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Dean 
Special Collaborator 
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
 Posted: January 03 2013 at 03:55 |
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 Both formed in 1972, both are bands, both have songs not written by "the band", both still touring today, both peaked during the 70s. Have I missed something or did you just want to share this irrelevant subjective preference with us for no apparent reason? |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 03 2013 at 03:24 |
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Sooo... to perform a Symphony each orchestra member needs to be a virtuoso musician with compositional skills and they have to write their own parts. Looks like this Beethoven chap is a bit of a fraud, so if the string section wrote their parts and the wood wind section wrote their parts and the percussion section wrote their parts and the choir wrote their parts and the brass section wrote their parts and the soloists wrote their parts then did Ludwig just contribute the title and just leave them to it? Ha-ha ha har.
Edited by Dean - January 03 2013 at 03:25 |
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ExittheLemming
Forum Senior Member 
Joined: October 19 2007 Location: Penal Colony Status: Offline Points: 11415 |
Posted: January 03 2013 at 01:51 |
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^ We'll take Walter over you any day
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 03 2013 at 01:43 |
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I'll take Pink Floyd over Dream Theater any day. Steely Dan over Return to Forever.
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HackettFan
Forum Senior Member
Joined: June 20 2012 Location: Oklahoma Status: Offline Points: 7951 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 23:05 |
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Yep. |
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:45 |
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I should have been more specific.. to include compositional skills and the ability to write great memorable parts on their instrument. Great playing is a huge part.. but being able to articulate original ideas within the framework of other talented artists who are pushing the original envelop is key.
Lot's of cover bands are filled with musicians who can't write a decent song if a gun were to their head. But you need to be able to write a great song or part and also be able to play at a level of proficiency far beyond your average rock musician. I consider songwriting as part of being a virtuoso musician.. to really be the complete package. |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:38 |
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Really? I'll have to take your word for that, because they read as insults to me. Accusing me of being brain damaged is not meant to be insulting? How is it meant to be then?
Criticism is not insult. If it were then every review on this website would be taken down for fear of offending those artists we review.
The Final Cut was released in 1983, whether Waters thinks that is great Prog or not is neither here nor there. Whether you rate The Final Cut, A Momentary Lapse of Reason or The Division Bell as great Prog or not is not important to me either - I think (and I said), that they produced good Prog - I don't think it was great prog by any stretch, especially when compared to what they'd done before.
That many people didn't like Tales From Topographic Oceans when it was released is simply a matter of record, that is neither criticism nor is it insulting to say that. If you think that Howe would find that insulting why does he continue to work with Wakeman?
Where did I say that Foxtrot and SEbtP were standard Rock albums? And how the hell would that insulting to anyone?
No, I don't think A Trick Of The tale is great Prog, it's good but it's not great and again that is personal opinion as I do not care for Collins singing and since Hackett is only creditted on three tracks I can't see any criticism I make would offend him that much (unless he was a precious prima donna, which he isn't).
Why? Criticism is not insulting and any artists that are not are open to criticism do not concern me.
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docall27
Forum Newbie 
Joined: December 22 2012 Location: Lake Geneva, WI Status: Offline Points: 35 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:27 |
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There have been multiple cases of people who have shown virtuosity on multiple instruments. Paul Hindemuth was a composer who was also able to play EVERY instrument in the orchestra at a professional level. Prog does not need great players on each platform - it needs great IDEAS on each platform. Dark Side of the Moon isn't even a little about virtuosity - it is a brilliant collision of ideas. A lot of the instrumentation is quite mundane. Frankly, this insistence on virtuosity has created a lot of dull Prog.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:03 |
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Not really. Good maybe, but not great, and not every band member has to be a virtuoso. The abundance of cover bands tends to prove that (one could argue that a symphony orchestra is a cover band) and many rock bands have the occasional Prog cover version in their repertoire. By your own evaluation none of those contemporary musicians are anywhere near as good as the members of the original bands, yet somehow they manage to replicate those compositions and arrangements live on stage without studio trickery, quantisation and auto-f'king-tune...
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:24 |
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One person is not going to show virtuosity on all instruments...
Prog needs GREAT players on each platform... |
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:22 |
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I don't mean to be insulting...
I am sure Roger Waters would not be insulted to suggest Floyd did great Prog in the 80's and 90's Yes would not be insulted to suggest Close to the Edge and Tales were not great Prog releases? Howe would be insulted Foxtrot and Selling England by the Pound are just standard Rock albums? That's insulting Trick of the Tail was not great Prog? Hackett would be insulted. I hope they don't read these message boards. |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:22 |
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:19 |
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One person may have wrote it... but one person did not perform the Symphony...
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docall27
Forum Newbie
Joined: December 22 2012 Location: Lake Geneva, WI Status: Offline Points: 35 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:14 |
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This may apply MOST of the time. NEVER is a very strong word. ONE person wrote Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. ONE person wrote almost of of the great symphonies, concertos, and sonatas in the classical era. I think one person can write and perform great prog rock...but they have to think like four people - as Beethoven did - and perform like four people. VERY difficult but not impossible. Using Dark Side of the Moon is unfair, much as using Beethoven's Ninth is unfair. They are RARE one-off events that only happen at great intervals in music.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:01 |
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You haven't actually said anything that disagrees with that statement. All you've disagreed with was my assessment of The Yes Album and possibly Fragile and we'll have to disagree about Hackett's departure - I think it was all over when Gabriel left.
Erm, where the hell did I ever say that 70s prog is inferior to anything? I said that not every album released was a classic Prog gem. If you really don't believe that the 70s produced some really poor Prog albums then you've either not listened to much 70s prog or you simply were not there.
Traditional classical composing techniques??? You are kidding right? There were no classical composing techniques used on any of the Genesis albums - where do you get this nonsense? Is the tag "symphonic" possibly misleading you in some way? I'm as big a fan of Gabriel era Genesis as anyone, but they were a rock band and their songs are rock songs composed like any other rock song - just because they are long and use wacky time-signatures, eschew the verse-chorus format and broke songs up into sections that doesn't mean they were composed using "classical composing techniques" - The Musical Box is not a concerto nor is it written around the sonata form - it's an extended rock instrumental with singing. There is no mystique about what they did or how they did it - the progression and development of "the prog epic" can be seen just by tracing back through time and looking at how songs structures were gradually changing - you can see this in the Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Small Faces, Cream, Procol Harum and even the Bee Gees ... some of those got tagged as Baroque Pop because they employed little classical motifs in the music, but they were composing variants of "standard" rock and folk songs - they certainly were not making rock versions of real Baroque Classical Music.
I saw amateur bands of teenagers aged between 14 and 19 in the mid 70s doing Genesis covers in our church hall, one of them was even called Genesis Recreation (or GenRec to their fans) - those same bands were doing Moody Blues and ELP covers - and they were also playing their own prog rock compositions. There's a band on the Archives called After The Fire - you may remember their 80s poptastic synth-pop hit Der Kommissar - back in the 70s they were a little known Symphonic Prog band producing Christian Rock epics. I've seen a lot of amateur bands over the years and still take an interest now - from what I have seen the playing ability of those amateurs is no different.
I said I would not have called it Prog back then, you know, back in 1976, when I was 19. Back then there was a lot I would not have called Prog that we call Prog today, but that's okay - apparently back then some people didn't call any of it Prog at all.
Oh, by the way - lay off with the snide insults. if you cannot hold a discussion without having childish snipes at me then I suggest you refrain from posting altogether.
Edited by Dean - January 02 2013 at 21:10 |
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 18:08 |
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sure the guys in Yes were in their 20s when they produced that stuff, but they were no more talented, gifted or practiced as musicians as contemporary musicians are today
I could not disagree with this statement more than absolutely disagreeing with this statement. Steve Howe changed the band. It was all good from there on... just as with Hackett in Genesis. When Hackett left it was over. They should have called themselves "Dukes Travelers" or something like that. Dean, your ears must be so brainwashed by the digital sound, quantization, auto tune etc.. to possibly think 70's prog is inferior to today's homogenized computer manipulated charlatan releases. Yes and Genesis were great bands because they had great compositions based upon traditional classical composing techniques... but played with rock instrumentation. The limitations pushed these bands much harder than ease of use stuff that spoils artists today. Why would anyone work that hard in today's environment? They don't. To suggest 2112 or Farewell to Kings is not Prog must prove that one of your Hemispheres is not working correctly. You can't really mean that! Two examples, two bands - both taking at least four albums to achieve that watershed moment of making a truly impressive album - would anyone here grant a modern band that courtesy? No - they have to produce the goods with their debut album or be forgotten or decried as failures. I completely agree with you here. Prog is ambitious music. A band needs time to develop their sound, technique, and ideas... and I don't think there is a better example of this than Pink Floyd. How many albums did it take them to get to Dark Side of the Moon? Sure, a lot of expermental interesting stuff on Ummagumma or Meddle, Atom Heart... but while I am pretty tired of listening to DSOTM.... it is no doubt one of the greatest records ever recorded top to bottom in any genre. It speaks for itself. They could never have got there on a first attempt at making a record. You can't take a guy out of that classic lineup of Gilmore, Waters, Wright and Mason and expect it to work correctly. You can't take a guy out of Zeppelin. The Who was never the same, nor was Genesis. There is a chemistry created in a band.. and you can't put in a mediocre ingredient and expect the magic to happen. This is the problem with the one man band. If you look at Genesis.. Gabriel was a drummer.. and probably could have layed down beats just fine and put up some decent prog rock tracks on their albums.. but he was smart enough to step aside and allow a really great drummer like Collins to take that place. While people don't focus on Rutherford, he was a very good multi instrumentalist who had a great feel for tying things together between Banks, Collins and Hackett. A real catalyst. One man bands are just not going to have this kind of depth and diversity of consciousness. One person CANNOT BE FOUR PEOPLE! Not going to happen.. and will ALWAYS be limited in scope. Sure... one can make some good music but one person is not going to write and record Dark Side of The Moon.. This will NEVER happen. Settle for less... only because you have to.. not because you want to. |
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wilmon91
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 15 2009 Location: Sweden Status: Offline Points: 698 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 13:47 |
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But the modern technology isn't just great possibilities but also challenges musicians to resist using some of the available tools and methods. Pop music today is highly dominated by digital production effects to maximize the energy. To create a fat sound you stack several sounds together into one sound. And you use compression and all kinds of tricks. I don't like the use of auto-tune, I hear it on Yes and Asia's latest albums, maybe not much, but enough to be noticed and to make it sound artificial. Technology brings endless possibilities but it requires a lot of knowledge if you want to have a high level of control, especially if you are a one man band.
I while back I bought a sampler program (Kontakt 5), so I want to explore ways of controlling sounds and see what kind of sound I can produce without a band. I will have to see what kind of sound I can come up with and see if it needs to be re-arranged with musicians, and more acoustic sounds. I'm still learning, so it's a work in progress for me.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 12:01 |
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I say you are rewriting a revisionist history of Prog because your view of how it happened and what happened back in the 70s is so blinkered and so tinted by rose-coloured spectacles you only see what you want to see - sure the guys in Yes were in their 20s when they produced that stuff, but they were no more talented, gifted or practiced as musicians as contemporary musicians are today - you cannot even say it was band chemistry because they changed keyboardists, guitarists, drummers, singers and bass players - the same can be said for King Crimson or Jethro Tull and their ever-changing line ups. Not every album Yes recorded was a gem - the first three albums were average or less than average, Fragile was better but nothing special, a lot of people rate Close To The Edge (but I'm not a lot of people), Tales From Topographical Oceans was better but most people hated it at the time, Relayer is the only album I'd rate as a real masterpiece. Back in in 1975 Rush failed to impress me, in 1976 they still failed - I thought 2112 was interesting but a little corny both musically and lyrically, the B-side of the album was exactly that - a collection of forgettable b-sides - things picked up on Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres, but I wouldn't have called it Prog Rock back then, I called it Hard (or Heavy) Rock. Two examples, two bands - both taking at least four albums to achieve that watershed moment of making a truly impressive album - would anyone here grant a modern band that courtesy? No - they have to produce the goods with their debut album or be forgotten or decried as failures.
But by then (1978) we were at the dog-end of the 70s and the dog-end of the so-called classic era of Prog Rock - even during the heyday real classic albums were few and far between, but by then they were as rare as rocking horse dung. Just take a hour to browse through the archive here at all the albums released between 1969 and 1979 to see all the albums you've never heard of, and all the bands you've never heard of, and all the albums that failed to sell and all the albums that are, frankly, quite poor by any standard. It's easy to cherry pick the good ones and hold them up as shining examples of that so-called golden era of Prog, but that is a massive sin of omission if you do that while ignoring all the also-rans, the near misses and the out-right flops. Sure there are some unknown or forgotten gems hidden there by obscure bands whose albums were bought by half a dozen people (most of which were family members of the band), bands like AFT or Wally or even Flash and Badger. Do people remember Alquin or Principle Edwards or Asgard, or do they just remember the dozen or so classic albums by the half-dozen classic bands?
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 10:59 |
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Other than that you've missed the point by a country mile and there is simply no need to make wild excursions into Punk or Grunge. But no surprises there. Prog is not a boundary defined genre - if it were then Canterbury bands would not sit along side Symphonic bands or Psyche bands or Electronic bands or Jazz Rock/Fusion bands. If we could accurately define Prog as a genre then 90% of the bands we regard as Prog would not fit, including Caravan, Rush, Jethro Tull, Tangerine Dream, Magma, Mahavishnu Orchestra or even Pink Floyd.
PS:
You can play reggae beats all night and call it jazz, for example, Monty Alexander:
Edited by Dean - January 02 2013 at 12:26 |
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012 Location: Squonk Status: Offline Points: 232 |
Posted: January 02 2013 at 10:41 |
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Punk bands are the antithesis of Prog. So by your argument, they are certainly not a product of technology and technique. They are using their tools to the best of their inferior abilities, and certainly not hog tied by any revisionist rewritting of history.
Is classical music irrelevant today because they are hog tying themselves to instruments invented hundreds of years ago, playing in a style of a bye gone era and avoiding advancements in technology? Really? |
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Abundance of one-man "bands" in modern prog
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Surrealist wrote: