Asia....rising from the rubble of prog rock??

richardh wrote: My favourite Asia track is probably Cutting It Fine from the debut. Thats for me a great ensemble peice and I simply don't care whether its ''prog'' or not.

 

 

 

Well said.  A real waste of talent by Steve Howe, Carl Palmer, and John Wetton (and, then, even Greg Lake when he replaced Wetton)...

As for Howe I think he sort of got caught up in and perhaps needed a band with Yes not an option at the time. He was the first of the original line up to jump ship after falling out with Wetton over the bands direction.Downes was never really a 'progger' as such despite a brief dalliance with Yes.

 

 

 

I think Asia was designed by Wetton to be an attempt to become a more commercially acceptable version of what UK had tried to be.  The need to include Howe and Palmer probaby had more to do with their name recognition than any other factor and both sounded badly dated on the recordings.

 

Its an unusual track as it has two instrumental passages. The first one has Carl Palmer doing some trademark fastfootwork on the twin bass drums and then Howe takes over for the last bit (slightly reminiscent of the instrumental section of Layla in mood). This is the kind of thing Asia do best I think. They never wanted to be a full blown prog band and made that clear from the beginning. This was something that came mainly from Wetton and lead to some friction between him and Howe if I understand correctly. Asia could be seen as a waste of prog talent but individually they had already done it with their previous groups and probably reasoned it would have been pointless and self defeating to try and repeat all that again.

 

My favourite Asia track is probably Cutting It Fine from the debut. Thats for me a great ensemble peice and I simply don't care whether its ''prog'' or not.