Has the flame finally gone out?

Thomas Jefferson is dead, but Democracy lives on.

Kind of.

There is plenty of great progressive music begging to be heard outside the "Big Five". If we want the flame of non-mainstream music to survive, we must support the newer bands and artists, and stop pining for what has been.  No one is going to take those Seventies masterpieces away from us: now it is time to give the newcomers (many of whom are not so new any longer) a chance.

Power To Believe is a great album so King Crimson can safely be left out of this hypothesis.( however read my later comments)

People who are waiting for new master pieces of the old are regressing rather than progressing probably. Let's look at what else is out there - there are more than enough bands that deserve our attention. Thing of Edensong, Fright Pig, Corvus Stone, Edison's Children, and many many more....

Angelo wrote: People who are waiting for new master pieces of the old are regressing rather than progressing probably. Let's look at what else is out there - there are more than enough bands that deserve our attention. Thing of Edensong, Fright Pig, Corvus Stone, Edison's Children, and many many more....

Attention? Sure.
Loyalty? Not so sure.

richardh wrote: Power To Believe is a great album so King Crimson can safely be left out of this hypothesis.( however read my later comments) ELP's last album was crap but then they were virtually crippled and trying to churn out an album to save a dying record company ( they might just as well as bombed it for the good it did). Their last brilliant album anyway was 1973's Brain Salad Surgery Yes - Relayer was the last time they made a significant progressive rock statement imo although there are plenty of good albums that followed and I do like the most recent. Genesis and the descent into pop music has been discussed to death but then they stopped being a proper working band 20 years ago. Jethro Tull is the one band of the big five I don't own much of. I'm guessing though that they haven't made anything as good as say Thick and A Brick or A Passion Play since those albums. They found massive success in the USA in the eighties although I gather a lot of it was not proggy . The recent stuff by ian Anderson I do own and its very good but not exactly earth shattering. Other than KC the big five were on slippery slope from about 1975 onwards. King Crimson has bucked the trend by to all intents and purposes being an ongoing project of Robert Fripp rather than a band in any traditional way. A band has to have an ongoing collaboration of a core membership. King Criimson barely had that at all. Fripp decides what he wanted to to do and then recruites accordingly. Nothing wrong with that and avoids the possibility of lurching head first into self parody which often happens to bands that have been around for thousand of years.

JD wrote: Raff wrote: There is plenty of great progressive music begging to be heard outside the "Big Five". If we want the flame of non-mainstream music to survive, we must support the newer bands and artists, and stop pining for what has been.  No one is going to take those Seventies masterpieces away from us: now it is time to give the newcomers (many of whom are not so new any longer) a chance. So if they aren't new any longer, wouldn't that mean they've had their chance and again come up short. Or is it that our expectations for "Great music" far outweighs the potential of the available contributors? Or put another way, are the current 'new' bands you're thinking of trying too hard to be progressive?

I believe I may have put it in the wrong way. When I said that many newcomers are not new any longer, I meant that they have been around for quite a long time, but their first efforts were released at a moment when interest in progressive music (unlike today) was very much at a low ebb.

As to trying too hard to be progressive, it depends on your personal idea of what progressive rock should be like. If you believe that prog should sound like the Big Five and their Seventies contemporaries, then you may not have a lot of time for those new acts that try to do something different from that template. In my personal opinion, however, this is where the future of the genre lies.

The Power to Believe is my favorite KC album, but I don't think we're going to hear something like this again, so I thought it was a great swan song from KC and personally I hope it stays that way.   But if not, then good for fans looking for something new from them.

Edited by SteveG - November 10 2014 at 15:40

JD wrote: Angelo wrote: People who are waiting for new master pieces of the old are regressing rather than progressing probably. Let's look at what else is out there - there are more than enough bands that deserve our attention. Thing of Edensong, Fright Pig, Corvus Stone, Edison's Children, and many many more.... Attention? Sure. Loyalty? Not so sure.

I have never felt so positive about the future of great progressive rock music. 2014 has energised me more than most previous years, and this in nearly 40 years now of listening and buying.

There is some great music out there. There is some great new music out there.

Whether we like it, or not, the torch has passed to new generations, and, you know what? They are doing mighty fine, thank you very much.