Is Prog Underrated?

Exit the Lemming wrote: Similarly, there are very few Progressive Rock bands who could 'free improvise' with anything approaching the credibility of Jazz masters

Lewian wrote: Not sure what "credibility" means here... Ultimately it is what it sounds. Surely improvisation as done for example by Pink Floyd, Gong, Soft Machine or Amon Düül II drew some inspiration from the jazz masters, yet was quite different. Some aspects of it couldn't compete, but it came with its own qualities and I don't see how "credibility" here is an issue as long as the message isn't: "yeah, we can do that stuff too."

Most of what I have heard that has been described as 'Rock improvisation' is done over a very static, or very predictable slow moving harmony or just circular riffs. Of course that makes it markedly different from Jazz and as you state, makes us prone to the danger of comparing apples with oranges etc Although largely absent from recitals now, medieval, baroque, renaissance and romantic era classical composers indicated in their scores that the performers were expected to be able to improvise certain sections around the written notation. The idea that orchestral players are but 'rote parrots' is a very modern one. Rock improvisation also usually involves interminable pentatonic and blues scale noodling (though that's maybe just my issue ) c/f identifying which scales or modes can fit the underlying ever changing harmonies (stated or implied) the ability to imply one key centre against another (polytonality), the ability to play a 'through composed solo' or a more 'lyrical' phrase based line using 'common tones',  the ability to substitute chords and scales freely in any key signature (the list goes on) are all entry level for even just a competent jazz musician. This isn't necessarily detrimental to rock music or its enjoyment but the 'pseudo improvs' contain the same artifice as the aforementioned 'pseudo suites'. I guess that by 'credibility' I also mean having to stifle a giggle when serial noodlers like the Grateful Dead name-drop John Coltrane and Miles Davis as avowed influences when it is demonstrably clear they haven't the faintest idea about their music and cannot even reference same in their own. Most Rock musicians don't know the basic theoretical relationships between any of the notes and chords they are playing. The only way to progress this state of affairs is the same way anyone grows their vocabulary: READING a.k.a. formal academic scrutiny of music.  As I stated before, Crimson are maybe one of the very few Progressive Rock bands whose audience go along to see in the expectation that they will improvise entire pieces 'on the hoof' The same does not require to be said about even the most conservative jazz combo.



Edited by ExittheLemming - April 10 2018 at 07:00

Audiences abandoned prog in the late seventies? Tell that to the legions of Yes fans who set record attendances for certain arenas for them in 78 and 79. There were still tons of Yes and ELP and PF fans and Genesis had a growing fanbase(don't say it). The point is it was the music industry who changed not so much the audience. The audience didn't have much choice but to go along with how the music industry wanted to shape popular taste in order to sell more records rather than focus on a niche market. Otherwise they had to go underground looking for this stuff which some certainly did. 

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - April 09 2018 at 22:03

ExittheLemming:

The Prog audience had dispersed long before the end of the 70's and had simply abandoned the genre. Therefore the 'willingness of many of the main protagonists to leave their earlier achievements behind' was hardly of their own volition.

Yet there were very different ways of responding the situation; I see certainly less abandonment of "progressive identity" in what King Crimson, Czukay, Fred Frith, Peter Hammill or even Roger Waters did compared with Genesis, Yes or ELP even earlier.  

Once again you mention Rock quoting classical inspiration but like I said before, most so-called Symphonic bands merely tied short song based fragments together in the creation of pseudo suites (ELP and the Enid are noted exceptions to this)

Fair enough.

Similarly, there are very few Progressive Rock bands who could 'free improvise' with anything approaching the credibility of Jazz masters

Not sure what "credibility" means here... Ultimately it is what it sounds. Surely improvisation as done for example by Pink Floyd, Gong, Soft Machine or Amon Düül II drew some inspiration from the jazz masters, yet was quite different. Some aspects of it couldn't compete, but it came with its own qualities and I don't see how "credibility" here is an issue as long as the message isn't: "yeah, we can do that stuff too."

Would you at least entertain the idea that Can might have been pleased to provide a didactic role in the opening up of 'world music to a larger listening public?

Unfortunately there's only Irmin now left to ask and I don't think he is as accessible as Holger once was (how I miss that guy ). I think you're right that they were quite aware of the issues around "authenticity"; but then I also think they were ruthless in using material for their own aims, not worrying about the wider impact other than how it sounded and "worked" within their music.
 

Edited by Lewian - April 09 2018 at 19:16

^ I believe its a case of admitting that the sound he heard is music but not very good music.

Not being a part of the music academia, I can't comment on the above posts. However, I do feel that prog, being a part of rock, is looked down on from upon high with a  prejudiced eye. I believe one professor of music referred to rock n roll as "atonal noise". That statement says a lot.

Lewian wrote: This is a good and interesting point and worth a discussion on its own. I am uncertain about this in ethic terms; there was a fairly recent peak of discussion of "cultural misappropriation" in the UK media and I found this a difficult topic because on one hand I get the arguments of those complaining about it, but on the other hand I have an issue with the idea of "cultural ownership". I see that creators of something great or inspirational deserve respect and a living, but I don't like the idea that this should imply strong restrictions on the "use", particularly the creative re-use and active re-examination, of such creations. There is surely a certain naivety of Can and particularly Czukay in this respect. There's the famous story that Holger Czukay got into a fight with Rebop Kwaku Baah, African percussionist of Can at the time, who accused Holger of stealing the souls of the singers who Holger was mixing into Can's music. I always felt that I'm with Holger on this one but I have certainly gained more understanding of the opposite view. In any case, I'm pretty sure Can didn't want to do the original material neither service nor disservice, They used it for inspiration and creation of their own sound. What would be naive would be to think that the way this "works" can be completely separated from the cultural connotations that come with the source material, and which may be influenced for the better or worse by this kind of "use" (I do realise that the word "use" itself points to where the problem might be). Can may to some extent be guilty of such naivety, but on the other side I feel very strongly attached to Michael Karoli's statement that "what made Can different from most of the other bands was that we were never interested in any kind of "message", we just wanted to make music" - just being interested in sound and its direct effect, probably wilfully ignoring political, ethical and other implications that seemed non-musical to them.

I guess that Can, unlike pretty much any of their contemporaries, were all too aware of the impossibility or even desirability of 'authenticity' when appropriating third world musical elements in their output. (If the titles of their Ethnological Forgery Series are anything to go by). I do agree that there is no copyright on 'spirit' or 'inspiration' and stifling their use merely consigns the originators further into obscurity. I also probably didn't intend the discussion to feature Can so heavily (as I suspect the OP would, like myself, be very reticent to describe the Colognians as being remotely representative of the broad thrust of Prog ) Would you at least entertain the idea that Can might have been pleased to provide a didactic role in the opening up of 'world music to a larger listening public? they are after all, the greatest dance band that Prog would ever deign to call its own....)

moshkito wrote: I disagree to a certain point. A lot of improvised music, did not necessarily agree with any of this and nothing in it, specially the early jazz that we found in Miles, Coltrane and others, had anything in common with the classical traditions of any "post modern" ideas. They were improvised, and they might have moments that came close to this or that, but I do not think that any of these folks were thinking, or had any weird ideas about turning these classical traditions on its ear and corpse and such!

I don't see this as disagreement to what I wrote. What I think is that Prog (or what we call now Prog) from the very beginning was based on conscious combination of elements, and part of these elements was the improvisational tradition from jazz. I wouldn't make that claim about that jazz tradition itself; one may find such elements in jazz as well as you noted, but probably for quite some time they weren't a major driving force.

Thanks for the positive words guys, and let me second Saperlipopette's appreciation for the posts (well most of them) by moshkito and ExittheLemming.
I may have more to respond to but for the moment I jump on this one, as so much can be said about Can's music and approach and not that much of it seems to be here on this forum:

I do like quite a lot of Can's music (prefer the Spoon compilations) but they too have been guilty of 'cod Jazz' and what I would term 'ethnic contraband' e.g. like the Talking Heads after them, and a million pale blues bands before them, a misappropriation of African elements that only serves as a great disservice to the source material. Call me a slave to structure but I've always found the fruits of 'instant composition' perish rather quickly.

This is a good and interesting point and worth a discussion on its own. I am uncertain about this in ethic terms; there was a fairly recent peak of discussion of "cultural misappropriation" in the UK media and I found this a difficult topic because on one hand I get the arguments of those complaining about it, but on the other hand I have an issue with the idea of "cultural ownership". I see that creators of something great or inspirational deserve respect and a living, but I don't like the idea that this should imply strong restrictions on the "use", particularly the creative re-use and active re-examination, of such creations. There is surely a certain naivety of Can and particularly Czukay in this respect. There's the famous story that Holger Czukay got into a fight with Rebop Kwaku Baah, African percussionist of Can at the time, who accused Holger of stealing the souls of the singers who Holger was mixing into Can's music. I always felt that I'm with Holger on this one but I have certainly gained more understanding of the opposite view. In any case, I'm pretty sure Can didn't want to do the original material neither service nor disservice, They used it for inspiration and creation of their own sound. What would be naive would be to think that the way this "works" can be completely separated from the cultural connotations that come with the source material, and which may be influenced for the better or worse by this kind of "use" (I do realise that the word "use" itself points to where the problem might be). Can may to some extent be guilty of such naivety, but on the other side I feel very strongly attached to Michael Karoli's statement that "what made Can different from most of the other bands was that we were never interested in any kind of "message", we just wanted to make music" - just being interested in sound and its direct effect, probably wilfully ignoring political, ethical and other implications that seemed non-musical to them.
 
Well that's the deeper (aesth)ethical issue, regarding the musical value of the results we just may disagree. I wouldn't be attracted by all kinds of experiments of this kind, but the way this is done in a number of Can recordings and some of Holger's solo work such as Canaxis 5, Movies or the far too unknown live "Clash" is to me so fresh, explorative, deep and exciting that it has never failed to amaze me in all the years, and I'd think that this is not just personal (despite my frequent emphasis that aesthetic judgement is not objective), I think there's something genuinely special and valuable to discover in these works (which some may not like for good reasons, fair enough).  

I also read somewhere that Schmidt was well on the way to becoming an orchestral conductor before he joined the group?

Yes, and he did some orchestral work in later days, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gormenghast_(opera)

It's also ironic that the band tried to get Liebezeit to 'sound more like a machine and play robotically' Mercifully he resisted their entreaties.

I don't think that's true. I read quite a bit about Can and I know they were joking about Jaki's machine-like qualities, cultivated quite consciously by the man himself, but I haven't heard anything implying that they wanted Jaki to sound different from what he himself wanted to do (apart from "normal" discussions about what exactly should be done with this-or-that track).

Isn't 'wilful primitivity' just pretending to be primitive?

As before, I think this question is too "outside music" to matter much for Can, but of course it can matter to their listeners, at least the skeptical ones, and if indeed it didn't matter to the musicians themselves they may be accused of naivety - or defended against that charge. I think it's very much about exploring an experience, and I don't doubt that the band and many of their listeners had genuine experiences from this approach and as such it "worked", and I see connections there to "primitive" practices and their archaic qualities in which music is rooted. I'd say there's no pretence in the experience itself, so in my view your objection may apply to my choice of words but not to the music itself.

When you state you 'rate those artists highest who could steer through these developments' - does this mean that you consider their music better than that of others who have not perhaps steered through these developments (I'm implying in the marketplace)

After having written this I thought that this was about appreciation for the (more or less) lifelong career of some musicians but this is of course different from appreciation for specific works, and surely I can value specific works of musicians as high and occasionally higher who don't fulfil the criteria I had used above over several decades. There may be some agreement between us here because when "rating" (from my personal perspective)  specific works, I'm attracted to work that creates what I'd call an "autonomous experience" rather than seemingly trying to satisfy certain expectations (even expectations that the musicians have of themselves subconsciously). Obviously it is hard to detect this from the outside but one element that distracts me is "showing off", the impression that something was created at least partly with the motivation to demonstrate virtuosity or a certain kind of "knowledge" or ability; one may see this in attempts to put "symphonic work" together that may satisfy certain criteria, maybe even academic ones.

Examples for such "autonomous" works in my view are Tangerine Dream's Zeit, Phaedra and Rubycon, Pink Floyd's "Echoes", Oldfield's "Tubular Bells", the last two albums of Talk Talk, and much by David Sylvian and Kate Bush (the latter two artists belong in my earlier list of "heroes over the decades"). "Autonomous" doesn't mean that nothing is cited and no external elements are used, rather it means that my perception is that really every musical element is there to serve the musical experience and nothing else. And obviously, when rating these, it doesn't play any role what else the artist did at other times.

I should probably admit that despite always holding up subjectivity and relativity in aesthetic judgement, "internally" I maintain a separation between "personal rating" and "critic's rating", the former meaning that I think that some music speaks to me personally but I wouldn't want to argue for this music in any more general terms; I love it but I may not think it should be highly rated in more general terms, which would be my "critic's rating"; there's music that I think has depth, potential and quality to which I don't have that much access, so it should be rated positively even though I don't like it as much as my personal heroes, but also obviously that some of those form a critic's point of view may not be all that remarkable (all the works and artists listed by me in this thread are highly rated by me in both categories).

You may think that by making this distinction I actually subscribe to the view that there are some "objective" qualities represented in the "critic's rating" that are different from what attracts me subjectively, and I admit that a certain paradox can be seen there (actually I believe that most if not all deep issues of humankind ultimately lead to paradoxes). I try to be well aware though that even my "critic's view" is *not* objective but personal as well. Only it appeals to criteria that can be more clearly communicated and refer to a discourse that is out in the open and in this sense not "inside me"; it resonates more with culture and communication rather than exclusively with inner experience.

or that you are just referring to their adaptability and business acumen to remain viable?

I tried to express something quite different. Obviously Genesis and to some extent Yes were very successful in the eighties business-wise, but I don't think they achieved this by creating a genuinely enrichening new music experience, rather by just adapting to commercial needs (if band members say that their development wasn't commercial calculation but that they genuinely wanted to take this direction for musical reasons, I would not accuse them of lying; I talk about what this music conveys to me rather than claiming to know what it "really" is). King Crimson's early 80s trilogy was commercially far less successful (despite working even in this sense better than the commercial attempts of many proggers at that time), but I see a proper and interesting musical development in it that responded to streams of the time but that I experience nevertheless as autonomous in the above sense. I don't mind the business acumen really, I don't like to see musicians aiming to be commercial on purpose, but neither do I have an issue with success, and I do value conscious development.