Why do italians like prog rock but french don't

Oddly enough I clicked on this after starting an Alan Stivell album. 

A Person wrote: Oddly enough I clicked on this after starting an Alan Stivell album.

 

Hi,

Edited by moshkito - November 19 2010 at 14:13

moshkito wrote: CPicard wrote: Alan Stivell is not French.   You might want to pick up his album "Before Landing" ... and find out how French he is ... and how political he can be ... and this goes back a lot further than Queen Margot ... and the film takes a massive dig and stab at it, too! Only thing missing was a little more of Alan's music!   Let's say that it is ... ball'istic!

No, I might not want. And I don't care about how French he can be, as I tend to disregard all that is French:
 - These people are usually unclean (most of them have baths or showers only three or four days a week);
 - 40% of French people are illiterate;
 - Talking about politics with a French is horrible: either they support Communism, or they support right-wing bigotry;
 - They stole their ideas from other people: that "Dada" thing was created in Zürich by a Romanian artist, Tristan Tzara, and his most famous companions were German (Hugo Ball, Huelsenbeck, Hans Richter)...
And Surrealism was nothing but a dissidence of Dada led by the horribly stubborn stalinist André Breton.

On the other hand, French people seem to enjoy Black Metal, even in (and maybe for) its worst aspects...

This is a very silly question.  Ignoring the fact that I see no evidence to support the claim that the French unilaterally dislike prog, why does any art form flourish in one culture and fail to take root in another?  Why are the Russians so into ballet?  What's up with Kenya and running?  I'm certain you could consult a very specialized anthropologist, but short of a sociological dissertation, there aren't any answers to this question.

And please, no eugenics-related garbage.

Why do Italians and French like prog rock and the Germans don't?

No seriously, is there a prog scene in Germany? I do not know of it! 
I have never heard a prog song in Germany, on Radio, TV or somewhere (and I do not mean the hit singles like 'Follow you, follow me' and the likes). Also Can or the so-called Krautrock I have never heard.
But: When I was in Italy on holiday I heard Marillion's 'The Web' on the radio! I could not believe my ears. I blame it indeed to the RPI scene.
And in the Symphonic prog section of this site I discovered already so many French artists, and not a single German artist (until the letter E.)

Since I'm French (and since I'm sick of trolling in this thread like I did these last days), I would have to share a few observations.

First, a lot of people seem to make a confusion between the number of progressive acts in France and the interest of the French audience in anything related to "progressive rock" (I also doubt that a lot of people ever heard about the very words of "progressive rock).
There are a lot of death-metal bands in Sweden, but the musicians themselves explain that it doesn't appeal to a lot of people in Sweden, at least in the first years: I would try to find back an interview of a musician saying that, most of the times, the death-metal bands play in front of other death-metal musicians...
So, just because Ange, Magma, Etron Fou Leloublan or Heldon have made long careers, just because we could find 1,476 French bands in the PA database would NEVER mean that French listeners really care about their bands.
In 1983, when Etron Fou Leloublan made a 36-dates European tour, they only played 3 concerts in France... Even Magma complained about not being programmed in the main Jazz festivals...

Secondly, in France, the rock critics are really, really, REALLY negative about everything related to progressive. Maybe Rock'n'Folk featured Magma on their cover last year, maybe they published interviews of VdGG or King Crimson, but they are also fond of defecating on Yes or Genesis and tend to ignore young experimental bands (and claiming having found the new hope of Rock'n'Roll each trimester...)
In fact, except for metal magazines or a small, small, very small press (the 5 fanzines mentionned by Sean Trance), the French musical press doesn't give two dead rats about prog-rock. Sometimes, the 3 Jazz magazines (each year, it melts like ice under the sun - quite frightening) can expand their boundaries to prog-rock, jazz-rock, R.I.O. - but who reads jazz magazines in France?

Thirdly, a lot of young bands described as "progressive" can't tour or live of their music. It's not like Yolk, Camembert, Nebelnest or Setna sell thousands of records and make French tours lasting 2 or 3 months. We have some festivals dedicated to progressive musics (Prog'Sud, RIO in Carmaux, Crescendo...) but we have more festivals dedicated to metal.

I don't know about things go in Italy, but all these observations make me think  that, in France, just a few people are interested in "progressive music".

Anaon wrote: CPicard wrote: I don't know about things go in Italy, but all these observations make me think  that, in France, just a few people are interested in "progressive music". As in most of the countries I would say

Yes, of course... But, I mean, damned, France had produced a lot of fine acts! There also has been some collectives (Dupon et ses fantômes, FLIP, and Art Zoyd and EFL were part of the RIO collective) and various dedicated labels (Musea, ATEM, and a few others)
It seems to me that the most important RPI bands have lasted longer than their French counterparts and have found more commercial success (but I can be wrong)