Why don't most people love our beloved music?

Prior to discovering this website by chance back in 2004 I  didn't really classify music at all. Either I like it or I didn't whether it was Tangerine Dream or Blondie.or Motorhead or Rimsky -Korsakov. I was actually looking for something about the Hungarian band Omega and ran into PA in my search ( I had just got my first computer ). Many bands I like just happen to fit into this category called prog rock. In my early days of colecting music back n the mid seventies just about any popular music  that wasn't disco, country, jazz or classical was classified as progressive.
I foud this in my pile of crap. It' an excerpt from a David Byrne article from the The New York Times, Oct.3 1999. The title of the article was "I hate World Music".

" Having the right piece of music at the right time of your life can inspire a radical change,destructive personal behaviour or even fascist politics. Sometimes all at the same time . On the other hand, musiccan inspire Llove, religious ecstacy, catharic release, social bonding and  a glimpse of another dimension. A sense that there is anothertime, another space and another, better universe. It can heal a broken heart, offer a shoulder to cry on and a friend when no one else understands. There are times when you want to be transported,, to get your mind around some stuff you've never encountered before."

I dunno I don't go around saying I'm a progrock fan. If someone asks what do ypu listen to I just say a lot of sh*t that's off the beaten track. A lot ofsh*t that's weird to a lot of people but not weird to me.


Edited by Vibrationbaby - May 20 2011 at 10:06

I suppose we have a liking for complexity and invention, whereas the mainstream tends to prefer familiarity and convention. 

The Dark Elf wrote: Garden of Dreams wrote: Harry Hood wrote: cstack3 wrote:   Prog was also most popular in the 1970's, when marijuana was widely available & commonly used!  Even the musicians used it (many of them anyway) from what I've read.....TFTO was supposedly conceived during a trans-Atlantic flight, when the band Yes were stoned on hash brownies!!  Concerts in the 1970's were so thick with pot smoke that you could barely see the stage.  These days, concerts are so antiseptic that they are not nearly the "event' that they used to be.   If anything marijuana is more widely used and available now than it ever was back then. In the 70's pot was much more demonized and something of a niche, but these days it's become a major part of popular culture (despite it's illegality), and you can even get a prescription to use it legally in some parts of the world. You can't smoke in venues anymore but that's simply because you can't smoke in venues anymore. But the correlation between decreased marijuana use and decreased prog popularity is just silly. Marijuana is definitely still popular.  Almost everyone at my high school smokes it except me.  Its still part of the culture and I smelled plenty of it at the Iron Maiden and Rush concerts I attended (great shows).   Not so fast, Garden. In the 70s smoking cigarettes was allowed in arenas in the U.S.; therefore, ushers could not ascertain whether joints or cigarettes were being passed back and forth, and so joints were passed up and down rows all through concerts (and any other drug could be purchased in the bathrooms as well). Nowadays, in the U.S. at least, there is a smoking ban in public places throughout the U.S. and concealing pot is much more difficult. You'll get thrown out for smoking a Marlboro, for Christ's sake. I would definitely say the crowds were a lot more stoned in the 70s than currently. Hell, most older fans (including myself)  bring their kids to concerts these days, and that was unheard of back then.  Nope, beers are now friggin' $10 a glass and smoking is being watched.   Harry's right, it aint the same. But that really has no bearing on prog's popularity, really. Concerts just aren't as good as they used to be.

Harry Hood wrote: cstack3 wrote:   Prog was also most popular in the 1970's, when marijuana was widely available & commonly used!  Even the musicians used it (many of them anyway) from what I've read.....TFTO was supposedly conceived during a trans-Atlantic flight, when the band Yes were stoned on hash brownies!!  Concerts in the 1970's were so thick with pot smoke that you could barely see the stage.  These days, concerts are so antiseptic that they are not nearly the "event' that they used to be.   If anything marijuana is more widely used and available now than it ever was back then. In the 70's pot was much more demonized and something of a niche, but these days it's become a major part of popular culture (despite it's illegality), and you can even get a prescription to use it legally in some parts of the world. You can't smoke in venues anymore but that's simply because you can't smoke in venues anymore. But the correlation between decreased marijuana use and decreased prog popularity is just silly.

wilmon91 wrote: a nihilistic view.

and

Henry Plainview wrote:

pretty much go hand in hand.



Edited by Padraic - May 19 2011 at 18:46

rogerthat wrote: I still disagree.  If it's not in any melody or rhythm whatsoever (regardless of how correctly or not the melody or rhythm is reproduced), it is not music.

Edited by wilmon91 - May 19 2011 at 17:57

cstack3 wrote: It's quite simple, actually....you can't dance to it (unless you want to end up looking like a lurching spastic or something!) Fripp's foray into dance began with "Exposure" and reached its zenith with "League of Gentlemen."  At his Chicago gig, he insisted on a dance floor in front of the stage.  Of course, all of us Fripp geeks immediately crowded onto the floor & crowded up at the stage!!  Dancing?  Nope, not one!!    Sorry, Robert!!   As I see it, the lack of danceable rhythms is the real reason why prog tends to be a guy's sport.  Rarely, prog songs made it into the disco (I think "Sledgehammer" was one).  Look at the effort that David Bowie and others made to produce danceable product.

Really? A dancefloor? I'd like to see Bob get down on a dance floor. Love the cover of their only album. I made it into a poster. I don't think it has ever been releasedon CD. Have to check DGM.

Most people nowadays don't want to be impressed by music that they can't immediately relate to.

They only want music that is blatantly danceable ... or reminds them of themselves lyrically (folk, pop) ...
or they can see themselves playing with minimal training if they actually opted to do so (rap, punk, grunge)

Any music that they can not relate to directly or vicariously
is considered simply uncool or downright pretentious.

Prog was popular during a brief window of time when it was surprisingly trendy to be existential in pop culture.

Since then, Prog has been relegated to niche market
-- just like many other musical styles that require a combination of natural talent and technical skill. 

Of course... What the hell do I know??  I love Prog.
Technically I must be crazy...since I lay waaay outside the thinking of the norm.

I think Douglas Adams hit the nail on the head in his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency :

Every single aspect of music can be represented by numbers. From the organisation of movements in awhole symphony, down through the patterns of pitch and rhythm that make up the melodies and harmonies, the dynamics that shape the performance, all the way down to the timbres of the notes themselves, their harmonics and the way they change over time. in short, all the elements of a noise thatdistinquish between the sound of one person piping on a piccolo and another one thumping on a drum - all of these things can be expressed in hierarchies of numbers.

I think it goes without saying that there has to be some semblance of order in anything or else you just have KAOS ( whoops I spelled it the Get Smart way ) Either you you use your heart or brain to appreciate music or both. I would think especially in jazz it's both. Very mathematical even if the players are not aware of it. I'm no Nuerologist but I find that hard core fans of prog I find are a bit more on the brainy side. Quebec jazz legend Nuy Nadon told me once that he plays from his heart and that counting was for bank managers. I wonder if Céline counts.

I think this example should make my view clearer.  Which of the below two lines of text is a sentence written in English?  Just English, not necessarily correct English.


I has to go to the park

h s k a o g t p r

I have used the same alphabets in both lines.  In the first, the letters have been used to communicate something intelligible. Should it not turn out to be intelligible, at least the communicator intends to be intelligible.  The second is just the alphabets not arranged to make any sense at all. This is the difference between music and sound.  Sounds are simply the alphabets. If you do not arrange them, you don't speak in a language anybody, including even yourself, can understand.  What liberties you take with your use of language and what mistakes you make come much later into the picture, but the sounds necessarily have to be arranged into the code we call music.  Two sounds placed next to each other in a musical way relate and make sense and that is why it arouses a different reaction from the ears than just any two sounds put together randomly which bear no relation to each other.  You can put two, three notes together which make no sense at all but ultimately the notes must fall into some pattern, whether immediately evident or obtuse, to be music and I don't believe every combination of sounds will give you that result.  By arranging sounds, you do eliminate those which you do not see the need for in the given context.