A brief history of prog

Certif1ed wrote: crimson thing wrote: Certif1ed wrote: ^Juzt arz laarng arz 'e ain't fraam Daaarzet!      ...but "Daaarzet" is surely the spiritual home of prog? Think of the alumni.....      Ah yes, the Wurzels...

Certif1ed wrote: ^Juzt arz laarng arz 'e ain't fraam Daaarzet!

 
      Very interested to read this if it gets published.


               And I hope it does.



YouthfulTheTid I didn't check where you are from but I really hope you write this book in your regional accent.

　
　


I find this thread very interesting,

                 Whether or not the word prog was bandied about means little to me.


                           Young music journalists appropriating words or slang is neither here nor there. They are doing their job. And their job is to inform us of the latest thing. Because, let's face it, it doesn't come around too often.


        Sit around the office all day waitin' for a scene....            Maybe a coupla years passes              Still nothin' happening.                           Oh bollocks !  Missed it







           
          I know these guys are paid well but I would rather have Mickys' testicles lightly roasted for a fortnight than have to come up with the new trend in music.

I would have said the British psych of the later 60s wasn't particularly akin to freakbeat- there were bands that obviously were, such as The Game, The Creation, John's Children, Small Faces, Who et al., but by and large these were the bands that had been around in the 'mod' or R & B era anyway. IMO, the UK psych was a far tamer beast. I got Kaleidoscope's 'Tangerine Dream' the other day. Fantastic album I must say, but hardly 'maximum R & B' so to speak. It owed more to the poppier, whimsical and occasionally twee (and I say that as a compliment!) of Donovan, Barrett era Floyd etc. I have various compilations of UK psych singles/bands and most of the tracks are quite tame when you compare it to freakbeat.

captainbeyond wrote: I'm feeling the presence of a dozen red herrings swimming around and have lost, regained, and lost the point of this conversation a few times over. Youthfulthetid: I'm not sure I'm getting your point, nor do I see why it is important whether the word "prog" came to use in 1973, 76, or 2006. Is your whole point that, because the word prog may have been invented after the initial flowering of progressive rock to apply to a specific type/genre/sound embodied by groups such as Yes, Genesis, etc, that other artists such as Frank Zappa and Stevie Wonder and Magazine were denied the use of the word "progressive," despite being very progressive, innovative artists, ultimately resulting in a wide underappreciation for their innovations?

No, it's mainly because all you guys (any women here?) are swimming around in your glorious prog universe, which is colourful and bright and rich and oh so many good things, while 'out there' is a world of media (broadsheet newspapers, magazines, TV, radio) where 'prog' is simply a dirty word and looked down on even now.

Take a magazine like MOJO - the only magazine I subscribe to. They are brilliant, covering music from the past. present, and almost future too. But if you scratch the surface even of a good magazine like that, you will find an intolerance of prog that almost borders on the obsessive. Their demigods? 1. The Ramones  2. Iggy Pop  3. The Ramones  4.  The Sex Pistols  5. The Ramones  6.  The White Stripes...  well, you get the picture.

So I did a bit of digging around, and combined this with the fruits of my own memory as I lived through the era in  question. Biggest mystery - why doesn't recorded rock history agree with my memories? Why doesn't it also agree with the few copies of contemporary music papers I could find? Then I began to see what has happened...

As briefly as possible - what we call 'prog' now was called 'rock' in the late 60s eraly 70s. You could go out and buy albums by The Stones, King Crimson, Yes, Humble Pie, Black Sabbath, Genesis, and The Groundhogs, all in one go, and no-one back then thought you were 'mixing genres' or 'can't make up your mind, eh?'. It was all just rock.

It wasn't till punk was leering on the scene in the mid-70s that 'prog' became classified, categorised, compartmentalised, and then loathed. The echoes of that change in perspective sstill echo today, which is why I try to help people see (or remember) how it really was. Punk really did change the world - not the world they wanted to change, but certainly how rock history is now told.

YouthfulTheTid wrote: "Oh no!", you are thinking, "not another history of prog, and by a newbie who should know better..." Actually, this newbie intends to write his own history of prog (one day), and much of it is already alive and living inside his head. Sites like this one (which looks great to my eyes) will help in my research, as it is not possible to know about EVERY band and EVERY trend and EVERY pioneering musician, and I'm sure I will find some answers here... ...I just wanted to give a short history of "prog". Yes, I mean the word itself, not the music which I've always loved. A few facts: Well that's my toe into these prog waters. I guess I will soon learn if I have inadvertently trodden on any toes when I read the replies (if indeed there are any.)

Well, yes, very interesting. Although I still have to credit The Beatles as putting anything that sounded "Prog" on the map because they were a rock band, that commercially put out these influences in a way no other band had up to that point. And it sold. They were the Fab Four that changed the musical world, if not the rest of it.

I'm feeling the presence of a dozen red herrings swimming around and have lost, regained, and lost the point of this conversation a few times over.

Youthfulthetid: I'm not sure I'm getting your point, nor do I see why it is important whether the word "prog" came to use in 1973, 76, or 2006. Is your whole point that, because the word prog may have been invented after the initial flowering of progressive rock to apply to a specific type/genre/sound embodied by groups such as Yes, Genesis, etc, that other artists such as Frank Zappa and Stevie Wonder and Magazine were denied the use of the word "progressive," despite being very progressive, innovative artists, ultimately resulting in a wide underappreciation for their innovations?

crimson thing wrote: ^ I think you underestimate the proclivity of 13/14 year old boys to "invent" slang - we didn't waste all those valuable seconds enunciating "progressive rock music" every time we boasted about our music collections - it was prog!!!   [IMG]height=17 alt=Cool src="http://www.progarchives.com/forum/smileys/smiley16.gif" width=17 align=absMiddle>

Maybe it was! But it didn't get into NME, Melody Maker, or Rolling Stone, or concert programmes, or reviews, or documentaries. Somehow the informal slang of 13/14 year old boys didn't make it out of their bedrooms...

Unless of course you can prove it?
    

chopper wrote: There is a sampler on this site released in 1969 called "Wowie Zowie! The World of Progressive Music". I think the question is when "progressive rock" became known as "prog".

That is the 64,000 dollar question! "Progressive" was very popular in 1969 and 1970, but that was a time when rock music was still trying to get itself taken seriously. By 1971 or 72 that had already happened, so progressive took a back seat, and the bands we all know now as 'prog' (Yes, Genesis, ELP, Crimson, etc) were just looked on as 'rock'. Another reason why these bands stopped being called 'progressive' is the simple fact they were selling shedloads of albums, and therefore they were 'too commercial' to be 'progressive'. (There was nascent snobbery back then too).

"Prog" - if you really look at it, and that is hard to do now, because it has become a term that lots of people love - is something of an ugly shortening of 'progressive'. One syllable. One grunt. One contemptuous dismissal. "Prog". It was intended as an insult, and that could only have happened in the punk era.
The nearest thing to a 'prog genre' before then was either 'space rock' (Floyd, Hawkwind, Tangerine Dream) or 'Krautrock' a term the Germans applied to themselves.