Getting estranged from prog

Nuke wrote: rogerthat wrote: Well, I don't mean emotional in a happy/sad sense, just that something should arouse my curiosity or excitement somewhere. In any case, I look for drama and dynamics in music, not so much direct emotions like sorrow or anger. As you said, any sort of connection will do.  Well then, we are in agreement! Seeing how rare that is on the internet, we should pat each other on the back.

I cannot always listen to prog;  I also love  psychedelic rock  without any "progressivity"  (Syd Barrett, Dandy Warhols,  Brian Jonestown Massacre)   or singer/songwriter material  (Simon&Garfunkel, Cohen, Mey)  or to simple (alternative)  rock/pop music.

Many  members  in here  have the attitude  that only  music  with strange rhythms,  the highest requirements  and lyrics without any colleration to everyday life  is good and listenable.  The more notes  per second  and the longer  the epics,   the better they are...    I couldn't disagree more.  

Talented songwriters  like Dylan, Barrett, Simon or Harper  can  excite  more  feelings  and  can make the listener  reflect more   than pretty much of the  hardcore proggers  have done during their whole discography.  Of course I love  the  mercilessly unconventional  efforts and  the  way-out  noises of King Crimson,  but for me Simon&Garfunkel  are on the same level -  with probably the total opposed genre,  but with an effect of similar intensity  on me.

The band  that  melts  avantgarde, charme  and beauty  in a perfect way  is  Pink Floyd - and the effect is their #1 position in my top5  band list. 

I find myself very much in the same situation. Personally, I think  prog has become a "GENRE" and not an "APPROACH" to music as it used to be. As Steve Hackett mentioned one time, the old bands were not trying to create "prog" music, but music that would challenge them and the listeners, that was inventive, creative, and the best they could compose. Nowadays, bands have to sound "Prog" to be considered prog, which means, they must have a yes, genesis, gentle giant, etc type of sound and elements in their music, along with long pieces, complex arrangements, odd metters, etc.

Prog is the first music I ever listened to, and I fondly remember the excitement I got from first properly discovering bands like Yes, Genesis, Camel, BJH etc. I too don't get any of these new bands that everyone raves about, stuff like Pendragon just sounds like MOR american rock with fiddly bits to me, without anything that made prog interesting in it. As a long-time metal fan as well, I find nothing interesting about bands like Opeth, who I REALLY don't understand the hype of. Second-rate (if I'm being generous) melodic death metal crossed with stolen Camel acoustic parts doesn't make for a great band to me! Also, I find ultra digital, pro-tools fixed recording makes the music sound very sterile, and takes away the spontaneous feel. I find a lot of people seem to be more interested in these new band's musical ability rather than their talents in songwriting and putting feeling and originality into a song.

I wouldn't say all is doom and gloom though, there are still plenty of very good bands to be discovered from the prog heydays, and now and again a real revelation such as Anglagard pops up as well. All musical styles have their times, and more productive and creative periods, but good stuff will always pop up amongst a deluge of crap bands, I think this is the case with all styles of music all the time.

^ My thoughts are, as always, that no one checks out Avestin's (and others') recommendations.

BTW, when prog bands really do adopt a 'challenging', 'anything goes' attitude, the reactions are usually WTF?!!! See KC's "Moonchild"... and Certified's review of it, for a dose of actual knowledge on the subject (a rare commodity)

^ this is why I introduced two different tags at PF to describe the "proggyness" ... a) progressive approach and b) prog style. Some bands are either one or the other ... some are both, some are none ... or anywhere in between. And usually, when you grow tired of the typical prog style, you should start looking for modern bands who still use a progressive approach in their music, but may be very different from the original prog bands (Yes, Genesis) in terms of style.

^ sure, breaking down barriers and reinventing genres is nice. But having listened to literally thousands of albums, I realize that - at least for me - it doesn't make sense to look for innovation all the time. At some point, if a band tries too hard to be experimental and innovative, they lose their identity (or fail to establish one in the first place). The really difficult thing is to walk the fine line between innovation and adherence to standards/tradition. And a band has to be creative ... which is entirely possible without being experimental and/or innovative.

Well, I'm not sure that too much innovation makes you lose your identity. I mean, it seems to me like most great bands establish themselves by having a unique sound, by having innovations. I mean, the bands that broke all tradition and just did whatever they pleased have some of the strongest identities. King crimson? Magma? Ulver? Black Sabbath? Miles Davis? Igor Stravinsky? All have broken down barriers, and have established a strong identity. I very much disagree that too much innovation and experimentation makes you lose your identity. I think that as long as all of your music has something in common, something in common that it doesn't have in common with other music, then it will have an identity.

Eh, it's fair enough to nitpick. It's the best way to learn, right? I agree that stravinsky never actually broke any barriers, but he was very innovative. I mean, I've never heard a piece as innovative as the rite of spring. Sure, it is primitivism, and other composers were making primitivist pieces before him, but the rite of spring is in a class of its own. For example, the harmonies he used were pretty much unprecedented, and the rhythms he used were likewise very adventurous. I mean, I've read entire articles just devoted to one chord he created for the song. I agree that a lot of his other work isn't quite so innovative, but I was thinking of the rite of spring when I mentioned his name. If stravinsky were alive today and writing prog, what he would be doing would depend on how old he was . In his youth, he would be breaking down barriers, in his middle age he would be doing symphonic prog, and in his late life he would be hanging out with the avant prog folks and doing derivitive yet superior works. Perhaps beethoven would have been a better example (although people who don't know music history too well might not know how innovative he was). I dislike cage, but steve reich would also have been a better example. 

Edited by Nuke - January 21 2009 at 19:24

You haven't been lied to, you just haven't been told the whole story.  It certainly wasn't the first piece of its kind.  Strass' Salome and Elektra had both explored very similar themes 3-5 years before.  Alexander Scriabin had been using ocattonic scales (which are fairly common in much Russian folk music) in his piano compositions for several years and Mussorgsy had hinted at the whole primitivism notion in the 1860's, so Bartok wasn't the only other game in town.  In the early 1900's Bartok was still out trudging around the woods in Hungary collecting the folk songs that would later help define his style.  Stravinsky's harmony and rhythms were modern but not ground breaking and were certainly nowhere near unprecedented.