I took a break from prog in the mid nineties when I was in college. I figured college kids wouldn't be into this stuff and I didn't want to seem like some kind of weirdo. I had one friend who knew about King Crimson and other bands like Pink Floyd and Yes but that's about it. So partly because of that I was more into the popular alternative bands at the time like Smashing Pumpkins(who actually did have some prog influences but that's another discussion) and others. I met this one guy who told me about this new thing(well not brand new because it had been around for a few years by then but it was still relatively new to me and I didn't know much about it other than it was information based and involved a computer)called the internet. He showed me something called news groups. I asked him if there was one for prog rock and it popped up. I don't remember much about it and didn't spend much time looking at it at the time. This was around 1996. 

Fast forward a few years to late 1998/early 1999 and I found a book in the book store called "the progressive rock files" by Jerry Lucky. This led to me ultimately finding that newsgroup again and prog online in general. Before that I never really thought about looking up prog online and instead relied on my old prog mail order catalogs. In the prog news group and a few years later on another well known prog rock website I remember seeing a lot of folks talking about the prog resurgence that was due to the internet and took place starting around the mid 1990's. Looking back I don't feel it was much of a resurgence at all.

In my mind resurgence kind of implies a lot of people suddenly discovering something for the first time not something that they already knew about but found out is still around. To me that's what happened with prog in the 90's. It was mostly older fans rediscovering prog not younger fans discovering it for the first time. There has been a resurgence in prog but in my opinion that didn't happen until a larger number of younger fans discovered it for the first time and that didn't really start to happen until at least 2005 or so with Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta being possibly the biggest catalysts for that. There were other factors also such as the appearance of this website, the growth of prog festivals and social media but none of those were around(except for the prog festivals which were still very small at that point)in the 1990's. 

So, in conclusion there was a major rediscovery of prog in the 1990's mainly due to newsgroups such as alt.music.progressive and the ability to search for prog websites, if you happened to already know what prog was, but even with the popularity of Dream Theater the real prog resurgence didn't happen, in my opinion, until the new millennium.

 

I didn't see King Crimson with Tool so I can't really speak to that exactly but I would guess something similar happened when ELP toured with Dream Theater. My guess would be many people in their twenties are still trying to figure out what prog is and what it's all about. They need to go to this site and see for themselves and see that it's not all about post rock and prog metal or Rush, Tool, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater. I mention them because they seem to be the most known prog bands for younger people or at least the  first ones they hear about.

As such I think most of the younger prog fans are coming at prog from a different angle then those of us who are maybe a little bit older(or even quite a bit older). While I did meet some twenty something prog fans who told me they got into the genre through Jethro Tull I think that's rather rare for them. I think they are more likely to get into prog(or find out about it)through either prog metal or some other kind of connection(maybe by hearing bands like Tool, Muse, Umphrey's McGee, Coheed and Cambria or Radiohead described as prog). I think these days it's not too likely(although certainly not impossible)they would get into it through older bands like Yes, Genesis or ELP. However, Pink Floyd, Rush and to a great degree King Crimson(maybe through the Tool connection)do seem to have some kind of "street cred" with the younger audiences. 

What is your point?

So you have only been a prog fan for the last ten years? 

Hi,

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: I first got int prog in the mid eighties and discovered the underground prog scene via newsletters and mail order catalogs(some of which are still around but now online stores). Back then there was no internet but there was a burgeoning prog underground happening. The prog resurgence happened very gradually and it started happening before the internet but for the most part it is a myth and I'll explain why.

My apologies, however, the "myth" is only a problem with the media and the folks that believe in top ten ... because the music had been there all along, but some fans, had to have material that sounded like YES and GENESIS, because they got tired of ELP's brashness, and that kind of stuff was no longer around ... and most fans ... so stuck in the top ten mentality, had no ear for music whatsoever, to concentrate on other new material that was out there.

The history of music, going back 500 years, is not one of repetition of top ten bullcrap, or fanboy appreciation and every other generation there is always something new ... but we are too damn stuck on top ten, to appreciate lesser known things and composers ... like Albinoni is a hecker and an idiot compared to Vivaldi, because the top ten fan will only know Vivaldi ... hopefully.

The advent of "progressive" and "prog" music was never really "underground" ... it just did not sell as much, but the proof that you are incorrect is that 50 years later, they are selling way more than they ever did, and their work is appreciated more than ever ... if that is not a sign that things happened, you are not looking.

And then, as is the usual in all arts, it changed into something else and all of a sudden "noise bands" (loud and louder) ... became the in thing, that made folks think they were progressive ... it certainly was a much better definition of the 4 minute song, however, it was now about the 15 minute song ... instead of 4 ... with exactly the same music passages as the smaller song.

Where is the creativity when the style and design is the same?

That is not to say that things like Iron Maiden and Dream Theater, and many other bands do not deserve any credit ... they certainly do so ... however, comparing them to the early material is unfair as this was a completely different time, and ... consider this ... Berklee School of Music is not exactly the London late 60's in terms of creativity and exploration ... and never will be ... because some idiots think that teaching means ... notes and chords and timing ... nothing else! The worst school of music EVER!

Sorry to disagree, but I have been there with all the music since about 1965 or 1966 in 3 countries (2 in the

US if one factors Midwest Madison and West Coast LA!) ... and anyone thinking that the music died and was resurrected, simply was not listening ... and never even heard the early days of FM radio and its incredible addition to the ears of all fans ... until it was finally bought by corporations to push their own product and stop all these different bands from selling anything ... you might not give a poop, but one day in '74, a big corporate guy gave a couple of bands over 100M dollars each, and within a month over 400 bands were dumped because they did not "sell". They did sell, or they would not have been pressed ... are you an idiot that do not know what BUSINESS is all about? It's a commercial lie to get you to favor their top ten! What sort of businessmen/women would do that and not sell a single copy? And they will tell you that they only sold ten copies, so they can say that the big cahoona sold a million copies so you think the big cahoona is great and the other band is crap anyway ...

Wake Up (XTC playing in the background!) ... this is the reality ... and you gotta get past the commercial talk and bs ... there is a huge history of material out there, and too many folks CONTINUE ... time and again ... to ignore other countries and other bands, that deserve the credit and the attention ... that we lost a long time ago, because we had no ears for music anyway ... we only liked the top hit!

After all this time, and history of music ... we STILL ignore ... that there are other artists out there ... and they will continue to compose and work, and create ... but we think they are dead because we won't give them a minute.

Sorry about the rant ... but this is almost personal for me ... I came from a house with 40K books of Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish Literature and there were easily 1000 authors in there that were not index'ed by any University in America ... and stuff that it likely never going to be read or found ... and the music scene with its top ten, is doing exactly the same thing ... an attitude that all of those authors are a bunch of hacks, ash-holes and idiots ... which unfortunately does not say much for the audience, does it?

It was still very fan based though and still targeting mostly only those who were already "into" the genre but maybe only got exposed to it again through the burgeoning internet. I see what you are saying though and I suppose you could say from a band's perspective there was a resurgence. I was referring more to a perspective from the fans and mainstream acceptance. Some of those companies you cite actually started before the internet though and in some cases even before the 90's(Laser's Edge started in the late eighties although initially only as a prog music catalog). So with that in mind you could say "resurgence" in interest but imo not so much popularity in the broader sense. But then if we say that couldn't we also say that there was a resurgence in the 80's with the neo prog scene? Marillion, IQ, Pendragon, Pallas, etc started to pop up in the eighties. 

progaardvark wrote: I think it depends on what you define as "resurgence." It may be that older prog fans were rediscovering the genre in the 1990s, but the 1990s spawned what is sometimes called the "third wave" of prog rock. This includes bands like Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, Glass Hammer, Magellan, Cairo, Porcupine Tree, Anglagard, Anekdoten, and probably many others. I always thought the term "resurgence" applied to this increase in the number bands making this music. The 1990s were also the time when I started seeing more of this stuff in record stores and new record companies appearing that focused almost solely on this genre (like Magna Carta, Lasers Edge, Kinesis, Mellow Records, Musea, Inside Out Music, etc.).

Bingo. It was also a big decade for progressive metal. Back then I listened to the likes of Dream Theater, Eternity X, Fates Warning, Lemur Voice, and Symphony X, along with a crop of neo bands out of the UK, and homegrown prog like Magellan, Glass Hammer, Cairo, Deadwood Forest, Mastermind, Enchant and Spock's Beard. There were a ton of reissues, too.

No, it's not a myth.

In 1991, a group of friends formed The Art Rock Society with the virtuoso multi instrumentalist Pär Lindh as chairman who presented the first Festival with ANEKDOTEN, LANDBERK and ANGLAGARD.

That year a group of Swedish bands rediscovered 70's style Prog and this movement spread tro Europe.

Hi,

alt.music.progressive
alt.prog
alt.new age
... some other groups in Intelec's listing ... and I added progressive themed group to a couple of other places, including the original group that became solidified into the Ygdrasil Journal of Poetic Arts. In that board, I talked foreign music and also foreign film, both of which I still review!

The idea/fact that Par Lindh helped create a group that flourished was a nice gesture (discussed in Eurock at the time), however, what it did show, was that there was a very wide/large interest in music that was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more interesting and educateddddddddddddd than most of the pop music ... thus, the title "The Art Rock Society" reflects a lot more than just 3 bands that have some inclination to the sound of King Crimson ... we won't discuss the other bands it had that didn't ... from the area and neighboring countries, and even the jazz scene that ECM had shown folks so well and so much for quite a few years ... so anyone thinking that creativity did not exist, until the day that someone had a cup of coffee and they wanted to copy KC and YES and ELP ... they are still asleep.

Europe, has been an artistic house for many years, most of it surviving what the church could not kill even after 1000 years ... so us thinking that nothing happened ... is like saying that there was nothing in the "underground" that helped the whole thing, one day, come alive ...

Look folks ... this is not magic. This is not a mystery. It was always there ... go read the literary lives of things (specially Bunuel's) of things in Spain, France and Italy in the 1920's and 1930's when many of these folks were not "known" ... and one day ... they are huge, although they probably did not sell a million like we think is some kind of gold standard for success.

Please go spend some time reading EUROCK ... and each year ... and learn that things were happening in many countries ... most of which we are still ignoring, because we are so keen on protecting the same sound, bands, and ideas ... that supposedly "drove" the new music ... the new music was a factor of many things, including political so much that we are not big enough to say anything about ... because we can only believe in the rock'n'roll fantasy ... and the rest is total crap ... you can not make "meaningful music" ... because some folks in PA and other places are afraid to find out they are incorrect ... THERE IS A WORLD OUT THERE ... and music was there the whole time ... again ... you ears were not tuned to that world.

Btw, one listen to ECM during that time, will show you that some incredible new things were coming up that defied description ... but somehow, they were a better fit on a "jazz" label, than on a stupid "rock" label.

The major Prog Festivals?

- ProgFest: 1993 If I'm not wrong, and precisely with Anglagard and IQ

- NearFest: 1998

- Baja Prog: 1997

- Progday: 1994

In the 90's, everybody thought Prog was dead, but the Swedish resurgence save it from oblivion.

Older people?

I believe all the Anglagard members were between 16 and 20 years

Most of the Swedish and East Europe Prog band members were between 20 and 30.

It's a new generation

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote: In my mind resurgence kind of implies a lot of people suddenly discovering something for the first time not something that they already knew about but found out is still around. To me that's what happened with prog in the 90's. It was mostly older fans rediscovering prog not younger fans discovering it for the first time. There has been a resurgence in prog but in my opinion that didn't happen until a larger number of younger fans discovered it for the first time and that didn't really start to happen until at least 2005 or so with Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta being possibly the biggest catalysts for that. There were other factors also such as the appearance of this website, the growth of prog festivals and social media but none of those were around(except for the prog festivals which were still very small at that point)in the 1990's.

Hi,

Folks .. this is ridiculous ...

The so-called "resurgence" or "reinvention" or re-appearance" of progressive music was not an "accident" ... it was, more than likely always there and it was the Internet, that started making it to people's homes between 1988 and 1992 more or less ... that helped get the style better known and appreciated.

No one, here, is capable of putting it in the proper perspective.

The music never died ... but your perception of it, got a nice burst of emotion and energy with the new Internet, and all of a sudden someone else was discussing this and that band, and the new this and that ... and giving some older works a new dimension that was previously ignored by the "rock press" (I call it the rock toilet paper! Or worse ... the rock database!) ... because it was not a top ten kisser! And Chris Squire would likely kick their butts out anyway with those huge boots!

It's bizarre to me, that no one notices that what we use today ... the internet ... was not around in anyone's computers ... maybe only a handful of us had one in 1989 ... when I got my first one ... as opposed to today, when everyone of us has likely more than one of them ... heck, I got 4 of them!

The immediate effect and knowledge of all the material and stuff out there ... that was mostly hidden from the media ... is all of a sudden alive ... (do you have any idea how many countries tried to suppress the internet and some still do? AND why?) ... and this was the case with the new "resurgence" ... and the idea that it was dead before, is totally ridiculous, since it had never died ... it finally, got the attention it deserved ... and you all still talk like it was some kind of a miracle that some savior was reborn ... we must like our fairy tales a lot!

The Dark Elf wrote: The 1990s were a myth. The decade never existed. Any record of musical achievement in those missing ten years has been eradicated.

Nahhhh ... you would not have missed the Internet coming up  ... no way in heck!

At this point a lot of my disagreements on here are about semantics. I'm definitely not saying something wasn't going on in the 90's and the point of 1991 is important because that's still pre internet. A lot of people think it was the internet that saved prog and that's really not true either. If anything it was band's like Marillion(and possibly Dream Theater). 

Yes, but the 90's were really just an expansion of the eighties. Because using your argument you could say things were starting  in the 80's  with the neo prog "revival." It doesn't take away from the fact that the larger public was mostly completely unaware of prog in the 80's and 90's.  Sure, stuff happened in the 90's but stuff happened in the 80's too. The important thing is the audience. Like I said it was mostly people rediscovering the genre in the 90's. More people actually discovered prog in the 80's then the 90's because bands like Yes, Genesis were still pretty big then and enticed a lot of younger fans(such as myself at the time)to go backwards in their catalogs and discover the "good" stuff. You can call it a resurgence if you want in the 90's but the big question is a resurgence for who? My answer would be those who were already fans(for the most part)unlike the following decade were prog's audience probably tripled if not more so. So if the market is appealing to those who are already fans but just don't know the newer stuff how is that really a resurgence and not a rediscovery? Imo, it's a rediscovery much more than a true resurgence. If a bunch of people who collected stamps and coins as kids all of a sudden discovered a big warehouse that was full of old stamps and coins and that got them into it again does that mean there was a big resurgence in collecting stamps and coins?

I'm talking about the year of creation:

Nope, Progfest was created two months before, it was supposed to be something small, probably a one time event, they didn't expected the success created by Anglagard

Where you there?

I was in 1994.

It was a small festival, planned for a hundred people and the show was full, most people was young, I honestly didn't cared about how people was dressed, I went for the music from Perú (Like 5 Peruvians went) and all were very young, I was in my late 20's

But that was the starting point, this festival encouraged promoters to hire new bands and start events like this one, everything that happened in the 21st century started there.

It meant a lot, Anglagard and Anekdoten became two legendary bands in USA with just one festival, and for the nostalgic, Giraffe played The Lamb complete.

People went from around the world to see them, not massive, but it was the resurrection of Prog...And this means a lot.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: ... People went from around the world to see them, not massive, but it was the resurrection of Prog...And this means a lot.

How could it be "resurrected" if it never died?

What kind of editorial comment is that which makes no sense whatsoever for an artist?

The arts NEVER DIE ... your perception and mine, DO! Why can we not accept the fact that the arts are not the issue ... our perception and how we get to it, is the issue?

Prog was dying.

They only needed the death certificate.

BTW: Some genres die, a good example is Disco Music.

Punk changed so much that it became another genre after 2 years

Was I at Progfest? No I already said I wasn't but I heard they had maybe 3-500 people in a venue that held 1300 or so based on what I've read.

My point is prog was still very small and underground in the 90's. Maybe it still is small compared to the larger population and unless you are big music fan you still might not know what it is but it sure is a heck of a lot bigger than it was back then. I'd say there are at least thirty times as many people into prog now as there were back then(and that's being conservative). 

Yes, the 90's were a very important decade but really it was when Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta entered the top 100 album charts where prog got to where it is now and that happened a little over ten years ago.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: ... Prog was dying. They only needed the death certificate. BTW: Some genres die, a good example is Disco Music. Punk changed so much that it became another genre after 2 years

Prog was NOT dying. It was always there, but had no media attention whatsoever, which made it look like it was not active. Please take a stop at EUROCK and read these years ... just as active as any others.

But we can't let go of our "gods" Ivan ... that's the real issue in the end! And they were being laughed at in the media.

And for my tastes, the Internet kinda stopped that ... COLD. There were too many folks that liked it and kept writing about it. These fans, were the ones that created things like ProgArchives and many of the "progressive" websites. They did not believe that sick media any more than you or I ... and the Internet was proving us right ... these people existed and the bands were being talked about.

DISCO didn't die!. It kinda changed into a different scene, and it became the RAVE thing for a while, and then something else ... it might have died in Peru on top of the mountain, where that music might not even be appropriate, but it's still around ... with a slight different bend ... this is the case in all music. The punk change is pretty much how music changes ... but the Internet, these days, will likely keep a lot of things from dying out ... there are way too many people that love too many things, and they still sell. Heck, now it's a movie about the Gibb brothers and the success ... and they were not "disco" when they started ... like many artists they morphed to stay alive.

It's still ... kinda the same music. The same thing with "progressive" because most you folks do not like to listen to the really far out and out there folk, rock, and other bands that are way and far more miles ahead of most bands mentioned here as "progressive", but because you can't define it ... it ain't progressive!

Go ahead ... tell me that Vivaldi is dead ... or Beethoven ... or Mozart ... MUSIC NEVER DIES ... it does not matter what its "style" or "kind" is. It will have different instruments that make it sound like something else, but its basis is the same. Mechanical, mathematical ... and not progressive, because those two bits are NOT progressive. Maybe in the far elements and the idealistic quantum sciences, but those are so far out there, few can actually read them and appreciate its discussion or create music for them!

Same thing here. And some of us, who should show a much better appreciation and understanding for the whole earth life and changes, including the Internet and how it changed the arts at that very valuable time, specially ... would really help what you write ... but you don't believe in the arts ... how can you  possibly believe in the music except your favorite bands?

Most of those festivals might not have made it as well, without their ability to get to folks on the Internet. De Luca would not have the time and money to pass out so many postcards and addresses ... neither would Nearfest and anything else. Without it, these folks would not have had as large of a response as they did.