The intergenerational appeal of progressive music

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When I ask my 23-year-old daughter what music we should listen to while driving, her response is "Anything but Yes."  So classic symphonic prog is certainly the less likely subgenre to appeal to the younger generation in our household.  Admittedly a small and purely anecdotal sample.

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emigre80 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member Joined: January 25 2015 Location: kentucky Status: Offline Points: 2223	Posted: March 05 2015 at 14:15
	When I ask my 23-year-old daughter what music we should listen to while driving, her response is "Anything but Yes." So classic symphonic prog is certainly the less likely subgenre to appeal to the younger generation in our household. Admittedly a small and purely anecdotal sample.

Raff Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: July 29 2005 Location: None Status: Offline Points: 24429	Posted: March 05 2015 at 13:23
	Your observations correspond to what I have often thought while listening to a wide range of progressive rock. Indeed, I believe that classic symphonic prog is the least likely subgenre to appeal to the younger generations, and it is not a coincidence that the majority of prog fans from the Baby Boomer generation tend to favour modern bands that have the same characteristics as the classics - hence the popularity of tribute bands such as The Musical Box or The Watch, or even of clever quasi-plagiarists as Wobbler or Glass Hammer. On the other hand, Krautrock, Electronic, RIO/Avant and even Prog Folk are the subgenres that have expanded the most outside the boundaries of prog, in some cases influencing other genres (such as New Wave), in others lending themselves to interesting instances of crossover that have attracted listeners not normally associated with the prog scene. As to albums that have or haven't stood the test of time, I have noticed that an album like Pavlov's Dog's Pampered Menial - by many considered lightweight because of its focus on the traditional song form rather than the expanded epic - sounds remarkably "modern", almost a forerunner of the contemporary crossover prog trend. Conversely, the classic prog sound - as embodied by Genesis, Yes, ELP and their ilk - seems to be more like a closed circle that offers very few opportunities for actual expansion, and is therefore doomed to be reproduced rather than updated. King Crimson, as you stated in your original post, are the exception to this rule, even though their recent reformation seems to me more a homage to the past than a wish to contribute to the development of modern progressive rock.

Toaster Mantis Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Reviewer page Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898	Posted: March 05 2015 at 12:45
	Something I've pondered a bit, half as a result of having studied art history at university and as a result thinking about music in a very "cultural historian" manner, is which progressive rock/metal endures in historical influence and what fades. See also the thread I started about generation gaps in the progressive music community, and a more recent one about the slang term "dad rock" used sarcastically to refer to classic rock which isn't also popular with generations younger than its original audience. The thing I started asking myself a while ago, I think it was in a discussion of music elsewhere, is how much the perception of which 1960s/1970s progressive rock has "aged the best" basically comes down to its inspiration to later music subcultures. It started when I thought that King Crimson's heavy mid-1970s triptych of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red has aged way better than not just their other classic albums, but also most other canonical LPs from that scene... it certainly doesn't sound as "1970s". I then wondered if that might have something to do with how much the abstract approach to heavy guitar playing that Robert Fripp introduced would shape heavy metal history, an influence most obviously felt in Voivod but also modern black/death metal as heard in for example Morbid Angel. Then there's how the slow-burn tension-and-release composition style of much post-rock can be traced back to those three LPs through Slint's Spiderland. I've also noticed a similar thing with the Krautrock movement, which seems to on average have way more intergenerational appeal with people my age than the "Anglo-prog" of its time. Maybe this could be a result of the Teutons thinking a bit further outside the box in terms of music experimentation, however I suspect this also has something to do with Krautrock's influence on not just modern electronic music by way of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream but also post-punk, noise rock and so on. Notice the evolution that the Japanese noise rock band The Boredoms went through, starting as psychotic surrealist No Wave punks before turning into 21st century Kosmische Musik-revivalist space cadets. What do you say? Would be interesting to hear some observations from people who have been around a bit longer for the rise of some of those movements. (I'm something of a novice within electronic music and noise rock, as much as I've come to love both in the last 3 years) Edited by Toaster Mantis - March 05 2015 at 14:48
	"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook