Books about the early days of progressive rock?

The trouble with setting a parameter of 1969-1975 is that most of the groundwork for progressive rock was set much earlier, circa 1965 - 68 particularly. Another problem is that books tend to cover magazine articles and recordings, ignoring crucial bands that had a huge influence but who never recorded during that phase, or were bypassed by the popular magazines. This distorts the real picture.

This may sound bitter, but from this one book I'm reading, which
will remain nameless, it seems some authors just want to throw in everything
they know about everything "academic" and try to apply it to the topic.  It is a bit pompous and
lowbrow, in it's own way.  I think a better approach would be to interview the people, and
realize that some degree of fame may have changed them, and use whatever wisdom
life has given you to arrive at what these people and their non-famous peers were
thinking 30 or 40 years previously.  To try to tie it into post-modernism is a bit absurd
when you have harmonic "figurative" music, which is not trying to deconstruct anything,
but instead build new structures much like the Baroque, Classical or Romantic period.

Emerson's autobiography isn't really serious,  but I read some interviews with him in the
early 70's where he was actually saying profound things about music.  It goes to show
that over time he just didn't care about that stuff to put it in the autobiography, for whatever
reason.  I'm not saying he doesn't understand what he was saying then, maybe he just
wanted to write a popular book. 

I think it's pretty obvious that these guys were at the top of their level intellectually...
I would underplay the dark angle of the Burroughs side for the major players in the more popular prog
music and think that they were just trying to create music more like the classical greats.
They wanted their innovations to be pleasing and loved by all.  A lot of these
other bands, like some of the krautrock variety, were a bit too drugged out to make
music that had much of a universal appeal. 

I get a sense that some like ELP and Floyd were incredibly mature individuals early on, whereas
Genesis slowly built up this professional maturity to the point where it seemed to eventually override
their artistic instincts. 

There is a saying, "Fame lifts up that which is light."  Every famous or somewhat famous
person I ever got close to did seem somewhat lightweight in some ways compared
to others who may have had similar talents.  I would also put that in the equation if you want
to think about what the prog greats are like.  Look at how so few of them stayed involved
in writing more serious work.

This group played prog 2 yrs before there was such a thing

Pardon my ignorance, I'll need to check out what 'Baroque Rock' is. 1-2-3(Clouds) was the blueprint for Yes, The Nice, King Crimson etc. Ritchie was the first keyboard player in Rock to stand and take a leading role, long before Emerson and Wakeman. Then again, (IMO) Clouds didn't adapt so well to the prog era, Ritchie remained an organ player, not keyboards/synths, and the band couldn't seem to incorporate their own writing anything like as good as the bands who copied them, like Yes and Crimson. 1-2-3 though, was a catalyst. 

brainstormer wrote: What is this 1,2,3 band the poster is talking about?  Do they have a discography on here?

1-2-3 was prog at least 2yrs before prog. Sure they have a profile here, check out Clouds

A few books come to mind:

Edited by Dayvenkirq - May 23 2012 at 04:06

Hi,

Edited by moshkito - May 24 2012 at 11:02

What a good summary as an epitaph to the post.

I'd like to revitalize this topic as I've been deeply into prog books lately... because I'm just finishing my script (in Finnish, sorry!) of a book on prog 1967-1979 (UK - about 60% of the contents- , Germany, Italy, rest of Europe excluding Finland, North America).    Hopefully all Finnish members here will be glad for the first general prog handbook in Finnish language, and will check it out in spring when it comes out! (I told about the book in the latest Colossus magazine too).   Here are some English titles I've enjoyed:

DiamondDog wrote: JeanFrame wrote: I'm afraid that like most history, it depends who's writing it, to the victors go the spoils could be a theme song. The real roots of what happened are below the somewhat limited vision of the music press, who always go for the popular and commercially successful, and the visible anecdotes come from bands who prefer to write their own history rather than tell how it really was, in case it dents their egos and manufactured legacy. Why is there so little truth about? That's then followed up by the book writers who use these thin and censored sources as sources, so we end up with a kind of watery soup. What music literature needs are serious historians who pay no attention to slogans and charts and instead go back to basic forensics. Then we might have a story we can take seriously. Well said.