Why classic prog faded?

Dean wrote: octopus-4 wrote: Rick Robson wrote: At least the major part of the classic prog rock music are made for listening, in other words not appropriate for dancing.   And just in the 70´s emerged the Disco fever with huge success and selling at that time.   These are one of the reasons why classic prog faded in the 80´s.     If in the 70s people has quit listening to long suites and started moving their asses on 4/4 it's because of people, not because of dance music. Being against the system and trying to change the world as in the 60s is not an easy thing and with the "restoration" of the second half of the 70s Disco music was one of the main offerings.  People's will to fight for something, and sometimes people's intelligence faded, not classic prog. Dynosaurus who were used to earn a lot of money just tried to follow the stream to continue earning, that's all.  I'm still not getting this Disco killed Prog thing.   I'm really struggling to imagine that long-haired, bearded, unwashed, demin-clad, kaftan-wearing, patchouli-scented, dope-smoking, beer-swilling Prog audiences all had a shower, donned a white suit and headed off for Studio 54 for a bacardi cocktail and a bop on the dance floor, and then went down to the record stores to swap their copies Close To The Edge and Tarkus for the latest Disco Tex and His Sexolettes single.

I gotta totally agree with this. Disco? No way! I gotta give the human race more credit than this.

Neelus wrote: progbethyname wrote: Dean wrote: octopus-4 wrote: Rick Robson wrote: At least the major part of the classic prog rock music are made for listening, in other words not appropriate for dancing.   And just in the 70´s emerged the Disco fever with huge success and selling at that time.   These are one of the reasons why classic prog faded in the 80´s.     If in the 70s people has quit listening to long suites and started moving their asses on 4/4 it's because of people, not because of dance music. Being against the system and trying to change the world as in the 60s is not an easy thing and with the "restoration" of the second half of the 70s Disco music was one of the main offerings.  People's will to fight for something, and sometimes people's intelligence faded, not classic prog. Dynosaurus who were used to earn a lot of money just tried to follow the stream to continue earning, that's all.  I'm still not getting this Disco killed Prog thing.   I'm really struggling to imagine that long-haired, bearded, unwashed, demin-clad, kaftan-wearing, patchouli-scented, dope-smoking, beer-swilling Prog audiences all had a shower, donned a white suit and headed off for Studio 54 for a bacardi cocktail and a bop on the dance floor, and then went down to the record stores to swap their copies Close To The Edge and Tarkus for the latest Disco Tex and His Sexolettes single. I gotta totally agree with this. Disco? No way! I gotta give the human race more credit than this. I also would love to believe that most people get into music for the sake of music...but I do not think this is the case...I do think that dance brought more girls out, and caught some attention...but in reality I am too young to know this for sure...but it seems possible...just speculating anyway.

Surrealist wrote: When music started becoming more about the "new sounds" then how the sounds were played really propped up the tombstone for the genre.. many genres of music. Classical music has suffered greatly by this insistence that sounds need to be new and fresh... rather than the focus being on what can we play with these time tested elements of proper sonic integration. Moogs, Mellotrons, Hammonds, Arps, Rhodes all became archaic sounds when really they shouldn't have.  The techo age of creating sounds that don't exist in the real world on any instrument is like handing cotton candy to the masses. But cotton candy rots your teeth and digital sampling rots your ears.

Octopus-4 wrote: It's what I was saying...Disco didn't kill prog. At a certain point, music consumers changed and in a time when tape cassettes were the media used to exchange music and also the only available support for unsigned bands, labels were keen to invest on "easy things" without taking risks. Selling a standardized product, in every industry means savings and less risks. Why should a label invest on non-commercial music when the majority of its customers are happy with the Bee Gees?

I agree.


Edited by HackettFan - October 05 2013 at 23:39

Like others here, I am not convinced of this "disco killed prog" thing.  Did former prog fans get into disco?  I doubt that.  Disco was a genre that appealed to teenagers, especially teenage girls, while prog appealed to educated people in their 20s and 30s.

Nor am I convinced that "punk killed prog".  Again, it was a different audience - younger, less educated, with different (more materialistic) concerns than the counterculture.

I think that the decline of classical progressive rock was to a large part caused by the progressive rock musicians themselves - they failed to advance further, and what they did after 1975 was of lesser quality than what they did before 1975.  Just compare Going for the One to Close to the Edge, and you probably get what I mean.  Many people said, "They don't cut it anymore", and went on listening the old albums - or migrated to modern jazz or classical music.

A small part of the progressive rock musicians went the way classical music went after 1945 (partly already around 1908, but it took until '45 until "atonal" music won the day) and jazz after 1965, and created astringent, dissonant, hard-to-comprehend avant-garde music that simply wouldn't sell.  But those were a minority, and their contribution to the decline of classical progressive rock was minimal.

Of course, those music journalists who always had thought that progressive rock was "overblown" said, "We have been knowing this all the time" and went on to hype punk.

^^  I was going to ask a question about exactly this, thank you.   The kind of crowds that ELP drew in the 70s,  I have only seen big hard rock/heavy metal bands match that in the last decade or so.  A flattering inference from that could be that tastes were that elevated at that time but more likely, prog was a fad for a lot of youngsters in the 70s.  Many of them must have moved on, given the state of prog since then (commercially), while some others have kept in touch with the music. 

Unfortunately, not only american Disco "night fever" music had quite better diffusion than Classic Prog at that time, but also New Wave in the 80´s, and of course Punk Rock. Do you find an answer for that ? We can not deny the fact: they selled much more, or do you think Phill Collins is famous for his work in Classic Prog ?  

Rick Robson wrote: Unfortunately, not only american Disco "night fever" music had quite better diffusion than Classic Prog at that time, but also New Wave in the 80´s, and of course Punk Rock. Do you find an answer for that ?

First, bigger and broader audience.  We think of progressive rock as "better music", but we are all music geeks.  Most people aren't.  They want music that is easy to consume, not music that takes some intellectual effort to get into.  Sure, classical music has the same "problem" as progressive rock - it also takes some intellectual effort to get into - but it has prestige.  If you can tell Bach from Beethoven, you can use that to show that you are refined.  If you can tell Yes from Genesis, all you can use that to is to show that you are a geek.

Second, pop singles are cheaper and easier to produce than progressive rock albums, and punk singles are cheaper still.  The producer of a pop single can tell the musicians what to play and how to play it, and they will play it and the way he wants it (today, the instrumental "musicians" are of course often computers - but that wasn't yet the case in the 70s).  A progressive rock band would only play what they wanted to play and the way they wanted to play it, and come up with all sort of artistic and spiritual mumbo-jumbo to justify their lofty plans.  And punk records are damn cheap to produce because the musicians themselves do not demand high quality.

Third, progressive rock is subversive.  It is about building a consciousness for a better world.  And in that better world, the powers that be in our world would have a hard time.  That hurts.  Of course, punk is also rebellious - but it is pessimistic and nihilistic.  There may be something to struggle against, but you will ever fail, and there is nothing to struggle for.  The bourgeois establishment can live with that: it drains the anger of the youth and doesn't really challenge anything.  And New Wave, like disco, is not even that: it is just about having a good time, no matter what goes wrong in the world.

Wow there is a lot on this thread to get my head around - very interesting debate.

Edited by Dragontrouser - October 08 2013 at 16:01

Quote from somebody: the generation that really liked it were no longer the target audience of the record companies