Has the flame finally gone out?

Once the flame begins to catch, the wind will blow it higher,

Skullhead wrote: 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?  (...)

Edited by Svetonio - December 06 2014 at 22:54

I don't think people in general like complex music.  Maybe the reason prog rock is for the most part unpopular is because it comes across as pretentious and snooty to the masses.  While I love prog rock, I don't usually go to the symphony.  It feels overbloated, the pieces are too long and I fall asleep.  Some of it is great, and I know the musicians are great, but it doesn't do it for me in most cases.  It's my guess that centuries ago when classical music was in it's prime, it was still mostly attended by the upper class citizens. The folk music was probably overall more popular for the peasant people.  Sing along simple stuff.  Row Row Row your boat kind of thing.  The kids today are into techo music because it's simple and they don't have to think about anything. 

I also think that the kids today are not going to be impressed by someone like Peter Gabriel coming out wearing a fox head and a red dress, or a big laser light show that YES put out there during their stadium tenure.  Necktar, same thing.  The kids today have been blow away by Rave and Techno effects beyond anyone's imagination.  Seas of bubbles, lasers, confetti, huge sound systems and half naked strippers hanging off poles and scaffolding. You can't impress the youth visually anymore. The pulsating kick drum and endless weavings of computer samples transforming into ear candy will keep them away from being interested in how Steve Howe played 3 octave leads across odd time metering.  They just don't care about Bill Bruford or Barlow. 

It's very much a generation of I, me and now, and they don't want to have to take the time to master an instrument like so many did in past generations.  It seems pointless to them.  With programs like Garage Band, anyone can make what they think is amazing music just pushing a mouse or moving their finger across a touch screen.  The young chicks think it's cool also.  Long haired rock musicians don't get laid like they used to.  Now it's more about the DJ.  It's more about getting in with the Doorman than The Doors.

Prog rock will never go away.  Classical and Jazz, funk and reggae, and country and western will all have an audience of some sorts.  The "Alternative" or "Indie" scene looks and sounds very dated now also.

This line of argument comes up often.  That prog is seen as elitist and snooty and hence not appealing to youngsters.  I don't go along with the underlying generalisation that elitist, snooty works of art don't appeal to youngsters as a rule.  I thought the last Nolan-Batman film was rather pretentious.  And yet, when I watched it, people got up from their seats to applaud the film at the close.  Harry Potter was also pretentious (strictly in my opinion, that is, before I unwittingly offend any lurking HP fans), especially in the way the dimensions of each new installment of the series increased without necessarily bringing writing of more depth.  HP was not like the lucid, fun children's books I was introduced to in my childhood, stuff like Famous Five, Nancy Drew etc.  It involved a rather complex concept with an alternative fantasy universe that readers needed to remember and plenty of characters who would recur out of the blue in later installments.  But HP was lapped up by the kids.  So time or attention span is not necessarily of essence.  But today you have to convince the audience that a seemingly pretentious work of art is 'important' enough for them to invest their time in it.  Somewhere, music culture has arrived at a juncture where there is not much that is both important and also not too hard to penetrate.  

I'm thinking that prog has been, since its inception, a musical style that primarily appealed to pimply young lads!  

Edited by cstack3 - December 07 2014 at 14:12

Has anyone here been aware of this "hipster" trend, or craze going on mostly in the urban cities all over the world?

I have talked to a few and they are most all embracing techno music, hip hop and if the go see live music it has to be groovy dance, latino or funky R and B.  If they are going to take a date to a quiet place it's going to be  sw**ky bar with jazz music. 

I was explaining to a couple of them that music has more possibilities like going into odd metering or developing a concept outside of boy meets girl or drugs, pimps and hoes, and they will say something like,
Yeah, I get that, but I just don't like that kind of stuff.. too "heady".

There is this thing about not getting too serious, because it takes the fun out of the experience.  There is a huge pressure to make money and live these bordering lavish lifestyles even being in your 20's.  Tapas bars where everything is served a la carte and the dinner tab easily gets up to $30 per person quickly plus drinks.
Inner city lofts are often $2000 plus a month and everyone is driving a new car and making payments on 20 to 30k and then come the student loans.  Kids are having to make upward of nearly 100k to be with the "in" crowd of hipsters who think they are being cool saving their money shopping at vintage clothing stores where everything is already marked up back to full retail pricing.

When they get off work, they have no interest in listening to "Topographic Oceans".  They want to eat, sit with a group of pretty people, keep up up with their facebook, twitter, Yelp etc... and are constantly pressured to keep up with the fast paced tech world of gadgets, smart phones, google glasses etc.  Falling behind in the tech culture is not an option. 

You also have an incredible # of people in the music scene that are not really musicians by any traditional definition.  A lot of computer programmers making their version of music and it's working nicely against this culture also.

Bands in say the 1970's had financial support from the labels to explore different things.  It was a motivator that funded big tours at the best of spectacle for that time.  That money stream is still around but it is being channeled into raves and big electronica festivals for the most part, because that caters to the tastes of the youth culture. 

They may often like your prog music with a "that was cool stuff" but then two minutes later they are checking facebook and trying to find where "Wendy and Tara" are hanging out and there mind is gone from that and back to the hipster thing.






Edited by Skullhead - December 07 2014 at 16:32

'PiphanyRambler wrote: Skullhead wrote: <span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;">I was explaining to a couple of them that music has more possibilities like going into odd metering or developing a concept outside of boy meets girl or drugs, pimps and hoes, and they will say something like, </span><br style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;"><span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;">Yeah, I get that, but I just don't like that kind of stuff.. too "heady".</span><br style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;"><br style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;"><span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;">There is this thing about not getting too serious, because it takes the fun out of the experience. I think that a good share of people consider music only from an entertainment standpoint, rather than considering it art, or something worth their time outside the clubs. And I don't think it's a bad thing, it just means that you're not that interested in music.</span> <span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;"> Now, since I wasn't around at the time, I know nothing about the '70s, but perhaps there was a different approach to music, as many here already said. </span> <span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px; : rgb248, 248, 252;">I think that now it's not just Prog Rock the one to be at risk, but music in general. Today music is relegated to a role of entertainment/pastime and nothing more. The most fun songs become famous, or the ones that make the most people dance. There's nothing wrong about that, mind you. Fun is right, of course. But I think that this kind of promotion removes the charm that music can have if given the proper time to appreciate it.</span>

Believe it or not this is not something new,but the way it has been.Its called popular music hence the term Pop music.For instance,King Crimson isn't pop music.

Just want to add that this problem of keeping the prog going is not limited to the genre.Mass media has hidden a lot of music such as modern blues,blues rock,jazz,jazz rock ect.
Lucky that there always seems to be new bands that relight the candle so to speak.
I know it seemed that blues was dying out,but there has been a resurgence the last few years.

The internet kind of solves that problem, though. Maybe it's just some kind of generation gap I'm on a different side of compared to the older posters, but all the doomsaying and pessimism in threads like this kind of rings false to me. There's plenty of new rock and metal groups in more avantgarde/technical/progressive/psychedelic styles with plenty of new records coming out and new concerts being announced if you just look the right places at concert venues, neither is it difficult for me to find people to discuss it with.

Maybe my perspective is skewed further by the fact that I live in a capital city with a healthy alternative cultural scene and a lot of small underground concert venues, not to mention it's the place for art festivals where experimental musicians often play as part of? Even the provincial town I grew up in had a rather active DIY punk/metal venue that's now reborn itself as expanding into other underground music forms, including quite a few psychedelic rock groups, so I'm not sure if that's really the case. Then again another confounder would be that I'm friends with quite a few people in more subcultural music scenes, so I might be more exposed to underground music than the average citizen.

Sure, progressive rock might not be as much of a cultural force slash overall phenomenon as it was in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and quite a few modern experimental rock/metal groups don't really sound that much like the progenitors of that ethos. I just get the impression that the "scene" around progressive music is way healthier or at least more productive than it's been in like the past 20 years or so, and anyone who doesn't notice that just hasn't been paying attention. Maybe I need to provide concrete examples of what is happening exactly that I'm referring to?

Most of the people dressing up in hippie clothes these days don't listen to the same kind of stuff they used to back then.