Has the flame finally gone out?

TODDLER wrote: The classification of Mike Oldfield being Progressive Rock on this website has always created a great debate. I can offer some insight backed by my music education and personal involvement performing with Prog bands over the years. I believe Mike Oldfield technically and naturally has played some long extensive note passages on the guitar that have been reminiscent of Steve Howe's passages. This is where a few musicians cross the same path and MAY sound the same in detailed aspects of their playing due to their personal common interest in the exact same specific areas of music deriving from various cultures. One more solid observation is how the 2 of them tend to play rapidly on 1 string rather than 2 or 3. This is a commonly applied style within Traditional Irish Folk music...for example...Jigs.  Steve Hackett has often played rapidly on 1 string and for an extensive amount of time producing a hundred notes..(as it seems like that), and also producing an atmospheric sound. Mike Oldfield is a impeccable guitarist and even though he may have crossed paths with the same exact elements of music played in the exact way that Progressive Rock musicians often do, he remains to be a instrumentalist and that alone..is not logically correct to be entered into a certain genre of music. He is one of the few artists in the world that cannot be pegged with a term and even if he is one day, it won't be totally correct logically.

A couple of years back, when the genius Ilayaraja bagged a big budget film project after many years, the director of the film (and a huge fan of his music) perhaps felt anxious about how a new generation of listeners would relate to his idiosyncratic style and decided to dub it "Raja-genre".  It was as if uniqueness was a bad thing (even to the admirers) and had to be somehow contextualised and suitably labelled in a genre mould for the audience to understand and make sense of it.  Such contextualisation was never required in the heyday of Ilayaraja in the 80s.   I don't know how and where genres became so disproportionately important as to dominate all music discourse and override the qualities that made/make an artist distinct and a standout.  But I am fairly convinced that that is a big part of the problem.  Unless we as listeners learn to listen intuitively again and stop worrying so much about genres, we are not going to recognise genius even if it bites us in the proverbial ass.  And in such a climate, no artist would dare to try standing by his convictions either. 

Edited by rogerthat - December 04 2014 at 07:21

richardh wrote: TODDLER wrote: The classification of Mike Oldfield being Progressive Rock on this website has always created a great debate. I can offer some insight backed by my music education and personal involvement performing with Prog bands over the years. I believe Mike Oldfield technically and naturally has played some long extensive note passages on the guitar that have been reminiscent of Steve Howe's passages. This is where a few musicians cross the same path and MAY sound the same in detailed aspects of their playing due to their personal common interest in the exact same specific areas of music deriving from various cultures. One more solid observation is how the 2 of them tend to play rapidly on 1 string rather than 2 or 3. This is a commonly applied style within Traditional Irish Folk music...for example...Jigs.  Steve Hackett has often played rapidly on 1 string and for an extensive amount of time producing a hundred notes..(as it seems like that), and also producing an atmospheric sound. Mike Oldfield is a impeccable guitarist and even though he may have crossed paths with the same exact elements of music played in the exact way that Progressive Rock musicians often do, he remains to be a instrumentalist and that alone..is not logically correct to be entered into a certain genre of music. He is one of the few artists in the world that cannot be pegged with a term and even if he is one day, it won't be totally correct logically.  Just Mike Oldfield?! In the seventies , Pink Floyd , Rush , Hawkwind , Led Zep , Deep Purple , Steely Dan and many others were never considered ''Prog''. They may have been connected or may have had elements but they were never lumped in with ELP,Yes, Genesis, Tull , VDGG or GG.  Oldfield is a unique artist much like all those others that I have named. Even lumping Yes and ELP together was just a convenience. Its long winding symph tracks - yep they are the same!  Whats lacking now is 'uniqueness'. Perhaps Radiohead have a bit of that 'you cannot just lump them in with others' thing about them. So the flame has gone out because few have the guts to stand up and carve out their own niche anymore.

TODDLER wrote: There is networking, You Tube, personal websites for your band and all the options of promoting yourself you never had in the 70's when your little demo hit the trashcan in the executives office because they didn't have time to listen to it. Maybe. Truly it is because they work with higher ups and people like John Williams are more important based on , (in their minds), abundance of profit..unlike the situation presenting itself around an independent artist trying to get signed. All the work the industry would put into an act..maybe commercial sounding? maybe not..during the 70's was a grind for them and if you didn't tow the line like they asked you to, you were basically done. Finished! In the 80's ..I had a friend, (who shall remain nameless),  who was a drummer for a "Heavy Metal" band on the verge of being signed. He was approached by a male record executive and asked if he would go out on a date. He refused and he was replaced in a heartbeat. His drum parts were erased and a new drummer joined the fold. The band went on to having major success and some of the members have appeared on "The Metal Show". Take into consideration that because this kind of criminal activity exists in the music industry today more than it ever did, we are dealing with a monster that controls the existence of art presented through the media and lack of art is what WE get. With the source of You Tube, some mainstream type artists have connected with higher ups in the industry and gained popularity. Aside from the financial damage that downloads bring to record sales, an artist like this (that I speak of), will still have enough skyrocketing sales to finance their career and possibly act in a major movie that blows up the box office sales. Chris Squire found his singer for the new YES band by viewing Y.T.   Chris Squire is a very determined character and you can judge for yourself on the YES documentary of the 80's where he speaks clearly about the distance he will go to keep YES together .....regardless of WHO leaves. "Sure, I'll take 17 percent"...that's Chris Squire...so it's in his nature to examine Y.T. Where do YES perform? The Atlantic City Casinos and other small theaters? There's something very wrong here. Musicians are not getting that much of a percentage further with Y.T., their own websites, and networking in general because their music is not being played on the radio. Once your music is circulated on the radio, you are now in direct touch with the industry. Until that happens, you're on your own. You'll have to promote yourself and God knows where the hell that's going to take you.

Edited by rogerthat - December 05 2014 at 07:37

Another thing to consider might be what folks, and perhaps even more importantly, what young folks want out of music? 

Guldbamsen wrote:   I honestly don't see that in the vast majority of music fans today. Sure there are quite a few groups and styles of music that draw in these kind of people, but it isn't a huge cultural movement spread all over the globe.  The mindset is different, which corresponds with the kind of music being produced. History is everything. We need a new "the 60s" for people to get with the program on a larger scale

Good synopsis on the attention factor, David.

Guldbamsen wrote: Another thing to consider might be what folks, and perhaps even more importantly, what young folks want out of music?  The ideas and thoughts behind a lot of the music from the 70s that we today talk so highly of on this very site may simply not speak to the modern generation. Here I'm not talking about a specific type of music but more in how you approach it as a whole. The audience back then seems like it had far more patience for the strange and un-streamlined. There was a search for something otherworldly or simply "different" through music. A lot of that is probably down to the top bands at the time being willing to explore and be outright progressive in their thinking. The Beatles probably planted the seed.......but from there on it was up to the audience to embrace this new line of experiencing music.  I honestly don't see that in the vast majority of music fans today. Sure there are quite a few groups and styles of music that draw in these kind of people, but it isn't a huge cultural movement spread all over the globe.  The mindset is different, which corresponds with the kind of music being produced. History is everything. We need a new "the 60s" for people to get with the program on a larger scale

Society from the 60's, 70's and even part of the 80's acted like extremists and to think these kids were 18 or 19 years old and judged every note you played. That sounds extreme , but that's the way audiences were as a rule , (it seemed), and they were part of a social environment that appreciated music for it's every expression. I lived through this and still can't convince myself that it existed. As Guldbamsen stated in so many words, a vast majority of people don't have the same mindset as those in the 60's and 70's when music WAS about extended note passages played over an oddball time signature. Other styles of music ..like "Pop" were more complex and then as time progressed on, they became less inviting. I remember reading something a long time ago about Billy Joel in a Rock magazine ..where he said that he was a huge Keith Emerson fan. He seemed to desire having difficult note passages existing in his commercial hit songs and as you can easily arrive to a conclusion that "Pop music" is no longer written too much in applying that concept, you have to accept that the entire social environment today has totally changed regarding it's apathy for music. That's something that you can't repair unless the industry promoted Prog music in a serious and artistic way. If they did in fact do this, it would eventually begin to reflect upon the way in which people look at music. 

The flame went out in front of me when I was between the ages of 19 and 25 and how sad it was to go through that. I first started by performing in community colleges in the mid 70's and when I turned 18..I played in Rock clubs, (which were then, huge venues..almost like concert halls and not bars which would be a description of something very distant from this)...some acts had been dropped down to the theater scale level of bookings , when prior to that, they had been on television, scored decent record sales, and performed in the multi-purpose arenas. This was very constant when I entered the music scene during the very end of the "Glam Rock" period and the death of the Progressive Rock period. In 78'...Happy The Man had been traveling around and gained a devoted following. I was a naive 20 year old and was traveling with musicians/entertainers who were 10 or 15 years older than me. Several bands, several line ups..etc. They taught me all about secret stage signals and helped me to express myself musically and grow freely. I was getting paid for this..what? They all seemed to like Happy The Man. Happy The Man had this huge dimensional impact on East coast musicians of the U.S. Remember when The Beatles played covers in Hamburg? Well...this was the same situation..except many acts had already "made it" and were being throw away's for the industry. Renaissance decreased in popularity and often performed at Club Bene on Rt. 36 in Ocean County..N.J. We pulled up in a bus with a road crew and their name was still posted from the night before. I had a N.Y. horn section who stood up to read their name and reacted with hostility. They understood why the band wasn't being promoted as much and this whole tragic time period seemed to get on a musicians last nerve. Basically all the professional musicians performing cover material and doing session work in the huge on demand cities did become famous at one time. But don't confuse the word for it's meaning tagged through the media. In the 70's...to be famous ONLY meant that you were now going to share your music with the world. Dressing up and playing the part was part of you selling more product for the record company. Many times with the exception of David Bowie and a few others , it had little to do with art. 

Hi all, new to the forum.
Great insights and thanks for posting.

Isn't progrock a sub genre of rock?
I wonder if people get turned off by progrock for the simple fact it is associated with rock in general?  It seems a lot of folk these days don't like rock music but prefer R and B, electronic music or hip hop.  Should there be hip hop prog or prog rap?