Early British Prog vs American. Discuss.

Hi,

Here's how I see it ... sort of ... still trying to define it.

The idea of being a "progressive musician", from an European perspective, means that you have to be fluent in improvisation at anytime.

In America, the idea of being a "progressive musician" is not really possible, because some folks in your neighborhood or school band, or bar band, might know a band or two, the thing they know best is what the American music history shows, and it always seems to end in some type of jazz form.

Fusion, for me, is the American version of "progressive" ... and for all intents and purposes it is also material for folks that are far more educated in music than would otherwise be seen in a "progressive" environment as we saw in England, with young folks and their bands just learning as they go along. However, in Europe, there is not the "critical" environment and complete (no Melody Maker here!!! for example!) disregard for so much music as there is here in America, whose media STILL sticks to the "numbers" and the supposed top bands ... 

Improvisation is an art form in and by itself though ... and not (usually) something that the most educated musicians might enjoy doing all the time. There are exceptions ... and you can see a McLaughlin rip it up with anyone anywhere .... and you can see various folks listed under the ECM and a couple of other labels that love to mix and match what they do ... with the results often been ... weird ... for many of us ... but fascinating all the same.

Improvisation in "America" is different ... it is often mostly related to some form or another, like a riff that you come back to ... and I don't know many bands that do what one guitar player told me ... when we were joking about chords ... he said they could start on A ... and end up on Z ... without even thinking about it ... which means they were into the "sound of it" or the continuation of the "feeling" ... instead of worrying about which note or chord it was. (The band? Djam Karet!)

Europe has a larger history of music and appreciation for it ... you take music out of the Italians, and there would be a war and you would lose! With loud sopranos, too! When hearing CAN in their early days, the guitar improvisations are interesting, and somewhat similar (not in sound) to McLaughlin ... although I think that their studies in Music School, of which some of them were ADVANCED and then some, when they looked at "improvisation" it meant something different that came together with the rest ... and in most cases it did ... AD2 is a good example, all the way to Dance of the Lemmings. By the time they got to Vive La Trance, a lot of their "improvisations" were totally gone, and I have always thought that "Apocalyptic Bore" was a goodbye to the improvisations ... a sort of done that ... time for something new!

For me, "progressive" in America dissolved quick ... the FM stations getting bought by Corporate Raiders, ended the incredible journal of almost 10 years of new music ... but it continued in Europe.

This is easily seen today as we look at history and mark out all the bands that we talk about ... "progressive" never really died, and it's almost becoming obvious that we are probably misinterpreting the term and its usage since the flow in Europe and America go in such a different way ... it's the music they "know" ... not quite what we think, or thought!