WHY ENGLISH PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN TO PROG?

The British media is run by a bunch of self obsessed coke heads based in London, and none of them like prog. Other genres of music flourish at a grass roots level without attracting the attention of the boy band, brand obsessed pundits, and given time prog may come to occupy a similar place to folk or country music and have its own network of venues and festivals.

oliverstoned wrote: WHY ENGLISH PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN TO PROG? Because they are big peasants? like the french people btw I've been to a Soft Machine concert in Paris yesterday and we were only 40 people maximum for all the parisian area (billions of people) to come to this concert.

As regards the French, it is not related to be a peasant or not. The French hate music, basically. What they listen to is "chanson" which is a short story with some straightforward "music" around. If they don't understand the story (because the text is not in French, or there are too many words or the music is dominant), they reject it. This is why, while in the UK you have 3 averagely good pop, rock ,folk...band in every single village, you barely have 3 in the whole France.

Second to that, France is a country of monopoly. Hence like big national companies have the monopoly of almost all services, a few bands have the monopoly in each muisical genre (radio, TV, journals, promotion, big concert areas monopolies). For those who know, a band like Telephone had the monopoly of radio rock in the eighties, while a band like Trust had the monopoly of hardest rock. A singer like Johnny Halliday has the monopoly of large audience strong "chanson", and earlier in the seventies, Ange had the monopoly of prog...and so on. As a result, why should different artists be promoted since there is already one in each genre?

Sad but actual

Syzygy wrote: The British media is run by a bunch of self obsessed coke heads based in London, and none of them like prog. Other genres of music flourish at a grass roots level without attracting the attention of the boy band, brand obsessed pundits, and given time prog may come to occupy a similar place to folk or country music and have its own network of venues and festivals.

Well, we cannont let this happen. No way in hell can we.

The prog community needs a great band, far superior to any other prog band ever so far, and with this band prog will become popluar again. Also things that might help are like reunions, like Genesis. If they reunited imagine what the possiblities would be! Without something like this to happen I think that prog is doomed to crappy fairs and such. Prog still needs large concerts.

But I also don't think this will happen for a while, because I recently went to a Jethro Tull concert, and it was packed. People loved it.

Also everyone should check out the band Captian Beyond. They are in the Art Rock section, but if you listen to their first 2 albums you'll see they are clearly space rock. The song on prog archives is not a good example (a good song though).

andYouandI45 wrote: Syzygy wrote: The British media is run by a bunch of self obsessed coke heads based in London, and none of them like prog. Other genres of music flourish at a grass roots level without attracting the attention of the boy band, brand obsessed pundits, and given time prog may come to occupy a similar place to folk or country music and have its own network of venues and festivals. Well, we cannont let this happen. No way in hell can we. The prog community needs a great band, far superior to any other prog band ever so far, and with this band prog will become popluar again. Also things that might help are like reunions, like Genesis. If they reunited imagine what the possiblities would be! Without something like this to happen I think that prog is doomed to crappy fairs and such. Prog still needs large concerts. But I also don't think this will happen for a while, because I recently went to a Jethro Tull concert, and it was packed. People loved it. Also everyone should check out the band Captian Beyond. They are in the Art Rock section, but if you listen to their first 2 albums you'll see they are clearly space rock. The song on prog archives is not a good example (a good song though).

It's a nice thought, but for a prog band to become big, people need to appreciate the ingredients of prog rock, and generally they dont. A good healthy attention span is required, as is an acceptance of music that breaks the rules rather than follows a blue print. Generally people are not programmed to respond to music like that anymore.

A new prog rock band would have to be:

a) Young

b) Good looking

c) Preferably 'working class' They are more likely to succeed if people can connect with them, although this re-ignites the debate of whether proggers are mainly middle class. or whatever??

d) Be able to sell hit singles with a pop feel, whilst not compromising their progginess (very tricky!)

Basically It Bites tried all this back in the 80's. They tried to introduce prog to a non prog audience, through the back door, but people know when they've been 'progged'  and when Francis Dunnery said things in interviews like 'Yeah, we love seventies music. You had to be able to play your instruments to get anywhere. Bands like Genesis and Led Zeppelin are our heroes' he was driving the nails into his own coffin one by one. The whole ethos behond mainstream pop has always been image and the cool asscociations of the scene, the music itself is fairly incidental.

In reply to the original question: I tell you why the English don't listen to/Like Prog. Because they'd rather listen to a bunch of miserable twats like Coldplay, Keane, Travis, etc.

It's the latest trend, in Blair's Britain, to be a miserable (whether drunk or not) twat.

How's that?