What Happened To You?

I dug out a 1980 recording and release last weekend, by the British band Random Hold, The View From Here (released on Polydor Records), and played it for the first time in a very long time. The point was to transfer the first track What Happened on to my I-Pod. However, it was inevitable that I listened to the whole and eventually transferred the complete record onto CD, as a more convenient format.

I was reminded what brought me to buy this album in 1980, when funds were particularly tight. First it was reading that former member of  Quiet Sun/Matching Mole/Phil Manzanera, Bill MacCormick was playing bass. Second, no doubt hearing the said What Happened played on the radio, and this appealing having a certain new proggie thing about it. Unfortunately I discovered after purchase the rest of album didn't appeal as much, therefore to unplayed for long periods. Some 28 years later, my lack of familiarity with most of the album seems to have now made the whole far more appealing. However, one thing that still didn't click is the vocalist, calling himself (in the vernacular of the punk/post-punk period) Random Hold!! Trying to make comparisons, I would have said Random Hold vocally was a cross between David Sylvian and John Rotten, with the emphasis on the less pleasant aspects of those two vocalists' styles. And being reacquainted with their studio recorded music after so long, the band Random Hold sound now like they were holding back, employing simple keyboard riffs, not letting solos continue for too long i.e. avoiding being prog - although Mr MacCormick was left with plenty of space (recognisable from his outings on  solo Phil Manzanera albums).

Now to the point and the title of this thread. Random Hold recorded/released - and seeing there is a CD with live tracks - also touring in 1980. 1980: post punk, new wave whilst prog rock is ignored or blasted by the UK media. Here you have jobbing musicians wanting to survive. So may I argue the likes of Bill MacCormick and many other musicians first known in prog field, must have felt  they had been cut a drift and in a hostile environment, where music is expected to be more simple than the mid 70's? Which lead to music which had some disguised complexity but a thick veneer of simple chord structures, simple playing, less attractive lead vocals and ultimately a music which is now stuck in the 80's?

Well of course those prog rock bands that did survive, either by disappearing underground or taking up temporary residence in the USA, changed as well. 80's  King Crimson wasn't the same as the Red-period Krimson. Yes got simplified -  e.g. lost the metaphysical lyrics etc. Genesis simplified in aiming at the hit charts and so became stadium rock.

Talking with Jakko Jakczyk last year, I asked him specifically about forming and then trying to survive as a jazz rock band in 79/80. You didn't last long - and you were forced to compromise before the band members went their separate ways (Jakko's 64 Spoons' compilation of studio and live material Landing on A Rat Column, reveals a band forced to compromise be it in a very entertaining way). And then Jakko's next band with Dave Stewart, the very Canterbury Rapid Eye Movement, couldn't get a record deal. Similarly Jack Bruce/Jon Hiseman/Allan Holdsworth recorded a 30 minute demo (aka The Sherwood Forest Tapes) of jazz fusion and blues rock, and couldn't find a taker in the record industry for what was considered last year's music.

Recently I caught an interview with a couple of the keyboard players of popular dance-electronica bands of the 80's e.g. Human League. They said that they discovered playing guitar to the standard of many prog players was impossible. However, keyboards had become massively cheaper and affordable through the 70's and with the increasing numbers of effects on board, a keyboardist didn't have to have to anything like the skills of Rick Wakeman. Indeed using 2 fingers and sequencer + somebody playing a simple beat on a drum kit or a drum machine, they could produce music which appealed to the masses crammed into a dance hall .

Hence mass-consumed music of the 80's from one point of view was simpler but played on more complex (but cheap) instruments. Therefore former prog musicians were forced in some  sea-change diluting their performances or drown. Interesting to note, musicians labelled punk or had jumped on the punk band wagon, became a tad more sophisticated, e.g. Stranglers, Police, Squeeze, Joe Jackson.

And what doesn't fit in to my argument is the neo-prog of Marillion and later It Bites. Is this down to the apparent familiarity of neo-prog band's music - so less of challenge of trying something really new, or is it that combined with the hit charts being targeted with shorter songs by these bands than those which their album-oriented predecessors produced?