"Golden Prog Era" thread

ES335 wrote: Dick Heath wrote: ES335 wrote: StyLaZyn wrote: Here's something that adds to the charm of early Prog. The overall sound. Today's studio recordings seem to lack something I really liked. Slight muddiness. Yes, really. That almost recorded in the basement sound, but mixed too well for basement. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I hear it on old Genesis especially. Rush's Hemisphere's has it as well.   Instruments like the Mellotron and Hammond play a large role in this, but the main thing is that back then everything was recorded analog, onto audio tape. Now everything is recorded digitally. You can do a lot of cool things with digital recording, but making a nice, warm sounding album apparently isn't one of them. If I was in a band and was seeking out a recording studio, I would seek out a retro studio. Digital recording gives vastly different genres a sameness to them. Pro Tools is Pro Tools and it doesn't matter as much what the physical environment of the studio is when you use it.   BRING BACK ANALOG RECORDING!!!! The problem with too many recordings at the height of prog, was analog recording. Two track, four track, 8, 16 and so forth, rcording equipment - and every time bands/producers want to lay down more layers of recording that multi-track machine would allow. So analog recording was overlaid onto analog recording - increasing residual tape hiss; solutioncut back on the treble, with loss of some hiss and warmth, but not the full audio expereince as original heard in the studio. Then deliberate clipping or compression to ensure a 45 minute plus analog, electro-mechanical readable recording could get placed onto two sides of vinyl - when the optimum without  clipping, (so avoiding top and bottom end loss), was to have 15 minutes maximum a side. So with loss of the treble end, hey it is a more warmer sound. And then compression so AM and then certain poorer quality  FM radio stations could cope with broadcasting a recording - hey yet more warmth with frequency loss at one end and boost towards the bottom end. If you want an illustration of how bad these problems could be, check out Deep Purple's In Rock, in the pre-remastered and the remastered forms, the former is so muddy both on vinyl and cd. With the quality of the remaster semi-digital recordings nowadays may renders the original release unlistenable to a 21st century listener.   Finally, also remember that stereo format for pop and rock records was only standard from about 1968, and even then few folks (especially younger people) had stereo equipment this side of the Atlantic. And boy we did have to put up with some sh*t; why:   1. It was new technology - teething problems relating to scale of market. 2. Audiophiles (i.e. the middle aged and middle class) had their tastes catered for - and the record industry had distain for the growing youth market - hence best quality and attention went into serious music recordings and those labels calling thermselves 'audiophile series' - Decca was at first with stereo dreadful for rock, with the exception of the Moody's Days Of - which was issued originally on Decca audiophile label! 3. Quality of pressings, as indicated, was below parr, but when rock records started to shift in millions of units, the record companies got greedy and deliberately kept sub-masters on their presses long after these had started to wear and deteriorate. Hence poor pressings.   You make some valid points. I'm certainly not advocating a return to the equipment that Sgt Pepper was recorded on. However, the technology advanced in leaps and bounds between 1967 and the mid 70's. Heck, Sgt. Pepper would have sounded different if it had been recorded just a few years later as one can tell by the very different sound of the Abbey Road album. That said, I still think, oh, let's say Relayer, or Lamb Lies Down on Broadway or Dark Side of the Moon would not sound better if recorded on modern equipment.   And while Sgt. Pepper might sound better recorded on the same equipment as those 70's classics, it still might lose some of it's charm.

This is my Prog biography with new part:

As with most musical genres, the limits are put in place only when the music has been written, played, recorded, released & then listened to. Go through early Rock n Roll, Blues, Jazz, Metal, Punk, Country and so on. Start with the progenitors. Proceed with the ones that joined in & formed a first wave. Unlike music from pre-phonograph times, the spread of any new type of music is much quicker and so we tend to see spurts of innovation. So you have more people finding out about a new musical style, adding their two cents to it & contributing to what becomes the eventual stereotype or classification. USUALLY, the music will arrive at a certain static point where progress is minimal or non-existent. Then, later someone re-invigorates it by adding a little something new or a lot. In some cases, too obvious copying of past glories is evident. But that can & does serve as the starting point.
Neo-prog certainly does owe a lot to the 70s Symphonic bands. But they added aspects that they grew up with or that were newly available at the time they started playing. Many here prefer Mellotrons & Organs to Synths. Whether it's a case of preferring what you grew up with or snobbism isn't important. SO your typical 80s neo-prog act likely heard more synths than even the mid 70s acts. SO they were more at ease with it, & saw no reason not to consider it an important & viable instrument. Along with that the ideas that have worked themselves into the rock & even the music world as a whole.
If you folks remember, Vibration Baby had a grand old time in a thread about the early 70s being THE peak of prog. He finally got his point across by stating the seemingly obvious - he'd grown up on those prog dinosaurs music. The newer acts, to him, just seemed to be replicating the whole thing with a few add-ins that were minuscule compared to the leaps that prog music in general took during the so-called golden years. I'd added the point about Homer Simpson's claim that everyone knew that rock had attained its' apex of perfection in 1974.
I believe that we are now seeing a 2nd golden age if you will. Not because we have seen the same number of classic recordings as came out in the 70s. But because this genre we call prog is being picked up by a new generation of players; adding to those who carried the torch in the dark ages of the 80s & most of the 90s when prog was seen as passe & no more a vital genre. Time will tell if Porcupine Tree's output will be judged as worthy of comparison to Gabriel era Genesis or if Dream Theater will occupy the same place in the pantheon as Rush does. But we won't see the same revolution, if you will, as we saw back then. But back then , it was easier to do so so when the rules were still mostly unwritten. Combine a folk madrigal with a heavy duty b3, here we go. Compose a 2 lp long suite, no problem ... let's see if we top what we did before. SIng songs about elves & fairy dragons, why not. You learned a meter that can be divided by two, woohoo, let's fling a jazz melody over it to go with that rip from Mozart !!!

So the new always seems so extraordinary by its' new ness, not always its' actual worth or quality. With the ascendance of bands like Porcupine Tree, Mars Volta, Dream Theater, new found appreciation for Marillion, IQ and other neo-proggers, creeping respect & acceptance of technical metal and other progressive heavy music and  so on, we will come to see that some of this supposedly non-prog prog actually out progs some of our childhood heroes, and can definitely stand on par with their own masterpieces. For now, these new acts compete not only against that music of a golden age, but the attachment that many here musical memories made in their youth.

1976 is probably a good end date for the golden era - Genesis had lost Gabriel, ELP were slowly but surely imploding, Floyd had effectively become the Roger Waters Band, Uriah Heep had lost Byron & Thain, Van der Graaf Generator released their last album with the classic lineup for 30 years, Gentle Giant were beginning to spiral down, Deep Purple were gone, as were Argent, Spooky Tooth (plus too many more to list), and in England, all attention was being devoted to a third rate pub heavy metal band called the Sex Pistols...

Jethro Tull continued for a few more years creating interesting & innovative progressive rock, as to an extent did Genesis & Yes, but eventually even these suffered by the law of diminishing returns & turned into shadows of their former selves - In my opinion, only King Crimson genuinely survived, and this only by Fripp continually moving forward & changing (whilst never compromising).



Hang on, this is getting a bit maudlin...

Forget what happened after 1976 - sod 'em! Let's remember what happened previously, when no stage was complete without Hammond, Mellotron, Moog (if the keyboard player was feeling fancy), at least one double necked guitar, an unfeasibly large drumkit (or a ridiculously small one if played by a drummer with a jazz pedigree) and an outlandishly dressed frontman with a penchant for completely obscure lyrical references...

...and hair.

...lots of hair.

Long live the Golden Age of real Prog-Rock!