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Surrealist 
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Joined: October 12 2012
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 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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Dean
Special Collaborator
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Joined: May 13 2007
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:01 |
 Surrealist wrote:
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. |
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.
Surrealist wrote:
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. |
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.
Surrealist wrote:
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! |
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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docall27
Forum Newbie
Joined: December 22 2012
Location: Lake Geneva, WI
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Points: 35
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:14 |
Surrealist wrote:
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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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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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012
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Points: 232
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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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Dean
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Joined: May 13 2007
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 21:22 |
Surrealist wrote:
One person may have wrote it... but one person did not perform the Symphony... |
And your point is?
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What?
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012
Location: Squonk
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Points: 232
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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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Surrealist
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Joined: October 12 2012
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Points: 232
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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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Dean
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:03 |
Surrealist wrote:
One person is not going to show virtuosity on all instruments...
Prog needs GREAT players on each platform...
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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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docall27
Forum Newbie
Joined: December 22 2012
Location: Lake Geneva, WI
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Points: 35
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:27 |
Surrealist wrote:
One person is not going to show virtuosity on all instruments...
Prog needs GREAT players on each platform...
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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
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Joined: May 13 2007
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 22:38 |
Surrealist wrote:
I don't mean to be insulting... |
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?
Surrealist wrote:
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. |
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).
Surrealist wrote:
I hope they don't read these message boards.
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Why? Criticism is not insulting and any artists that are not are open to criticism do not concern me.
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What?
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012
Location: Squonk
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Points: 232
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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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HackettFan
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Joined: June 20 2012
Location: Oklahoma
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Posted: January 02 2013 at 23:05 |
docall27 wrote:
Surrealist wrote:
One person is not going to show virtuosity on all instruments... Prog needs GREAT players on each platform...
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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. |
Yep.
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Surrealist
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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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ExittheLemming
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Joined: October 19 2007
Location: Penal Colony
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Points: 11415
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 01:51 |
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^ We'll take Walter over you any day
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Dean
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Joined: May 13 2007
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 03:24 |
Surrealist wrote:
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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Surrealist wrote:
One person may have wrote it... but one person did not perform the Symphony... |
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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What?
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Dean
Special Collaborator
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 03:55 |
Surrealist wrote:
I'll take ... Steely Dan over Return to Forever.
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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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What?
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Gerinski
Prog Reviewer
Joined: February 10 2010
Location: Barcelona Spain
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Points: 5154
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 07:34 |
@ Surrealist:
I'm the one who opened the debate and I myself tend to enjoy more band music than one-man music, that's the reason why I raised the topic, but your style of posting is rather annoying and it's putting everybody against you. I happen to agree with some of your points of view and I might want to post further defending what I find in much band music which I find lacking in much one-band music, but your posting style ruins it all, and it makes me hesitate to post because I do not want to be perceived as being "on your side" in the discussion.
For one thing the period or technology are not important for me. I raised the discussion of "band vs one-man" but you threw in all this crap that anything beyond 1978 and/or using digital technology is by definition s*t. I certainly do not subscribe to that.
Contemporary musicians with contemporary technology can still produce great music, I just happen to think that if talented musicians could work together in a band format they would probably be able to produce better music than if each of them decides to work as a one-man format, nothing more and nothing less.
I respect much of what has been said about current one-man efforts, I understand their current limitations and there's no need to trash them, I want to understand why one-man albums seem to be a growing trend in current Prog and discuss the pros and cons, I don't want to trash them as being lazy b*****ds.
But personally I still believe that generally speaking a band of talented musicians can produce better music than most one-man efforts, and I would like this to be discussed too, because I fear that if the trend continues for musicians to release as one-man projects because of their current (and understandable) limitations and issues, we may be prevented from getting really outstanding band music in the future. In my opinion we should discuss the subject and try to find ways where musicians can still form bands and produce collaborative music under the current adverse circumstances.
It's a pitty that because of your posting style this is probably becoming a dead end to the discussion. Think about it next time...
Edited by Gerinski - January 03 2013 at 07:40
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HackettFan
Forum Senior Member
Joined: June 20 2012
Location: Oklahoma
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 08:03 |
Gerinski wrote:
@ Surrealist:
I'm the one who opened the debate and I myself tend to enjoy more band music than one-man music, that's the reason why I raised the topic, but your style of posting is rather annoying and it's putting everybody against you. I happen to agree with some of your points of view and I might want to post further defending what I find in much band music which I find lacking in much one-band music, but your posting style ruins it all, and it makes me hesitate to post because I do not want to be perceived as being "on your side" in the discussion.
For one thing the period or technology are not important for me. I raised the discussion of "band vs one-man" but you threw in all this crap that anything beyond 1978 and/or using digital technology is by definition s*t. I certainly do not subscribe to that.
Contemporary musicians with contemporary technology can still produce great music, I just happen to think that if talented musicians could work together in a band format they would probably be able to produce better music than if each of them decides to work as a one-man format, nothing more and nothing less.
I respect much of what has been said about current one-man efforts, I understand their current limitations and there's no need to trash them, I want to understand why one-man albums seem to be a growing trend in current Prog and discuss the pros and cons, I don't want to trash them as being lazy b*****ds.
But personally I still believe that generally speaking a band of talented musicians can produce better music than most one-man efforts, and I would like this to be discussed too, because I fear that if the trend continues for musicians to release as one-man projects because of their current (and understandable) limitations and issues, we may be prevented from getting really outstanding band music in the future. In my opinion we should discuss the subject and try to find ways where musicians can still form bands and produce collaborative music under the current adverse circumstances.
It's a pitty that because of your posting style this is probably becoming a dead end to the discussion. Think about it next time... |
Judiciously stated. I suspected you might have found a lot of this awkward. Getting back to trend lines, obstacles, and opportunities for musicians to network into future bands might be constructive indeed.
Edited by HackettFan - January 03 2013 at 08:15
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Surrealist
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 12 2012
Location: Squonk
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Points: 232
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 20:53 |
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I'm not here to make friends or enemies for that matter. It's an open forum and I call things how I see them. I speak from experience as a composer, writer, director, producer, sound engineer and label owner. I also consider myself proficient at both drums, bass, and guitar.
You can disagree all you want with my posts.. fine.. but where are the great prog bands of today? Certainly not one man bands. Any one person here or there may think something is great.... subjectively speaking.. but there is an objective element also that cannot be overlooked.. nor will it.... as the sands of time tick away and the iconic prog bands of the 70's will endure because of the inherent quality of which they contributed to the musical fabric of the genre.
Copy cat bands.. bands based only on chops, homogenizing digital production techniques etc will ensure it's all lost and forgotten onto the ears of the next generation.
We have already entered the dark ages of musical history. Blame who you want for the American Idol mentality but don't point the finger at me.
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docall27
Forum Newbie
Joined: December 22 2012
Location: Lake Geneva, WI
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Posted: January 03 2013 at 23:33 |
The dark ages of musical history? Really? There is a lot of great music out there right now, produced in the last two years. If you don't like it or feel that it somehow doesn't measure up to the great prog of the past, consider this:
a) Your opinion that music is in a dark age is pretty subjective. I see a lot of people out there excited by the current crop of music who actually feel that we are in a new great era of prog.
b) The first music of a genre tends to be viewed as the best ever and the pioneers who produced that music are revered as pioneers. Pete Townsend said as much about the Who, that they were viewed as fabulous because they were the first with that kind of sound, as was Zeppelin, Yes, King Crimson, and on ad infinitum. Often, those who follow are never viewed in the same light. A lot of classical composers considered the symphony "over" after Beethoven's 9th because it perfect in their eyes - greater than perfection could never be achieved.
I don't think we're in a dark age at all. On the other hand, the chances of hearing something completely new and different are becoming rarer. I don't know if there are any totally original avenues left in music.
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Abundance of one-man "bands" in modern prog
