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Sean Trane 
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Prog Folk
Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
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Points: 20248
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 Posted: July 19 2007 at 05:43 |
 salmacis wrote:
The very fact people of all ages are still discussing prog to this day show it never did die- I'd argue it's now in its best health for some time, with Marillion, Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater and Rush faring reasonably well in the UK album charts for the first time in years (and in some cases, ever). This would imply that there is a greater audience for prog than there has been for years- perhaps an audience that has tired of the dull, NME-hyped indie bands that are de rigeur at the moment (I tried to move with the times and bought various Strokes/Libertines etc. albums and I was just deflated and disappointed with all of them). |
Of course prog didn't actually die, but those (not you Jamas) taking a bite at this notion must take this very notion with a grain of salt and third degree humour.
salmacis wrote:
However, the album which damaged prog's reputation the most? I've posted many a time that I like TFTO (though I readily accept it's not perfect and that there are flaws) and it's a LONG way from Yes' poorest, imho, but the candidates I always reach for in the 'worst excesses of prog' category are 'A Passion Play' and 'Works Volume 1'. I cannot find a memorable hook on APP no matter how many times I play it (and don't get me started on that '...Spectacles' thing!!) and even the title of 'Works Volume 1' is pompous! The solo material is, imho, well below the band's usual standard, and really it doesn't justify the album's double album length. Spectacles such as Rick Wakeman's 'King Arthur on ice' extravaganza/folly probably didn't help, either. |
I think you nailed it right. These were indeed the first nails in prog's coffin!! 
darqdean wrote:
The decline of Prog towards the end of the 70's and early 80's had nothing to do with the music, but was caused by the change in peoples’ attitude towards it engineered by a few “hip” journalists in the music press who were more interested in promoting their own fragile egos than good music.
In the UK we can blame the self-promoting Charles Shaar Murray, Tony Parsons, Jane Suck and Julie Burchill - and their biggest and most damaging converts: the Radio DJ's who had championed Prog up until then and now jumped ship, switching their allegiances to the emerging New Wave scene solely because it made them look trendily anti-establishment – something they hadn’t been since the demise of Pirate Radio in the late 60’s.
Rock Journalism became the new Rock and Roll, not Punk (which in case we forget, lasted less than a year before it drowned in its own puddle of gob) they just hijacked it and used it to fulfill their own agenda. If Punk managed to kill anything at all, (other than itself), it killed off Glam-rock and the unbearably dire Pub-rock scene – the Progressive groups of the day continued in spite of it.
It is hard to comprehend the power they wielded at that time – They were the people who politicized what was happening, spreading discontent through the system – and as Journalists, they are the ones who have written the skewed history of that time that is still regarded as truth today.
The evidence does not bear out their claims, Neo-prog and Prog-metal are not a nostalgia gig – new vibrant young musicians are emerging who have seen through their lies: Progressive music is still around, concept albums are still being made, epics are still being composed and stadiums are still being filled by the very dinosaurs that they claimed had been driven to extinction.
You can't even blame Greg Lake's Persian carpet - even that is going strong after all these years, and can now be seen guesting on the System of a Down video for Hypnotize.  |
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let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter
keep our sand-castle virtues
content to be a doer
as well as a thinker,
prefer lifting our pen
rather than un-sheath our sword
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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20248
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 05:59 |
bluetailfly wrote:
BaldFriede wrote:
Sean Trane wrote:
Interesting idea here!  But I beg to differ on your choices.
The first four on your list look like the perfect culprits. You may want to include all of Curved Air and most of the post Carnegie Hall Renaissance albums.
Thhe next few are from the 80's and prog was already in a coma, so they don't count.
The Wall and ATOTT are not top be put in such a list, though |
Ah no, not all of Curved Air; they made some wonderful albums. The Wall completely belongs there; why, in my opinion "Animals" already belongs there. Pink Floyd just couldn't get their asses in motion in the passages that were supposed to be kicking.
Some Zappa albums belong there too, in my opinion; there was a period (after "Zoot Allures") in which he had nothing original to contribute. His "Joe's Garage" trilogy just stinks, in my opinion.
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Baldfriede, I know we butted heads on this earlier, but I think it's an pretty clear to prog historians that Animals was one of the best albums Pink Floyd ever made, and one of the best prog albums ever made. If anything, it strengthened prog at a time when prog needed it.
In fact, I would like to have a dialogue in this very forum with anyone who believes Animals in any way represents the "death" of prog or even a dropping off of quality for the Floyd. Not that I want to argue; I just want to understand in clear terms where someone who holds that view is coming from.
For example, Meddle is a great Floyd album. Animals is not that different from it. In many ways what makes Meddle successful is more fully developed on Animals.
I'm sure there are one or two persons out there who don't like Animals; but I don't think one could argue that it contributed to the death of prog like Love Beach did. |
Animals is certainly not a prog death throes album, as it spat its bile at society like no punks could've possibly done so!
darqdean wrote:
bluetailfly wrote:
I know what you mean here, but I think you're crediting those journalists/critics with WAY too much power to influence events. These journalists just jumped on trends that were already building up. Their journalism might have been a component, but I think it is more of a "trailing" indicator of what was inevitiably going to happen. Journalists couldn't have "saved" golden age prog or kept it going much longer than it already had gone. It had fully developed it's sound and vision and ethos. |
I cannot speak for the situation in the USA at that time, but in the UK the paradigm shift within Rock Journalism was initially driven by the NME and Sounds (then later by The Melody Maker) in early 1976 while Progressive Rock was at its peak - a few years before all but one of the albums listed in this poll were even released. This was when these music papers stopped reporting trends and started opinionating and distorting the facts. At the 1976 and 1977 Reading Rock Festivals no one in the audience was remotely interested in Punk rock - we hated it with a passion, yet that wasn't the impression you got from those Music papers. Although they probably stopped short of telling blatant lies, they still did so by ommision, for example by failing to mention crowd sizes at gigs: 20 people at a Pistols gig in Manchester vs a completely sold-out performance by The Enid at the Roundhouse were reported as if the attendance figures were the other way around.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that what was written had any effect on the established names of Prog Rock - the effect they had was in stopping any emergent bands from following the prog-route, because to do so whould have been commercial suicide because the press was against them. Just look at how many of the New-wave bands did a complete volt-face at that time - various members of the Dammed, the Clash, the Stranglers, Ultravox! and the Police had started in prog bands.
We will never know whether these Journalists could have saved prog, or kept it going because they where instrumental in burying it. |
Again some very worthwhile comments from Dean!
Actually Punk became a phenomenon in France first. They even created the first punk festival in Mont De Marsan in August 76 with The Damned headlining. There was even a French bassist as the only real punk in the Stranglers >> JJ Burnell was not only all attitude, but a real brawler too.
But to come back to the competion between SMBWMP (Stupid Mindless Brutish Weekly Musical Press) was really the main culprit. They simply had to be ahead of the other two weeklies and pushed the hype to almost anything and once adopted by the public, they derided it to jump on something else.
NME created the punk craze by complete hype and it sets MM and Sounds back to the drawing boards. MM came back over a year later with the post-punk or "new wave" , while Sounds created the NWOFBHMB phenomenon.
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let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter
keep our sand-castle virtues
content to be a doer
as well as a thinker,
prefer lifting our pen
rather than un-sheath our sword
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Visitor13
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Location: Poland
Status: Offline
Points: 4702
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 06:09 |
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Prog never died. It sure was hurt, but like with all other music, it was/is hurt first and foremost by the people who:
- don't want to find something better than the stuff they listen to regularly (not believing anything better exists?)
- having come accross the better stuff, refuse to listen to it, for some reason.
The man in the street is even more to blame than radio DJs and the like.
(throws a brick at a random person in the street)
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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20248
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 06:15 |
mrgd wrote:
Regarding S. Trane's comment that all the CURVED AIR albums should be included, where in God's name does that come from.......or what the.......?
I agree with BaldFriede all the way. Curved Air have some excellent releases. I can't say much about the attack on Renaissance but no doubt some of their fans would strongly disagree.
I just can't see the point of singling out a band like Curved Air and ALL their albums , even those realeased during the early to mid 70s , the heyday of prog as it is now known. At least as far as Renaissance is concerned, he's qualified his comment to after the 'live' album.
Quite frankly, I find such an attack perverse. However, we must bear in mind that this comes from an enthusiast who has distiguished himself by allocating Curved Air's AIR CUT one star, an album that is currently rating a well underdone 3.74 [most posted reviews have it at 4 or 5]. Say no more.
I think it's fair to assume he has gone out on a limb with Curved Air and for reasons known only to him, has chosen to lampoon a commonly accepted band of the 70s which many feel contributed much to the development of progressive music. This is largely by virtue of the contributions of well accepted players and luminaries of the era such as Francis Monkman, Darryl Way, Eddie Jobson, Mike Wedgwood, Tony Reeves, Kirby Gregory and others not to mention Sonja Kristina. Not a bad list.
I don't know, maybe I'm the perverse one, but I rather think not!! |
You're right , there is a preverse attack on CA , but this group cumulates everything hatable about prog: the classical borrowings (come on: Vivaldi !!! Puhleaeaease!!  ), a female singer that can't handle singing in tune (please don't deny), a complete lack of energy (no wonder Darryl Way left this band stricken by stupor), sleep inducing symphonic rock (this is why I am a moderate fan of Camel, Greenslade, Renaissance and a few more of those "mellow" bands) etc...
And I don't see why I would be more apt at judging Renaissance, Pendragon or Univers Zero rather than Curved Air.
Another reason why I don't like much that group is that they named themselves after a groundbreaking album (Terry Riley's absolute masterpiece A Rainbow In Curved Air): if you're going to make such a reference , the least you could do is be adventurous and groundbreaking. and CA was neither.
darqdean wrote:
^ of course, John Lydon has since "come-out" as a Van Der Graaf fan |
And he's actually admitted that his I hate Floyd T-shirt was an attention grabber, for his group to grab a bit of sunshine. These new groups had to fight to gain their spot in the sun.
Edited by Sean Trane - July 19 2007 at 06:17
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let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter
keep our sand-castle virtues
content to be a doer
as well as a thinker,
prefer lifting our pen
rather than un-sheath our sword
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Firefly
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 29 2007
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 384
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 06:30 |
TheProgtologist wrote:
Prog isn't dead,but alive and kicking.
So I pick none of them. |
I'm with Progtologist here...
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Okocha
Forum Senior Member
Joined: July 13 2007
Location: Greece
Status: Offline
Points: 681
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 07:18 |
ASIA
Of course it started to fade maybe in 1975-6.And in 1982 with tis magnificent(???) album(Asia) by this magnificest(???) band(Asia) the gravestone was put...
Edited by Okocha - September 08 2007 at 02:06
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BaldFriede
Prog Reviewer
Joined: June 02 2005
Location: Germany
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Points: 10261
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 07:23 |
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Well, Sean Trane, you definitely mistake Sonja Kristina's singing style. She is certainly not the chick that sings "beautifully", but neither is it her intention. Which is why I like her voice. I hate these chicks who try to sing "beautifully", that's why I am no fan of Renaissance, for example.
As to "stealing from classical music": Come on, Sean, you can't be serious! Shall I list how many other groups did that, including (for example) Yes (just look at the REALLY awful "Cans and Brahms" on "Fragile".) ELP were of course the masters of that, but there is hardly a prog band without a nod towards classical composers, at least in the early 70s. The "Sheherazade" suite of Renaissance. The Nice! Procol Harum! Shall I go on?
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 BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue.
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meinmatrix
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Joined: July 18 2007
Location: Finland
Status: Offline
Points: 230
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 07:45 |
ghost_of_morphy wrote:
So which album is the one that made you finally realize that prog was dead? |
It has got to be Yes - 90125 because for me, growing up in the 80's, it made this prog dinosaur band look like it's just another pop band playing hits similar like Police. Genesis was still prog even when they released songs like Mama et cetera. Marillion was going very strong in the post-Genesis department. So for me, being a teenager of 80's, Yes was definately the death toll of fresh and inspirational prog. And last straw was when Fish left Marillion. That killed my interest in current prog music for years.
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salmacis
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Content Addition
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 07:57 |
I like Curved Air a lot, personally. Their first four albums get regular plays from me.
Those UK journalists- Charles Shaar Murray especially- get on my nerves because they are often more pompous than the music they are criticising. BTW, CSM got a lot of hefty online criticism after his appearances on that 'Seven Ages Of Rock' series. The words regularly used to criticise his accounts on that series were, ahem, 'pompous' and 'pretentious'. Oh, the irony.
Personally, I think prog's bleakest years were the late 80s, before Dream Theater's (who are a pretty consistently big selling act, it seems) emergence. The 90s and 00s have been more steady, imho- perhaps coinciding with the rise of the internet and CD reissues. And really, I personally don't think punk fared any better during the mid to late 80s, anyway.
I don't think Genesis ever completely gave up the ghost-'Mama', 'Home By The Sea', 'Domino', 'Tonight Tonight Tonight' (only the album version though) and 'The Brazilian' have hints of their 70s glory days, imho. I was delighted that most of these got played on their recent tour.
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Man Erg
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 08:03 |
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No vote because...
In an obscure way,the album that killed prog for me was VdG's Quiet Zone/Pleasure Dome.Not in a negative way,I loved the album on it's release and still do, but because Hammill had embraced the punk zeitgeist and applied it to his material. Gabriel did something similar on PG II (Scratch).Quiet Zone... lead me into new territories,i.e. New Wave.Bands like Joy Division,Magazine and Pere Ubu became more 'important' musically to me.When Genesis brought out Duke and then ABACAB,the game was up for me.I put my 'prog-ears' into storage for quite a few years.
Edited by Man Erg - July 19 2007 at 08:28
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Do 'The Stanley' otherwise I'll thrash you with some rhubarb.
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meinmatrix
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Joined: July 18 2007
Location: Finland
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Points: 230
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 08:12 |
Man Erg wrote:
.When Genesis brought out Duke and then ABACAB,the game was up for me.I put my 'prog-ears' into storage for quite a few years. |
This is so sad, because the very same happened for me, not particularly because of Genesis, but all of the big names in general. Then i went for metal and blues (Stevie Ray Vaughan anyone), only to re-discover prog when Marillion released Brave and Marbles, and Dream Theatre with its followers breaking loose with this neo-prog movement.
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Man Erg
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 08:26 |
meinmatrix wrote:
This is so sad, because the very same happened for me, not particularly because of Genesis, but all of the big names in general. Then i went for metal and blues (Stevie Ray Vaughan anyone), only to re-discover prog when Marillion released Brave and Marbles, and Dream Theatre with its followers breaking loose with this neo-prog movement. |
Yes.Quite a few of the 'major' players started to release,let's say,'material a bit below par.'
I gradually came to listen to prog a bit more a few years later when the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) came onto the scene.
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Do 'The Stanley' otherwise I'll thrash you with some rhubarb.
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Norbert
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Points: 2506
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 08:26 |
Melomaniac wrote:
Prog might have been on the respirator for some years, but it never died. And you know the old saying : what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
So I won't vote, as prog WILL NEVER DIE !!! |
Prog will never die! That's the spirit!
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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
Joined: April 29 2004
Location: Heart of Europe
Status: Offline
Points: 20248
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 08:29 |
BaldFriede wrote:
Well, Sean Trane, you definitely mistake Sonja Kristina's singing style. She is certainly not the chick that sings "beautifully", but neither is it her intention. Which is why I like her voice. I hate these chicks who try to sing "beautifully", that's why I am no fan of Renaissance, for example. |
I'm not much of a beautiful female voice (ala Haslam >> in the genre I much preferred Jane Relf) man either. I much prefer the folk rock female singers than all of those Gothic "godesses" or those Lucassen muses.
I love Janis Joplin, I love Madeleine Bell and my favorite Grace Slick plus countless other female belters, so why do I not like Sonja?
I simply think she sings badly. While staying in a normal range, she can give the illusion she's a good singer, but as soon as it gets tricky, she can't control some of her frequencies and it goes awry (curdles milk instantly   )
And accessorily I don't like Babe Ruth's Janita Haan's singing as well >> maybe you'll see where I am getting at, with this analogy
BaldFriede wrote:
As to "stealing from classical music": Come on, Sean, you can't be serious! Shall I list how many other groups did that, including (for example) Yes (just look at the REALLY awful "Cans and Brahms" on "Fragile".) ELP were of course the masters of that, but there is hardly a prog band without a nod towards classical composers, at least in the early 70s. The "Sheherazade" suite of Renaissance. The Nice! Procol Harum! Shall I go on?
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I never said the opposite!
But The Nice, Procol and The Moody Blues did that in 67/8 (and CA did that in 72/3). And while I like those early albums, it doesn't mean I don't accept it for everyone.
Emerson (as imperfect as he was) was a bold adaptor of classical masters and usually chose more difficult composer (Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev , Moussorgsky etc). And I don't think that much more of Wakeman and Jon Lord really
Well it's mostly Monkman's doing that I don't like much CA: Monkman chose to rip-off easy-listening composer like Vivaldi and Mozart, then made the whole band sound close to easy-listening.
Then I shall not get this arguments against the Dutch groups who regularly plundered classical music >> Finch, Focus, then the shameless Ekseption and Trace and in the same genre, Monkman's very own Sky .
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let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter
keep our sand-castle virtues
content to be a doer
as well as a thinker,
prefer lifting our pen
rather than un-sheath our sword
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|
StyLaZyn
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 22 2005
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 4079
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 10:11 |
meinmatrix wrote:
Man Erg wrote:
.When Genesis brought out Duke and then ABACAB,the game was up for me.I put my 'prog-ears' into storage for quite a few years. |
This is so sad, because the very same happened for me, not particularly because of Genesis, but all of the big names in general. Then i went for metal and blues (Stevie Ray Vaughan anyone), only to re-discover prog when Marillion released Brave and Marbles, and Dream Theatre with its followers breaking loose with this neo-prog movement.
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This goes to show everyone is different. Duke was out for a couple years before I started getting into Genesis. I considered Duke to be a great Prog album and was a real help in getting me into Prog.
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sircosick
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Points: 1264
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 11:03 |
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Maybe prog must died at that time, because that was the way it worked, in music....... Prog had its golden era in the 70's, so, in the 80's, the ideas definitely ended, in mostly of progressive music...... to came back in the middle of the 90's, IMO a better decade than the previous.
Even as progheads, we must face that prog must dissapeared for a while to let the other genres get the mainstream.... (such as punk, arena rock, metal, etc.).
I didn't vote.
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The best you can is good enough...
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XTChuck
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Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 407
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 11:30 |
schizoid_man77 wrote:
How about "forget th bullocks, heres the sex pistols"
Punk killed prog, not prog. Punk was music answer to music. Rebellious, sloppy, moshy freaks who dont know how to sing, play guitar/ bass, but they an play drums really fast, but with ZERO fills. |
AMEN
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A B Negative
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 11:51 |
darqdean wrote:
^ of course, John Lydon has since "come-out" as a Van Der Graaf fan |
... and a Krautrock fan, particularly of Can, in common with a lot of early punks.
Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks wrote the sleeve notes for Can's Cannibalism compilation, and the Buzzcocks song Sitting Around At Home sounds uncannily like Bel Air!
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"The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar.... Now, that's my idea of a good time."
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Dean
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 12:00 |
Man Erg wrote:
No vote because...
In an obscure way,the album that killed prog for me was VdG's Quiet Zone/Pleasure Dome.Not in a negative way,I loved the album on it's release and still do, but because Hammill had embraced the punk zeitgeist and applied it to his material. Gabriel did something similar on PG II (Scratch).Quiet Zone... lead me into new territories,i.e. New Wave.Bands like Joy Division,Magazine and Pere Ubu became more 'important' musically to me.When Genesis brought out Duke and then ABACAB,the game was up for me.I put my 'prog-ears' into storage for quite a few years. |
It was the same for me - I succumbed to the darkside, but to me PG2 (my favorite Peter Gabriel album) and Hammill's solo stuff from PH7 from the early eighties were just a continuation of prog into the 80's.
Also, wasn't Susan Ballion and her band of Native Americans doing a 10 minute version of The Lords Prayer with more than a nod towards Can & Neu! not just a little bit progressive for a bunch of punks?
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What?
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clarke2001
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Posted: July 19 2007 at 12:16 |
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I won't comment is prog alive or not - either can be discussed about rock and roll in general. Using the biological term "death" for something so abstract as a musical movement could always be intrerpreted in any way you like.
As for the end of the golden era - none of listed albums are responsible - and, in a way, all of them a little bit. Add punk to the whole picture - and punk is actually (in a way only) a prog's baby - because it was a reaction - and we are one step closer to the end of an era. But it's not punk's fault at all - as someone mentioned, bad journalism did it. Without people who were making abstract "tendencies" there would be no "antagonism" between genres, and wouldn't have to wait for The Mars Volta to hear the fusion between prog and punk, because it was proved hundred of times that it could be done properly - just listen to the Ayers/Cale/Eno/Nico's "1974", for example.
As a sidenote: As for the album that eventually could make 70's proghead thinking "I'm sick of it all" my candidate is Soft Machine's live record, ironically called "Alive And Well". Prog at its worst.
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The Album That Killed Prog?
