Your Prog Rock Hot Takes

I'm far from stuck in the '70s (my wife might disagree, yet she looks like she's going to burst when I roll  the likes of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and the Rabbinical School Dropouts).

I view the foundations of prog as coming from two distinct schools of music-the European School and the American School. The European school is rooted in fusing rock with all kinds of classical influences, giving us the likes of KC, Yes, Genesis, ELP, etc. There are obviously lots of jazz elements, but something that I find interesting is the limited cross-pollination among the bands relative to the American school. When there was cross-pollination, it was magical, such as Jon Anderson turning up on Lizard to sing Prince Rupert Awakes or Fripp and Eno getting together to totally mess with our heads. Slowly cross-pollination became more common, with the likes of Bruford showing up in KC and Genesis.

The American School, by contrast, is rooted in all kinds of jazz, blues, soul, and rock structures and less centered around the classical influences. The amount of cross-pollination is extreme, considering the diverse collaborations among all the Miles Davis alumni (McLaughlin, Corea, Zawinul, etc.) and Zappa spreading his alumni all over the place (Belew, Thompson, Ponty, Duke, Val, etc.). As such, the groups tend to be more transitory, and the individuals have really diverse careers with lots of solo and collaboration work outside the flagship bands, making the scene more diffuse.

In the '80s, however, cross-pollination yielded unbelievable results with contributions like the Eno-Byrne collaborations which gave us the likes of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and The Catherine Wheel. After the MTV-infected cultural lag of that time, the '90s brought tremendous diversification, giving us the smorgasbord of progressive styles we enjoy today-and all with very little major label support.