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rwhite View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Pink Floyd and Prog Music
    Posted: May 29 2009 at 14:08
Hello, I've been a lurker here for a while and first of all just wanted to commend the forum for it's intelligent discussion (so many forums aren't like this). But anyway, I just thought I'd present my viewpoint regarding some recent thoughts on Pink Floyd. For some time, I've thought of them as one of the very biggest names in prog rock and I still do believe that, but I now find a shift in how I would label them. Of course, the Syd Barrett years are most definitely psych, but I now believe that Pink Floyd remained a psychedelic rock group all the way up through Dark Side of the Moon and didn't turn progressive rock until Wish You Were Here. Being quite familiar with their work (I have all their albums through Momentary Lapse of Reason), I don't feel like I'm making an uninformed judgment here. Now I love both prog and psych, and I realize, like so many things, that there is not necessarily a clear-cut line between the two. Dark Side seems to be the culmination of what came before as a result of their prior ongoing evolution. Everything just happened to fall into place perfectly however, which has probably led some to believe that it took longer to create. From comments by the band's members though, it was actually one of the quickest albums they did. Wish, on the the other hand, feels much more carefully planned than Dark Side which has a more free flowing feel to it. Even those first four opening notes of David Gilmour's treated guitar on Wish are an indicator of this - you can just tell there was a lot of effort to make each of those notes have the perfectly desired sound quality - and it succeeded! So in the end, I place Wish You Were Here as the beginning of Pink Floyd's prog rock stage while Dark Side of the Moon was the finalization of their psychedelic rock journey. Any comments on this?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 29 2009 at 14:26
I feel that they were progressive all the way through. With a mix between psych and prog, beginning with a strong leaning toward the latter, until they balanced out with DSOTM/WYWH/Animals.

After this, they returned to more psychedelic, with a dark bent in the Wall, and Then they turned to psych rock for the Gilmour era.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 29 2009 at 14:46

I can see why to someone who isn't really into the Floyd wouldn't group them in with Yes and ELP, but I think from Atom Heart Mother on they were absolutely a prog rock band.  If Atom Heart Mother, One Of These Days, Echoes, all of DSOTM, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Dogs, Pigs, Sheep.....etc etc etc aren't progressive rock.... then what is exactly?  All they lacked was an emphasis on virtuosity, but their stuff was more spacey and mellow, so it fit that they weren't doing frantic solos and instrumentals. 

Edit: come to think of it, Saucerful Of Secrets (the song) and most of the Ummagumma studio tracks are pretty proggy as well. 
"and if the band your in starts playing different tunes, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon"
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 29 2009 at 15:10
Strangely enough, even though I have been a huge Floyd fan for years (though not so much in the past 10 or so, just because I've heard literally everything they've ever done a million times) I've never considered them Prog.  However, I would have to say that the way they "progressed" from album to album certainly could qualify them, and their innovativeness in terms of studio usage, found sounds, and early adoptions of  audio and music technology apply as well (and, of course, long tracks and concept albums).  But from a compositional standpoint, and speaking as a musican myself, I always found their music very basic and simplistic.  Which I don't normally assocaite with Prog.  But, of course, this web site broadens the definition of Progressive rock considerably over what I would think of as Prog so this is just an opinion of mine really.

Having said all that, I think the fully deserve to be on this site.  Especially if bands like Led Zeppelin and The Doors are on here.  I think of them really as psych rock, with some slight prog leanings.  But again, that's just me.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 29 2009 at 16:46
I believe they are prog rock.  I think the reason people disagree is the lack of complexity in their music.  I feel like they have everything else though.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 29 2009 at 16:55
of course Floyd were psych and their essential approach and simplicity remained more or less the same, but they surely became one of the more truly progressive bands in the world as that approach evolved album by album until almost unrecognizable, and comparable to other prog greats in its development

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 29 2009 at 20:58
Originally posted by Repner Repner wrote:

I believe they are prog rock.  I think the reason people disagree is the lack of complexity in their music.  I feel like they have everything else though.

This

Probably quite idiotically, I don't consider them to be as "proggy" as YES or GENESIS... Mostly because they aren't as complex in music writing or in technicality.

That isn't a bad thing though, simple can be good.
And Pink Floyd is a perfect example of this.

Once again, that being said, Pink Floyd aren't very simple really. Perhaps comparatively simple, not otherwise though.

Great band.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 14:46

They may not have played progressive rock all the time, but they played enough of it. I myself belief Dark Side of the Moon to be crossover prog.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 15:09
I agree with you about the change they made between dark side and wish you were here.  For a while I was a prog fan, but I really didnt like pink floyd because I didn't like their psych stuff.  I like all their music now, but wish you were here was the album that made me change my mind about them because I think it was definitely their most progressive album and a big step from proggish psychedelic music to music that was difinitively progressive
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 17:55
I like their early psychedelic instrumentals better than their later stuff, but I would definitely say PF is prog. Their only downfall was making a few commercially popular songs. Tongue
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 18:26
I still can't understand why is psychedelic rock incompatible with progressive rock. We have a whole subgenre here dedicated to this mix!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 18:49
^ not incompatible at all - blood relatives - just a different approach and goals

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 18:52
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

I still can't understand why is psychedelic rock incompatible with progressive rock. We have a whole subgenre here dedicated to this mix!
What we have is a subgenre dedicated to Psychedelic Progressive Rock and Progressive Space Rock, the name of which is shortened to Psychedelic/Space Rock. (http://www.progarchives.com/subgenre.asp?style=15). This subgenre excludes pure Psychedelic Rock bands.
 
What?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 22:02
I'm sorry. I really just can't see how you can say that Dark Side of the Moon isn't progressive rock. It's a concept album that flows so very well. Besides that, typewriters seem pretty progressive to me. Not to mention the fact that this becomes a reoccurring theme throughout the album. I think what makes it the most progressive is it's very strong instrumental base. I think it's safe to say half the album is instrumental.

I could go on and on about it, but I guess it just depends on how you view the boundary between Psychedelic Rock and Space Rock. I really like to think that psychedelic rock is more basic and main stream while space rock is psychedelic rock that is progressive.

I think it's also important to note that this album was very mainstream. So many of my friends who don't even know what progressive rock is but listen to classic rock love this album as well as other Pink Floyd works (but mostly Dark Side of the Moon). I never really understood that because I've always seen Pink Floyd as one of the most important progressive rock bands (I think that's because they seem so much more polished than other bands like ELP).


Edited by Little Sir John - May 31 2009 at 22:03
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: May 31 2009 at 22:33
I didn't mean that just because it's psych doesn't mean it isn't prog, it's just really good space rock Thumbs Up
Is it just me or does anyone else think that Space Rock (excluding PF of course) gets underrated/ overshadowed by other subgenres? It doesn't get talked about a whole lot, maybe more people would help dispel and clear up confusion as to whether psych/space is prog.

Anyways, IMO if you want to get into PF it is best to start with Dark Side, then Meddle, then Wish You Were Here, that way you see the best of both sides, both the experimental and the more symphonic side. If those three albums can't get you to admit PF is prog, then you probably aren't going to think the rest is prog. I'm not saying that you have to like PF or think they are prog, but those three albums are IMO some of their best in each "phase" of their career.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 01 2009 at 09:23
Originally posted by Atavachron Atavachron wrote:

^ not incompatible at all - blood relatives - just a different approach and goals



I know, it was a rhetorical question Tongue I find it strange when people dismiss a lot of music in this subgenre by calling it "just psychedelic".
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 03 2009 at 02:42

Barrett/Floyd were the most progressive of all the psychedelic bands - and their music was absolutely not run of the mill psychedelia.

It's important to have benchmarks, so pick a psyche album at random, like Country Joe and the Fish's "Electric Music for Mind and Body", Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" - or anything else. Both have progressive elements, but are psychedelic at core.
 
Note how the music falls into two neat camps - long meandering jams around a couple of chords, often using the harmonic minor, phrygian mode or other "Eastern" sounding scales, or short pop/rock songs with special effects, "acid" lyrics and the same modal scales in solos. It's not quite as straightforward as that - nothing in music ever is!
 
Then listen to "Piper At The Gates of Dawn" - it's in a league of it's own. There's very, very little (that I've ever heard) in rock/pop music from 1967 or before that is as sophisticated in terms of composition - apart from the obvious exceptions such as Zappa's "Freak out", or possibly The Doors' debut. 1968 (post Piper) is a different story...
 
This is because Floyd's longer songs were drafted like architectural blueprints - Floyd (3 architecture students and one artist) are on record as saying that this was their approach.
 
The structure is pretty much cast in stone (sic) - but they were absolutely free to improvise around that structure. "Saucerful of Secrets" is the best example of this approach at work, and is what differentiates Floyd from "pure" Psyche bands. Compare the version on the original album with the Pompeii version - all the sections are in place, the only real differences are subtleties in performance and improvisation.
 
Compare other psyche bands live performances - the jams just get longer around the two chords, and the solos drift off into indulgence, sometimes for the better, often worse - but it's clear that the focus is on the long improvs, not the structure.
 
This element of stringent, formal composition is just not evident in most Psyche, but is key to Classic Prog bands such as King Crimson, Genesis and Yes.
 
One of the very best examples is "Echoes" on "Meddle", which is a brilliant composition - far better than AHM.
 
By contrast, DSOTM is simply a collection of songs that are very well sequenced together to produce the feeling of a complete whole - I'm not trying to detract from its obvious brilliance, but it is in no way as sophisticated a composition as "Saucerful..." or "Echoes".
 
Similarly, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" is arguably not a particularly sophisticated composition, and hence not really as progressive as the earlier material. Like DSOTM, WYWH is an album that sounds prog, but isn't really, on a fundamental level - unlike Animals or The Wall.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 03 2009 at 12:29
I wonder how PF would have developed, if Syd would have stayed (sane)...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 04 2009 at 12:27
Hi,
 
How sad ... there is enough literature out there that has the history of Pink Floyd, and Syd Barrett and many other events around the band and the the time that it came up ...
 
Pink Floyd is NOT ... and never was ... proganythingbullsh*t ... and even Roger will tell you out front that many of those people have not heard enough music to even know the meaning of the word!
 
Pink Floyd was, like many other bands that we cherish, a product of the times, the educational system and the arts ... nothing less, nothing more.
 
Pink Floyd, like many other bands and people related to the scene was also put together with people that were not exactly low end uneducated students that are brainwashed by news media and don't know the difference between 4/4 and Ligetti, or Satie, or Jazz!
 
You can see a lot of what this whole thing was about ... grab the DVD "Tonite We All Love in London" ... and you can see that Syd Barrett was exploring just as much as anyone else ... that exploration has absolutely nothing to do with "prog" ... or as Mr. Fripp would say ... it's just a jam exploring some themes and ideas in rock music terminology.
 
That PF was considered "psychedelic" was more a media thing and record company thing than it was real, since, and you can see this ... it was all over pretty quick ... one drug too many ... over and out. But that psychedelic "Music" which has a lot more in common with English skit comedy of the time that you heard on the BBC radio, than it does with anything psychedelic itself, was more of a media event relating to radio and such than anything else ... look at the art scene in London at that time ... look at that video ... look at what Soft Machine does at the time (right next to PF on the same stage! ... and realize one magickal and important thing ... the number of artists and people around this ... check out Daevid Allen's talks about the times and the literary giants he was around and sharing fun with ... as were others.
 
That. is how some art scenes develop and sometimes a musical process comes with it ... and the same thing that many of these people ended up doing in music, was also being done in film and theater at the time. You must realize that London, New York and Paris are the artistic capitals of the world ... and when a King Crimson hits, 10 bands copy it ... immediately ... or when Beatles hit ... 10 bands will copy immediately. Granted, there are some folks that are not copies and a lot of these "progressive bands" are not exactly copies ... but saying Genesis is original when Europe already had a famous history of story tellers and staging events for the like ... is pre-posterous ... and someone needs to go see Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel ... for a week, so they will understand and know the cultural developments and influences that helped bring about something different and new ... for which the 20th century and this time is one of the single greatest development events in art's history ... and this is the credit that we are taking away.
 
"Prog" by itself ... is meaningless ... in the proper context is very important ... but don't forget that these people did not create/compose "prog music" ... all they clamored for was a voice ... just like you and I would if you felt you had something to say .... and it may or may not include some lyrics ... what's so hard about that picture ... unless you went into it to be a rock star and pick girls and didn't give a poop about anything --- like today?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: June 04 2009 at 13:30
Just think of the word progressive - moving forward, advancing - in this case, by pushing the boundaries of rock music to places it has not been before. KIf that does not describe The Pink Floyd, then I don't know what doesBig smile
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