The Single Non-Event that Changed Prog Rock ?

Snow Dog wrote:   I bloody loathe Style Council btw!

A Jam purist eh? You're missing out Snow Dog, Cafe Bleu is a great album!

You can't fault Bruce Foxton for playing one of THE most iconic prog instruments on the planet, The mighty Rickebacker Bass.

Edited by sigod - February 12 2010 at 09:30

sigod wrote: You can't fault Bruce Foxton for playing one of THE most iconic prog instruments on the planet, The mighty Rickebacker Bass.   Ironically the rise of punk, new wave and the indie scene actually drove Prog back into the underground where it had originally came from. Prog today might even have a better claim at being the real alternative to mainstream music as it owes it's continued existance to the support of it's fans rather than the huge PR and media machines that sustain todays stadium acts.

DangerousCurves wrote: My former house mate is a mega Muse fan and he cringed when I called Muse prog. I'm not sure he thought they were indie, I think he thought they were a rock band who were a bit different. I used to tease him by showing him Classic Rock Presents Prog magazines with them in, especially when they were on the cover!

Prog truly is "The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name". Steve Hillage always makes me laugh with his efforts to deny  associations with the genre, stating he's "Not happy with the prog tag" in seemingly every interview I've read with him in the last few years (this from a man who was in Gong and made albums like L and Fish Rising). In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he actually changed his name to Steve "I'm not Prog" Hillage.

I waded through all of this to see if anybody mentioned it, but I didn't see a mention.  When Genesis released Duke it seemed like that gave most progressive artists permission to explore more popular music.

lazland wrote: Punk did virtually nothing to destroy prog, excepting in the eyes of the trendy & fashionable media, a silly trait that lasts to this day in most music publications, although, of course, they never bleat on about just how sad it is that The Pistols reform or UK Subs crawl around pubs & clubs still The bands we love still continued, and, indeed, continue to this day, to sell out conert halls or stadiums, sell truckloads of records, and inspired a whole new generation of great bands. Punk did NOT kill prog

No, No, No No No, Agreed, Punk didn't kill Prog. Prog did get cut off as an ascending art form quite severely at the end of the 70s though. This was done not by Punk, but the social/historical forces which brought punk to prominence. I'm becoming extremely interested in the question of historical progression of music and art lately, and I've not got much out of it so far except that the progression (or regression) of music is extremely forceful, quick and hard to attribute to any one thing. You see how so many fads are created and how so many apparently fruitful trends hit the ceiling very dramatically.

Its only speculation at this point, but I think it is wise to see the sixties musical direction in Rock and the Progressive Rock trend proper as one movement, and to identify them with cultural modernism which we identify as "60s spirit" and to identify Punk and the 80s music trends as part of a post-modernist cultural backlash (reflected in politics so acutely by the rise of Thatcher/Reagen, that's just one example in one area). I think this model is a good start to understanding the change over, and the evolution and reflection of all the minor trends into quite different trends which are related in non-obvious ways.

Make sense? I'm not suggesting my model should be adopted but its the sort of thing that should be worked towards, "Punk Killing Prog" doesn't say much, I think we all agree