Punk: A Logical Extension of Prog?

ExittheLemming wrote: Not an entirely implausible scenario and yes, there is always that cocky schadenfreude from the younger musicians when they are clearly supplanting the old guard in the marketplace. This is natural, this is good, this is healthy see Fathers and Sons by Turgenev from (gulp) 1862 for evidence that anything less always leads to conservatism, sentimental nostalgia, complacency, decline, apathy and unthinking conformity. The Nice, King Crimson, VDGG, Hendrix, Arthur Brown, the Who, the Stones, the Kinks, the Doors and Pink Floyd etc all had the same irreverent attitude to their forebears that the Punks had. Trouble is, Punk revisionists didn't have to work that hard at concocting a legend around Prog's alleged 'pretentiousness' or in some instances, the overripe and rotten fruit from the abandoned cosmiche orchard: Works Volume 1, Tales from Topographic Oceans, The Wall, Tormato, Love Beach, Stormwatch, Rhapsodies, Passpartu, (OK some of these can be dismissed as demonstrably w.a.n.k.y reactions to the burgeoning new wave aesthetics at the time) I don't think you're a Prog snob, but word to the wise, never shell out for the ammo that can be used by your assassins The Clash developed into a truly great Rock band with a punky and confrontational attitude not dissimilar to Oasis. Why PA members have a problem enjoying such brilliant music because they may have reservations about classification is beyond me.

I am ,like everybody else in this thread, only opining in general so it would help a great deal if you didn't interpret everything I say as directly attacking your own opinions.  I am not saying you said all prog was pretentious but that the net effect of punk-driven myth making amounted to that being held up as the generally accepted view of prog.  That is what we read in the mainstream: that prog is pretentious and all but a musical bad word.  I think to mention it so apologetically, as if they are sorry they liked it in the 70s, is just delusional because you can't change history.  It happened; prog was an important part of 70s music culture.  

Because I do have an opinion on how much was just myth making and how much was reality. I believe the mainstream narrative on punk is too romanticised and simplistic and that is the point I intended to make. The appearance of a mutually exclusive dichotomy was simply an exaggeration. As for whether the developments were good or bad for music, for me to opine on that would be to presume to know what music would be good for people in general and I certainly would not want to be so presumptuous. I am just saying the truth about the transition from prog to punk is probably somewhere in the middle rather than the generally accepted view which is lopsided in favour of punk. It may be a mundane point to make but I would like to all the same. I also have a rather naive way of looking at all music as just different ways of expressing emotions that are common across genres. So the notion of a genre warfare seems rather silly to me and little more than the musicians way of winning more listeners over to 'their' side.  The trend in favour of greater and greater fragmentation of music (with not particularly edifying consequences for the artists as it reduces the size of their potential audience) also seems to have gained strength post the emergence of punk, even if it may have been there before the event.  Whether that was directly a consequence of the way punk was pitted as a musical adversary of prog I do not know but it seems plausible that it would have had something to do with it.  As somebody else said in the thread about prog lacking metal's success in recent years, punk is far more polarizing than prog (about which the worst that can be said is indeed that it is pretentious or overlong or noodly and boring) and therein its greatest strength and weakness.  I will go out on a limb in that regard and say that I do regard fragmentation as more bad than good for music overall.  Not in terms of music appreciation but in the way it affects how music is distributed to listeners.  But a music that plots itself in an adversarial corner probably cannot ever bring all kinds of listeners together no matter how good it is.  

Edited by rogerthat - March 11 2015 at 10:51

Whatever. I'm outa here

Slartibartfast wrote: More like illogical

And when the broken hearted people,

Edited by SteveG - March 11 2015 at 15:33

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this:

Edited by SteveG - March 11 2015 at 19:17

SteveG wrote: If there's one thing I've learned, it's this:   There is no accounting for taste in either music or lyrics.

Dean wrote: SteveG wrote: If there's one thing I've learned, it's this:   There is no accounting for taste in either music or lyrics.  Before I leave this retirement home of senile delinquents: 1. Brian was referring to the thread title, not the your comment that his post just happened to follow. Not everything is about you. 2. It has fu*k all to do with taste - I cannot abide The Police and their white-boy calypso-reggae, I dislike Sting, his lyrics and his nasally voice. De do do do de da da da is the worst of all that I dislike about them. 3. Now... "Poets, priests and politicians Have words to thank for their positions Words that scream for your submission And no-one's jamming their transmission And when their eloquence escapes you Their logic ties you up and rapes you." ...is not a great lyric by any means, but the subject matter seems pretty serious to me and certainly no less banal that singing about an unprovable afterlife. 4. According to lead singer Sting, the song is about the attraction that people have to simple songs. Sting later criticized those who labelled the lyrics of the song as "baby talk," claiming that the song was grossly misunderstood." He evaluated, "The lyrics are about banality, about the abuse of words," saying that "the lyrics have an internal logic." "I was trying to make an intellectual point about how the simple can be so powerful. Why are our favourite songs 'Da Doo Ron Ron' and 'Do Wah Diddy Diddy'? In the song, I tried to address that issue. But everyone said, 'This is bullsh*t, child's play.' No one listened to the lyrics. Listen to the lyrics. I'm going to remake it again and put more emphasis on what I was talking about."

1) Your endless obsession with Sting's idiotically titled song was another way for you avoid the true subject matter, which was simply that a majority of New Wave songs are lyrically inconsequential. Focusing on De do do do  cannot alter that perception, except, sadly, perhaps only to you.

Edited by SteveG - March 12 2015 at 19:32