I'm beginning to turn around my attitude toward the music that the early prog bands played when they caught the wave of pop that seemed to arise and descend in the 80s. Although these songs do not carry the depths and highs of the prog that came before it, this "pop-prog" still has more in it than pop music in general does.
I think this turn around comes from the change in the way that I listen to music now. I have room in my life for pop music but only in measured doses. When I owned music on records, tapes or even CDs it was easiest to listen to music by listening to the whole record or CD. Although with tapes and CDs I could re-record song mixes doing that was a little bit more work than what I generally wanted to do.
But now I can effective scramble my MP3s and build up my own surprising, fresh mixes with little effort. Now I find pop-prog songs as a great dose of seasoning in the greater mix. The relative banalities of those songs show up their virtues better in isolation than they do bundled together I guess.
Now I first discovered prog through pop-prog. That is due mainly to the fact that my interest in music started when I received my first radio in around 1982. Yes, I am a child of the 80's. When Yes' 90125 came out it was for me a kind of revelation and, along with Asia's debut album, my gateway into prog. From there I traced the history of bands and musicians back to the original wave of prog-proper.
Now as I find myself sampling music from the 80's in this information age of the internet, I find that I can recall a greater appreciation for the pop-side of prog. And it would, after all, be a strange limitation if prog artists couldn't take on pop music styles along with all the other styles that have found a niche there.
Some pop-prog albums worth listening to:
Asia, Asia
90125, Yes
Genesis, Genesis
Hold Your Fire, Rush
World's Apart, Saga
/PAlogo_v2.gif "Progarchives.com Homepage")
Celebrating Pop-Prog
Topic Options
