When Did Prog Rock Began?

thanks, you guys!!! i learned a lot//.....

 

When was the first Rare Bird album put out? I know it came out in 1969, yet am unsure of the month- it may have preceded 'In The Court...', and is for sure a hugely influential album- you can hear the influence of Rare Bird in VDGG, ELP and Genesis, in my opinion.

I saw that BBC6 show a while back Dick- it had some great film; the version of 'Little Help' was a real stunner, from an era before Joe Cocker started doing more commercial, AOR numbers in the 80s.

Oh , and I forgot to mention The Nice ... once again, pre-70s.

This is interesting topic, but posts here are rather predictable, except one by ivan, which is very unusual one and contributing to general knowledge - thanks for that. 

The question which was consistenly bothering me while reading this thread was "When music, now known as prog, began to be called "progressive"????  I doubt it somehow that in 70's anyone was refering to Yes or Genesis as to prog, so when the same started??? I have a feeling that all or many of subgenres' names (kraut-rock, zeuhl, art-rock etc etc) came to life before the term "progressive" in relation to music appeared and united all category under this name.

And I am still coming across peope who wholeheartedly believe that "progressive" means "prog-metal", and was introduced or invented by Dream Theater and alikes.

Would you mind to share your knowledge on this subject, or express your opinion please??

 

Above in my response to Peter, I briefly talked about the Sound Of The 60's broadcast on BBC 4 last night, which was was turned over "to musicians who took them selves a bit too seriously" (the announcer's words not mine) ,  and then what the Beeb called 'psychedelic music'. Both Floyd and the Nice had been recorded live in TV studios in 1968 or 9 (dates weren't given), and therefore I was reminded of the quality of musicianship displayed, along with the gimmicks (aka props) these bands employed.

Nice: high standard coming from Keith Emerson  (and then we would have  seen/heard this as about the very best in rock). The gimmicks were only to do with Emerson  playing his Hammond - the knives were out to give distortion, and he played several bars of a longish solo from the rear of the instrument.

Floyd:  doing Astromony Domine sounded poor,  Syd Barrett voice was suffering (I wonder why?), his  guitarwork  poor, Water's bass plodding, drumming average, keyboards interesting but lacking the aggression and the changes Nice  were demonstrating. Gimmicks: the usual lightshow/oil wheels of the Floyd's  shows - a lightshow for the fans to trip to through the night, with music intend to induce trance states in some if not all the audience, therefore repetition (as their interviewer said in this broadcast - until Kevin Ayers left Sot Machine, Machine also indulged in mantra-like repetitions), doesn't require for change to happen  every few bars.

There, if you add the  demands of superior musicship in the British progressive music fan of the time, you have  some of the reasons why  Pink Floyd were called a 'psyschedelic band' (for quite some time after) , and Nice a 'progressive band'.  So I would suggest Pink Floyd weren't called  'progressive' until half a decade later when they took the USA by storm with Dark Side Of The Moon, and  that pigeonholing in prog  is American rather than a British - I suggest many of the original  British prog fans were taken aback to hear Floyd called 'prog' from 1975, when their mindset was : Floyd are 'psychedelic'.

Hendrix was also shown during this broadcast - so why not include his as  prog? 'Prog music', sure, but not 'prog rock' (I trust you know the difference by now) which kicked in  around 1971 as the preferred name, and with it  narrowing of the definition of the genre and therefore the bands which we would include. And beside  there were several other sub genre names for rock : AOR, blues rock, heavy rock, folk rock, into which you (if you WANTED) fairly safely categorise bands. I'll admit , unlike these categories 'jazz roc'k was more ambiguous - examples were the early spin-offs from Miles Davis, e.g. MO, WR, RTF  plus the likes of Soft Machine, Tasavallan Presidentt, heard as both 'prog rock' and jazz rock at the beginning of the 70's. But most subsequent jazz rock fusion bands, because of music changes would not be called prog rock unless their leader was a former prog rocker (e.g. Bill Bruford) or the rock element seemed more dominant than the jazz element in their music,  There was a big active blues rock/rock blues scene both sides of the Atlantic to conveniently pigeonhole Hendrix, and when on occasion  he shift away from the blues (e.g. parts of Electric Ladyland), simply we heard this as Hendrix being 'creative' with drugs - perceived as psychedelia mixed with blues. But in Hendrix's  limited musical output, the blues rock outweigh the  hybrid tunes significantly.

So I argue Pink Floyd took a long time to become called 'progressive rock musician's, in part because we British prog rock fans were snobs - musicianship-wise  they were not first rate in the 60's - touring and maturity changed things there, and the enforced radical rethink amongst the band  (over several years) after Syd Barrett was no longer thought to be leader or going back into Floyd.  Hence when somebody tells me Floyd were dominant at the start of prog, I beg  to differ.

None of it's relevant...who gives a sh*t...ITCOTKC just by age and efficacy.

Don Quito wrote: Precisely, that's why I said there is no band in particular to be considered progressive rock pioneers. I don't think none of them gave an interview, during their years (60-70), telling people or convincing anybody on how progressive they are or became... They just made music and enjoy it... Progressive is evolution without limits...

Yes, this is true. I had even come across an old source which listed the Top Progressive Rock Album for 1969 as being........(drum roll).......Fleetwood Mac's Then Play On!

FWIW: I can see how that qualified as Progressive, barely so, but it is a crappy album in my opinion. I would never own it again, much less listen to it again. A bunch of extended slop with little purpose.

flying teapot wrote: A special issue of Mojo Magazine was dedicated to Prog rock recently, and it pretty much gave the beginner spot to Pink Floyd. The band in its early incarnation may have been more of a psychadelic space rock, but it had firtuoso playing on long extended cuts and drug induced lyrics that easily could cause a seizure. Pink Floyd was just a step ahead of YES also right there in 1968-69. Another that MOJO gave credit to, and is the beginning of the Canterbury sound is Soft Machine with Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and a weird and crazy guy named David Aellen, later of course of Gong. This brings the earliest dabbling of Prog in the the late sixties, But we cannot under estimate the musings of the Moody Blues and their mixture of rock-pop and classical music. So PINK FLOYD, YES and Soft Machine. But don't under estimate the influence of Psyachaelic Music in the whole, because that is were Prog really gets born.

I agree it is between Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd, there the real starters of progressive.

A special issue of Mojo Magazine was dedicated to Prog rock recently, and it pretty much gave the beginner spot to Pink Floyd. The band in its early incarnation may have been more of a psychadelic space rock, but it had firtuoso playing on long extended cuts and drug induced lyrics that easily could cause a seizure.

Pink Floyd was just a step ahead of YES also right there in 1968-69. Another that MOJO gave credit to, and is the beginning of the Canterbury sound is Soft Machine with Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and a weird and crazy guy named David Aellen, later of course of Gong.

This brings the earliest dabbling of Prog in the the late sixties, But we cannot under estimate the musings of the Moody Blues and their mixture of rock-pop and classical music.

So PINK FLOYD, YES and Soft Machine.

But don't under estimate the influence of Psyachaelic Music in the whole, because that is were Prog really gets born.

ivan_2068 wrote: I won't go back to Bach, because he wasn't creating something new that broke with the establishment of his era, he was a genius and one of my favorite musicians, but I believe the seeds of Prog' in clssical music is long after him. I believe the first proggers were The Mighty Handful (Cui, Borodin, Rimski Korsakiv, Mussorgsky and Balakirev) they decided to create music that broke with everything that came from Europe, they were not pópular because they refused to play Strauss waltz (They were offered a fortune to play waltzes in Belgium but they prefered to play their music own during a frigid winter in a Russian park fror free than to play POPular music. Had the five Russian composers who made up The Mighty Handful been less stubborn, they could have been playing indoors - indeed, one of the ballrooms of the Winter Palace had already been placed at their disposal. They were offered Brussels lace coverlets for goal-netting, extra chandeliers for floodlighting and wigged servants for corner flags. Such a luxurious all-weather pitch, with every facility, would have cost them only a couple of waltzes each, but they’d refused.      ‘We’re Nationalist composers,’ piped up Cui. ‘We don’t do waltzes.’      Rimsky-Korsakov - who was to orchestral colouring what a chameleon is to tropical undergrowth - suggested a compromise set of Polish-style mazurkas.      ‘Waltzes,’ the Court Chamberlain insisted. ‘Strauss-style.’      The rest is history. Throughout the winter season The Mighty Handful were forced to play their five-a-side home games in a local park where, from October onwards, the snow fell thickly, and daily. Blizzards were frequent. Their music is very elaborate with incredible and radical changes, hard to understand by most of the people. If this isn't similar to Progressive Rock, I don't know what is. Iván

ha ha hah I don't either. Great post!