re: ELP, Haven't aged well?

raindance wrote: ELP were too adventorous for the mainstream and so didn't get it. Emerson was a pioneer in keyboard sounds/technology  that are still being replicated today. You mention Genesis! well they weren't great musicians so were limited in their creativity and so made more accessible music that hasn't aged very well at all!

What do musical skills have to do with creativity?
It's usually the other way round, it's your limitations that encourage you to be creative.
Great musicianship can even lead to creative lazyness. ELP and DT are good examples of that.

Everyone who can play can produce many notes, the challenge is to make something meaningful with them.
Like Genesis did indeed.

PS. Genesis = no great musicians? limited creativity? I won't even go into that.
PS2. ELP too adventorous for the mainstream? if there was ever one prog mainstream band it was ELP!
PS3. Don't think I don't like ELP. Their debut and a couple of scattered songs are fantastic. Their style just didn't age well


Edited by Bonnek - May 25 2010 at 08:55

raindance wrote: ELP were too adventorous for the mainstream and so didn't get it. Emerson was a pioneer in keyboard sounds/technology  that are still being replicated today. You mention Genesis! well they weren't great musicians so were limited in their creativity and so made more accessible music that hasn't aged very well at all!

You actually got everything wrong here.

Genesis Gabriel-era were really quite obscure, while (the silly and dated music of) ELP sold millions of albums and filled stadiums.

Of course all that had changed by the end of the 70's but not because ELP were too adventurous

Edited by boo boo - May 25 2010 at 09:38

^ yes, Bombast of organ and synths. You put that very well 
And I agree to the rest of your post as well by the way.
Well, except the ageing bit. ELP really have very little replay value for me.


Edited by Bonnek - May 25 2010 at 12:01

To a certain extent I kind of get what people are saying regarding ELP's music sounding dated, but I think that this probably applies to far more prog bands than we would care to admit.  The whole 70's prog sound is dated.  Doesn't mean that you still can't like it. 

harmonium.ro wrote: Pablo, "aging" in this case does not refer to the object of our debate but to the way the object is perceived. Yes, of course the "bombast of organ and synths" by ELP are the same , what changed was the perception. Not too many people can now like "bombast of organ and synths" (whether the music is good or not).

It is about perception, but a lot of 70's progresssive rock (and a fair amount of 60's music too) has a "timeless" quality to my ears.  A lot of 80's music sounds really dated to me, but other music has this timeless quality.  80's RIO/ Avant commonly sounds less dated to me than 80's Neo-Prog.  I think part of that has to do with not being so familiar with the styles of music that avant prog groups were making at the time; whereas, I hear that typical 80's influence in Neo-Prog that I was familiar with at the time.  So the RIO sounds fresher to these years.  I think I can extend the same principle to quite an extent to 70's prog that sounds dated and not so dated to these ears, but it's not really that....  Some remains fresh, and some sounds hackneyed (not saying it is) and stale now.  "From the Beginning", though of its time, still sounds, mostly, fresh to me (and quite timeless), but something like "Tarkus" does not.  Though there are definite indicators in the song as to when it was made, a song like "From the Begginning" would be that much more difficult to figure out fairly precisely when it was made for me than "Tarkus".  One style dropped out of fashion, and the other continued with variation.

Another poppish song that sounds timeless to me is Mellow Candle's "Messenger Birds", I could not guess that was released in 1972 (and recorded in '711, I think). 

I love a lot of music that is very dated (very obviously of its time) -- that can make music appeal more to me -- especially with 60's music.

harmonium.ro wrote: That's a good position in itself, but it doesn't explain the great variation (read: decrease) of the number of fans.

Logan wrote: Another poppish song that sounds timeless to me is Mellow Candle's "Messenger Birds", I could not guess that was released in 1972 (and recorded in '711, I think).

I would never have guessed it was recorded 1299 years ago!

The Quiet One wrote: That's my point. If someone considers ELP's bombastic sound dated, then why not consider Genesis and Yes dated for their own kind-of style?