Why is prog rock always called "snooty"?

I've always believed that the seventies journos didn't understand prog and I'm sure Emerson voiced this opinion in several interviews. They could however understand punk. It was simple enough for them. Journos were not music scholars so it's no surprise that they got behind it. That said prog was fading and had it's glory days and what was trying to replace was more technical jazz rock style music that was never going to achieve a wider audience that the likes of ELP, Yes, Floyd and Tull did.

^ while OAP punk bands play seaside holiday camps

HackettFan wrote: Lewian wrote: Still this doesn't explain that outside the UK similar things happened. Also there was TV, radio, club and dance hall culture, gigs, people listening to stuff they didn't know in record shops, lots of things going on apart from music writing. I remember (having come to the party somewhat late in 1979/80) that punk was seen as refreshing and liberating and people actually played a lot of punk which you couldn't do so easy with prog. I started making music myself at that time and it surely helped me and others that dilettantes were tolerated and even welcomed on stage. It was fun (and the product of my own proggish taste maybe sounded more punk than prog in the beginning ). We didn't feel strongly influenced by journalists but rather by bands that achieved something listenable with simple means. And it was indeed somewhat "snooty" to tell us and others (including some really good folks) that in order to make music and go on stage you need to be able to play lake Wakeman or Emerson. So the musical appeal of punk/new wave is very obvious to me, if more on the active side than just for listening, as is the observation that some proggers were/are elitist, and would praise their favourite music based on the musicians' ability on display, which to me is rather circus than essential musical quality. Obviously it's very useful to play good music as well, I'm not denying that (although I was keen to ignore it at the time). You get my point; I had already started to become a prog listener but I was in a certain sense part of the revolution against it as well. Which had nothing to do with what journalists wrote.   The boldface is mine. I don't really condone the view expressed, but I'm intrigued, because it speaks to something I've always suspected. It took awhile for Prog musicians to get to the level they were eventually. I suppose it may have been hard for even talented up and coming musicians to keep up with some of the Prog legends simply because they had a few years head start learning to be musicians.

Keith Emerson 1944

SteveG wrote: ^ I agree 100% about real punk vs. post faux punk, and the resulting trendy punk/new wave boom that followed. That was certainly perpetuated by the press. But the "real punk movement" was still an organic entity that I believe was created mostly on it's own before the music press ran with it. There is still a semblance of a give and take between the punk movement and the press. The bottom line is that the press did not create the punk movement. But they certainly did shape the punk rock that followed.

There was a real punk movement,yes, but it went underground again pretty soon. That is, it is very difficult to keep up a mainstream presence for very raw and simple music and it only happened with the active support of the music press. In fact, with the exception of punk, the music press, including the rock journos, have usually been conservative and loudly decried new trends only to jump onto the bandwagon when it breaks through at a mainstream level. Back to punk, what survived after the breaking apart of Sex Pistols was mostly post punk or new wave. Which is fine. I think Juju is a great album, for instance. But there's nothing DIY about it anymore, you don't get that sound without a decent budget and competent professionals. As Dean said, what really happened in the wake of the decline of prog was a slick commercialisation of rock on the one hand via New Wave. This ended with the soft side of rock getting subsumed into pop as it lost all bite. On the other side, the heaviness imperative. Pink Floyd weathered the punk attack better because they embraced big faux metal riffs in Animals and Wall. The period of prog's decline coincides with Rush's meteoric rise and they were as excessive as any prog rock band in the past. But they were heavy and in a tight Maiden/Priest like way, not a lumbering Ozzy Sabbath way. What 1976-77 really signalled then may have been the end of the hippie aesthetic, of rock as a dreamy kind of music. From hereon, rock necessarily had to be violent. If not violent, then at least whiny but that wouldn't come about until grunge and Radiohead.

ker-ching!

Dean wrote: I disagree. Back then the Melody Maker and New Musical Express (and later Sounds) would deem to lead not follow. If they decided that someone or something was no longer de rigueur then out it went.

Yes, once again we agree nearly 100%. I agree that these publications ousted those that were no longer de rigueur. My only point of contention is who said that they were no longer de rigueur? Did the musical press take this upon themselves or were they focused on the new musical trends and reporting on the outcasts? As this seems to be your area of expertise, I have to yield to views. And no self respecting punk would have ever said rock dinosaur . At least not the fake ones I've met.

Edited by SteveG - December 04 2019 at 10:44

Anyway... found this on one of my searches, I remember this Ad from 1975 appearing in the NME:

SteveG wrote: rogerthat wrote: SteveG wrote: Dean wrote: The sheer fact that Iain can reel off those 6 names from memory and I can instantly recognise every one of them (and add a few more) indicates to me that as, using the modern vernacular, influencers the power they wielded cannot be over stated. We are talking about a pre-internet era where a very small number of music newspapers and magazines were the only way that any music fan could get any information on their favourite bands and artists. Take for example Caroline Coon - one-time reviewer for the Melody Maker who was initially the inspiration for Matching Moles O Caroline and then later for The Stranglers' London Lady. Prog Rock artists avoided the press (possibly through social awkwardness) while Punks musicians (using that term loosely) openly courted publicity. Punk was a muso-journalists wet dream come true. I'm not denying the voracity of your (and Iain's) argument. But wasn't the punk movement (using the term loosely) partially the result of socio-political and economic factors that negatively affected young people, particularly in the UK? Surely the music press did not dictate that criteria for helping along the punk movement. Maybe but would it have exploded in the UK without Malcolm McLaren promoting it for ideological reasons, reasons that the press was sympathetic to? It is interesting that within a few years, punk went back to being underground albeit thriving in the mainstream through its many offshoots. Yes, it exploded with McLaren, but let's not forget that these types of music publications were geared to telling the public what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear. So, they had listen to their readership. Not the other way around.

Edited by Dean - December 04 2019 at 09:58

SteveG wrote: Dean wrote: The sheer fact that Iain can reel off those 6 names from memory and I can instantly recognise every one of them (and add a few more) indicates to me that as, using the modern vernacular, influencers the power they wielded cannot be over stated. We are talking about a pre-internet era where a very small number of music newspapers and magazines were the only way that any music fan could get any information on their favourite bands and artists. Take for example Caroline Coon - one-time reviewer for the Melody Maker who was initially the inspiration for Matching Moles O Caroline and then later for The Stranglers' London Lady. Prog Rock artists avoided the press (possibly through social awkwardness) while Punks musicians (using that term loosely) openly courted publicity. Punk was a muso-journalists wet dream come true. I'm not denying the voracity of your (and Iain's) argument. But wasn't the punk movement (using the term loosely) partially the result of socio-political and economic factors that negatively affected young people, particularly in the UK? Surely the music press did not dictate that criteria for helping along the punk movement.

SteveG wrote: Dean wrote: The sheer fact that Iain can reel off those 6 names from memory and I can instantly recognise every one of them (and add a few more) indicates to me that as, using the modern vernacular, influencers the power they wielded cannot be over stated. We are talking about a pre-internet era where a very small number of music newspapers and magazines were the only way that any music fan could get any information on their favourite bands and artists. Take for example Caroline Coon - one-time reviewer for the Melody Maker who was initially the inspiration for Matching Moles O Caroline and then later for The Stranglers' London Lady. Prog Rock artists avoided the press (possibly through social awkwardness) while Punks musicians (using that term loosely) openly courted publicity. Punk was a muso-journalists wet dream come true. I'm not denying the voracity of your (and Iain's) argument. But wasn't the punk movement (using the term loosely) partially the result of socio-political and economic factors that negatively affected young people, particularly in the UK? Surely the music press did not dictate that criteria for helping along the punk movement.

Maybe but would it have exploded in the UK without Malcolm McLaren promoting it for ideological reasons, reasons that the press was sympathetic to? It is interesting that within a few years, punk went back to being underground albeit thriving in the mainstream through its many offshoots.