the religious this and that was all that was about, which is impossibly true. 

A good course goes through many things and allows us to see the many eras and styles of music and learn something from it ... my main bitch about a lot of stuff regarding music and the arts is simply the fact that a massively huge percentage don't give a damn about the history and how things got to this level today ... and all that is left? Your favorite, of course ... because everything else is not around!

The main issue with the familiarity with the history of classical music, is that it will throw you for 10 loops and a half, and destroy your ideas, and understandings that you have about "progressive music", or anything else without a title and name on it. All of a sudden Chuck Berry is not important, but for one thing ... his ability to flip a finger at the folks that thought music was this and that, and all of a sudden he is selling twice, three times, four times more than any classical music ... but that does not entitle him (and he never claimed it!) to be an important part of music history ... he is in terms of ATTITUDE, which is one of the greatest parts of rock music, and its most distinctive feature! And THAT fits in a lot of music history, since you can listen to a lot of operas and realise that the "emotions are so bottle up and "invented" to the point of it being ridiculous ... but (sadly!), you'll never hear a Pavarotti (just an example!!!) go rogue on the stage which would actually be far out ... but that would take him out of the Carnegie Hall forever where he could make the most money! It kinda tells you how much "classical music" has controlled people to do what the history of it all thinks is the way it is supposed to be.

But knowing classical music makes you no better than anything else ... witness Rick Wokeman ... who knows all the music history and yet his compositions are such low level that it is almost sad. Most of his stuff is centered and designed/defined towards the song format, and has very little to show for itself than classical music in my book. Yes, HE CAN PLAY and then some ... but as a creative force, he lost it when he could not even realize that experimentation and creating music with it is what so much of the 20th century was all about ... and in his case having a hundred keyboards to play exactly the same thing with a different sound! It confounds me that he trashes TFTO over his own pieces, when his pieces are not even "original" and as strong and shown as the piece he didn't like, but was able to add some neat parts to it.

It is that kind of dichotomy, that prevents us, rock fans, from understanding music properly ... because some of these goons actually believe that a score with 40 lines for a staff is merde and his 6 lines of a staff on one piece is more important ... well, we do remember Bach, Vivaldi and such and they did not have a lot of lines on the staff .... but I think we will remember those a lot better than Mr. Wokeman!