Prog & Politics

 

Yeah, that is my only argument I have with people here when they criticize a band for not being original.  All artists

create from how other artists have already influenced them! Though some bands go too far like Starcastle did by trying to imitate YES, the result showed it.

 

A warning about Glass Hammer, older works of theirs did seem a bit copy-catish.  Glass Hammer - If is the one to check out if you are even remotely so inclined. It is full of high-pitched vocals, if that puts you off then you still have all those deep groans on your Beardfish records.

 

Beardfish to me suffers from cut & paste fatigue. Back in the day, an artist needed to compose music by actually writing it from nothing.  Now with all the cut & paste digitizers and samplers it is so easy for anybody to "staple" together a piece of music.  Beardfish throws in so many diferent styles that I am not sure go together if you sat down and wrote it out.  But with modern techniques to "borrow" so much into a song, that is the result.  I guess if I grew up in that generation I would be more friendly to the cut & paste motif.  I learned music with a guitar in my lap and a piano at my fingertips.  Not all the "groove boxes" and samplers that musicians have today. Nothing wrong with that, just a generational thing.

 

Bill Bruford left YES and complained that CTTE was a nightmare to make.  He said YES fought "over every single note".

Well I dare say that is why to this day, Close To The Edge is a masterpiece and is being discovered by generation after generation.  Weightlifters say:  "No Pain  - No Gain!" I don't think the current cut & pasting generation of music will have quite a lasting legacy, obviously we'll see.. Perghaps I am just some old crumudgen, that thought has occured to me.

 

Very kind of you to give The Chicken Farmer Song a listen.   It is a light tune with sweet harmonies and is just fun.

 

That is why I use that song as an example.  Prog music and prog bands don't need to make every piece an epic

with a thousand complex intervals.  Sometimes its nice to just have fun with a song. The Chicken Farmer Song is an example of a lighter & simpler song but still done proggishly.  A nice balance of progressive music and simple musical enjoyment.

 

 

Ok, dude, just don't tell me that you prefer Trevor Rabin, over classic YES. or you and I will make the Arabs & Jews

look like giddy school girls at a Brintney Spears concert.

 

I agree with what you say about hearing the same stuff, though I don't think it is applied consistently by people.

There is nothing good about an imitation in any decade or genre, but I do think that symphonic prog has been crucified by the younger generation while that same generation fails to see all the "influences" and "borrowing of ideas" in their music.  Each generation needs to have their music which they can declare "undeniably hip" while they proudly trash prior generations of music cause that is how it works through the generations in pop culture.  I think classic prog is exceptional, not because it came from my generation, but because it was basically the first to smash that generational formula.  Classic prog said, "we are gonna have a harp or bagpipes or a flute cause it works and not because some real popular rocker just did it".  Some newer stuff is good, but highly derivative as well.  I don't think an even standard gets applied to all music.

 

Example:

 

Glass Hammer - If gets dismissed around here for being considered a copy of YES.  I don't see that and I would despise

a copy of YES such as the horribly derivative Starcastle.

 

Yet, many metal bands make the top 2 or 3 of the year record here on PA.  I listen to these prog metal recordes and it is clear they are playing the same head bobbing down strumming on the guitar of a thousand metal bands before!

 

By the way...  Have you ever heard The Flower Kings - The Chicken Farmer Song?

Ok back to topic,hm so the chaps name on this forum is frippism is this correct? 

I won't down thumb you. At least you live in Wales. But you are correct. I am definitely against.