Exclusionsist or Inclusivist? |
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Chris S
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 09 2004 Location: Front Range Status: Offline Points: 7028 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 04:29 | ||||||
I cannot agree that prog ceased circa 1979. I just believe three major things happened
1) Record company's got more assertive on band's direction to compete with the onset of punk/new wave etc 2) The traditional hard line prog had evolved and yes, softened somewhat with the onset of 80's synths but only in certain bands 3) The music enthusiasts taste evolved as well. Those of us lucky enough to grow up in the 60's and 70's with the pioneers of prog changed just as the bands changed. Not all of us, but I wager most of us. But lets look at some great 80's work. Rush---Just listen to Power Windows or Signals now and some of that production is jaw dropping. Camel - Nude, Stationary Traveller. Caravan and Strawbs died a death in the 80's but resurfaced better in the 90's but then the emergence of neo prog in Marillion, initially scorned as a Genesis clone band ( how wrong we were), Crossover- Mike Oldfield, Vangelis, Peter Gabriel ( was f&%king awesome) in the 80's, Yes - Drama ( 1980,ok), 90125.King Crimson's Beat or Three of a Perfect Pair.... Then we have prog related like Talking Heads, Remain in Light ( umm Rolling Stone poll anyone)......anyway I am just getting started. I have not even begun to scratch the surface with Space rock/Krautrock/Avante/Jazz fusion etc. Prog like the Big Bang is still expanding....We are so friggin lucky to be around at this time and to be witnessing the sixth decade of Prog music. Sorry if I did not count the 50's!! Anyway alive and well in 2014 too. Big Big Train, Gazpacho off the top of my head.
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Chris S
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 09 2004 Location: Front Range Status: Offline Points: 7028 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 04:33 | ||||||
Discipline a Talking Heads tribute album?......Get real!!!!\ Camel - Irrelevant?........... Who - greatness died with Keith Moon? Smoke another
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uduwudu
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 17 2007 Status: Offline Points: 2601 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 04:55 | ||||||
What changed? Perception. 1977, UK punk, prog and the British media. As has been indicated Yes, Genesis were selling big time while the Pistils played to 200 in the 100 club. ANd would have been copletely ignored but for the fashion giving the press (a voracious animal needing constant food) grst to theri mill. A hack could be hip at a new wave gig but not dine backstage with Genesis. Better, drugs and a chance of getting laid. Plus punk and pop are easy to assimilate and write about and get to the pub on time.
There was a sea change. Tull nearly withered as A had to marketed under the Tull name, not Anderson's. Even now he is Jethro Anderson to many. Genesis kind of split (Collins / divorce / Vancouver, 1979) and reconvened under a changing direction (1980, Duke). Yes split, became Cinema as Atlantic finally figured out what to do with Trevor Rabin. Say hello to Chris Squire. But breaking in a new name? Ertegun might have been worried about hat but probbbaly more concerned at the requisite vocal identity (required in, er, pop music. What to do with you know who? Say hello to Trevor and Chris, Jon, they have an idea. ELP called it quits as did Gentle Giant. Even Plant felt Zeppelin's time was up in '79 / 80. Deep Purple were a fake band, Sabbath were falling apart and Heep were the heap in '80. Realy only Floyd were going and that was more due to Roger's energy than the normal PF lethargy. Plus his lyric on Animals were socially spot on and in a sophisticated way. He even got into the spitting thing. Punk Floyd. You see it is still rock and roll, and / or pop and All In A Mouse's Night did not quite cut the street value God Save The Queen had. The times changed as heavy rock shed the blues (as symphonic rock immediately did in the 60s). It was really the art rock side of pop rock that kept the levels of sophistication going (Bowie, Roxy to Magazine). Rock still had it's ambition and the new art rock was called New Wave. Then the Neo Prog Scene emerged as some new wave acts got this new romantic thing and some bands wanted to be more intellectual. Which is why you can have Duran Duran and Marillion in the same record collection in 1986 - but not if you were a King Crimson fan from 1974. Many names in prog are curios to the public now and the audiences reflect that. I mean I saw a Kiss vid earlier today (2 numbers). Grey haired baldies. (Not Kiss, that's all under wigs and make up - smart guys from the beginning!) but the audience. Not teenyboppers as they were 40 years ago when these tunes first appeared. Rock is always about the audience. Without whom drug dealers, record company execs, the press oh, and bands would fade away. Maybe we can get too hung up on what is prog and all that. I remember when The Ladder got released and the shop staff had no idea who it was and put it under L. Oh yes, the band was - and is - Yes. Do Muse fans care about Yes? Maybe some, but probably not many. Oh and this idea that Radiohead are a prog band is one of the odd consequences of that 1977 divide. Radiohead would be best associated with punk, new wave, indie rock but most certainly not prog (except maybe Kid A which seemed to have hijacked and recycled the European RIO and avant music for it's ideas). Porcupine Tree, absolutely, psych, art rock, symphonic as well as keeping it's orientation toward people (from In Absentia onwards anyway) . The amusing sight of SW (Rockpalasst) taking 10 mins to describe what kind of band P Tree are was amusing. In rock, people understand pop, metal, disco, rap, reggae, kazz, jam band, country. indie rock, rockabilly usw as labels. But prog? Nah. If your definition takes more than 2 words and as long as a drum solo you're a prog band. There's no identifying fashion. I mean no one in the prog audience can define it. I just call it sophisticated rock if any one asks (they don't). And it's all generation oriented. Classical music isn't. Rock is because it is all about the pop sounds of your life. That's over by the time the new kids are in town and all the audience have got married, jobs and have no time for records and associated activities. (Poor beggars). The active life of a pop or rock band if good can go for what? 5 years on average? 10? But people have a relationship with music and a proximity to artists which had not happened before. Old age rock is in it's infancy still. And I don't mean the Net proximity. "Old" bands are around because of the timeless quality of being a "pop" fan. If they are doing what they are doing, people don't have to acknowledge their own impending decay and demise. So I don't. There's a lot to this question and the prog audience are not excluded from this perpetual change so it's best to deal with it. It's a process like all writing. Evolve or die. P.S. there's a lot to brand names. David Gilmour could not sell a 175 seat cinema show in the '80s. As the one who was Pink he ruled the world a year or so later. Asia provided symphonic rock in a form that pop fans may like but the old Yes fans hated because attention spans were geared to 20 minutes per "song" not 4. Oddly this still meant Topographic Oceans is disliked because it was 4 x 20 minutes which is like a whole CD's worth of music man and caused so much strife. In a world of pay for play it's evolve or die. Amidst the huge confusion that is human perception but it's lowest common denominator thinking (socially generated money oriented activities) that rules contemporary music. Possibly sad, but true. We deal with it. |
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 05:08 | ||||||
Great comment there. As a younger fan, I can vouch for the fact that I had never heard of these names like Yes or ELP in the so called non prog circles. Floyd, JT and Rush were the only ones I knew already before I heard that Floyd was supposed to be a prog rock band and, getting curious, read about prog rock on wikipedia and got directed to progarchives.com! It may be a hard swallow for some of the older fans but a whole chunk of rock history, namely 70s progressive rock, is basically wrapped up and tucked away out of sight for the younger generation. No, 70s simply means Led Zep, Who, Sabbath, Floyd, KISS, Aerosmith, Queen, Eagles, only classic rock, no prog except the unvavoidable Floyd or Tull.
Very astutely observed about old age rock too. We are living in times where the people who liked these bands in the 70s get to watch them perform all over again. And yet, the 'outside world' is oblivious to their presence. I think that in some ways the expansion of old age rock has also slowed rock's own momentum. Even when I was getting into rock more from the metal end of things in 2005/06, there were still big new bands hitting the circuit and quickly developing a huge following. Metalcore for instance was more of an early noughties phenomenon and Lamb of God were one of the biggest metal bands around the time I referred to earlier (not that I ever liked metalcore but just referring to the vibrancy of the scene). That seems to have become a bit difficult now because the older bands have a readymade, assured audience and are probably regarded as more reliable by promoters. And yet, many of these older bands either aren't doing much studio work at all or it pales in comparison to what they used to do in their heyday.
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 05:30 | ||||||
Voted for inclusive. I do think the main site is too inclusive in some regards, but at the same time I don't buy the other extreme of identifying progressive rock solely with the British prog scene of the 1960s and early 1970s. Even then, there are a lot of artists who started their career in the 1980s and 1990s who do continue that tradition but in the context of more modern styles. (Primus, Tool, late-eighties Voivod etc. just to name some most obvious examples)
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Chris S
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 09 2004 Location: Front Range Status: Offline Points: 7028 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 05:39 | ||||||
^^^ Great post
^^ I don't think we should underestimate modern day listernership of prog. I have three kids who love Dylan, Floyd, Rush and even Yes....( Yes...cosmic induced Yes!) to name a few. Sure Mum & Dad helped educate them, but since the turn of the millennium they have been accessing prog plus current musical trends via CD/internet. Their mates appear well briefed too and. One of my son's favorite live gigs was seeing Steely Dan...he was 13. We should not underestimate modern listener's knowledge. Beside how do we measure sales in prog, if most kids have burned their parents music too or share the iCloud I digress somewhat but referencing new generations being oblivious to the late 60's/70's prog experience, does not sit well with me. It is all by association anyway. Edited by Chris S - April 13 2014 at 05:47 |
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uduwudu
Forum Senior Member Joined: July 17 2007 Status: Offline Points: 2601 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:04 | ||||||
A fair few factors involved there. Creating a new album of music takes alot of energy. Getting new material in the public psyche is very diificult. In the olden days Deep Purple (a great example) would the airplay and tour (and still tour incessantly. I'd hate to be a collector of all their bootlegs.... But a new album ... older fans hate change (Yes 90125, 80s Genesis). Some people have no idea Peter Gabriel was in Genesis while some clamour for a reunion. Fans of the same band? More or less. New music in metal? Sometimes. Metal is great example of rock evolving to survive. There is also a collective marketing image (as one glance at CD covers in your city's CD store will reveal. It does in mine. Bit like how DVD comedies are all on a white background. It is one way of generated a market /audience. None of this is all really new. Many classical composers had fairly short shelf (concert) lives in the pre-recording days as audiences remain perpetually fickle. Oh, and a new album means platinum sales are what? 20,000 copies sold. The millions are gone as the other factor a permanently flat economy, record companies issuing mega size box set editions of albums against the public armed with the Net and a PC. The music biz set themselves up in direct competition with the public who told them to get stuffed and promptly pirated everything rather than pay for it all again and again. CD-Rs sound just as good as a CD. A new album costs a lot and sales may not cover it. So touring (Yes and their Prog Love Boat concert type novelties) help to "structure" (assess / guarantee) income. It says a lot when it's merchandise that is the big generator rather than tickets and albums. There's the failure factor. If you are Led Zep used to selling ship loads of records and sales dwindle to sod all then that's what the audience will get. (There are many consequences to piracy). Hence an overly hyped, marketed reunion - resulting in Celebration Day. One concert that lasted five years (marketing wise) and then got released to keep that going. I must admire PP and J for then touring the world saying they are not going to tour the world. Another thing that's gone - if some ever knew it existed is rock mystique. Now a band must grovel for emails, and be sycophantic. What's worse they are really found to be the miserable bunch of lecherous, drunken, addicted swine (probably back to Kiss again here but a glance at Guns And Roses) just so their personality matched audience can relate to them. Tweets, "like"s on Facebook and be as real as an "ordinary" person. That's not good. The mirage has dissipated. The evolution is still calling. |
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:05 | ||||||
Chris: Fine, it doesn't sit well with you and I can't help that. But I speak as one of the so called 'kids'. Yes, there are young guys here and there who know about these bands but at a larger level, oblivion is the word. We cannot form generalised impressions about larger socio-cultural trends if every exception is held up as if it disproves the statement. My dad named me after one of his favourite composers from down here and I ended up liking the work of said composer too. Doesn't necessarily follow that everybody else in my age group does or even a lot of people for that matter. There needs to be much more media coverage of classic prog rock; only then would we see an overall high level of awareness of these bands. And as I said earlier, the media, for whatever reason, has something against prog and chooses not to give it much prominence no matter what prog's significance back then was. They don't care. From what I have seen from 90s to the present day, one thing that hasn't changed across age groups is people in general prefer the music to walk up their doorstep on the radio, or youtube, or maybe a 'share' on a social network. So if it's left up to youngsters to read up on prog all of their own or count on the happenstance of being born into a household with prog fans, only a minority will end up following prog.
Edited by rogerthat - April 13 2014 at 06:06 |
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:14 | ||||||
Yup. 100% agree with this and most of your comment as such. To draw a parallel to this, in my country, back in the 70s, filmstars considered it beneath their dignity to appear on TV commercials as they felt it would dim their aura. Today? They are all over Page 3 of the gossip papers, twitter, facebook and anywhere else where they can garner eyeballs. If a filmstar makes a 'guest appearance' on a TV show, be sure it's because their film is releasing this Friday. I have mixed views on this trend. Yes, it means there is no mystique about famous personalities anymore so a certain elusiveness that made the experience of discovering their work exciting is gone. But at the same time, is a cultivated air of mystique around a person who is in fact in many respects a normal dude healthy at all? Why should people fall for it anyway? I think it's just the arts are coming full circle now where a successful musician doesn't necessarily lead a princely lifestyle. It's probably going to happen in sports going ahead too. I respect that a professional sportsman deserves to be paid a lot more than the amateur because of both his physical and mental skills. But as of now, the multiplier is an insane one and I wouldn't mind if it were corrected a bit. Maybe then people would start paying a little more attention to the stories of people who actually make a worthwhile social contribution and improve the lives of people in a substantial sense rather than being irrationally attached to stars who may be good at what they do for a living but may quite possibly be rotten people in many other ways.
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Chris S
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: June 09 2004 Location: Front Range Status: Offline Points: 7028 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:19 | ||||||
^^ fair comments but we work with the modern day mediums for accessing music.....how do we really measure that? YT hits, how many plays on spotify? We cannot measure listernership anymore so how do we really quantify it. The world population in 1970 was 3.7 billion, we are now over 7 billion. Maybe prog listernership has increased it is just more diluted.....just saying.
Awesome poll results so far......85% say yes Edited by Chris S - April 13 2014 at 06:21 |
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:26 | ||||||
Even then, there are recent bands who clearly are rooted in 1970s prog/psych-rock but still have an updated take on that original movement... like Colour Haze for example. They're obviously a continuation of the Kosmische Musik scene but updated with quite a few guitar playing techniques and sounds from newer doom metal styles that popped up in the 1980s and 1990s (Sleep being a clear point of reference) yet the resulting music never approximates it. Then there's the case of certain groups from the Japanese noise rock milieu evolving into a more extreme version of Kosmische Musik, avant-prog or Zeuhl. Acid Mothers Temple, The Boredoms and Ruins are perhaps the prime representatives of this phenomenon. |
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:38 | ||||||
Hmm, as a test case, I looked up the no. of views generated for youtube videos of Roundabout (which was much higher than for Close to the Edge). 3.7 million. Sounds very, very impressive until you compare it to the no. of views for Close to You, the Carpenters version: 16 million! See, I am comparing one of the top (non Floyd) prog rock acts of the 1970s with one of the top pop groups from the same period and there is certainly a huge disparity there. Hotel California: 12 million views. Dancing Queen: 45 million views. Sultans of Swing:11 million, a live version even has 28 million views. Staying alive: 36 million. I am basically listing the songs that define the 70s in the eyes of youngsters today. Stairway to Heaven would sit along side these tracks as would Wish You Were Here or Brick in the Wall. But not Roundabout, not Dancing with the moonlit knight, not Karn Evil 9. Yes doesn't seem to even have their own VEVO channel and while ELP have one, they probably got into the game too late. EDIT: Would like to further add that Dave Brubeck's composition Take Five garners 6.5 million views on youtube. That really puts the relative popularity of Roundabout in perspective, as in, not a whole lot. And what's REALLY, REALLY popular, like viral, on youtube is usually something relatively 'current;. Like Bruno Mars's Just the way you are. 389 million. Rolling in the Deep up even higher at 488 mn. Not even bringing up Gangnam Style.
Edited by rogerthat - April 13 2014 at 07:01 |
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AtomicCrimsonRush
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: July 02 2008 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 14258 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:43 | ||||||
Its a no brainer really. Prog progresses on and only the really pedantic approach would suggest it ended in the late 70s. Yes that era was quintessential to prog, but it continues onto this day and has transformed, even reinventing itself. i think Porcupine Tree are just as important to prog as King Crimson. Or bands like Haken measure up to Rush. No problem with that, as they come from different perspectives of the same medium. Without the modern prog scene prog would be dead! We cant live in the past or wallow in nostalgia as it gets tiresome after a while. Its nice to dip the feet into new waters, and broaden the listeneing experience, while still being reverant to the decade where prog originated.
Edited by AtomicCrimsonRush - April 13 2014 at 06:44 |
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Stool Man
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 30 2007 Location: Anti-Cool (anag Status: Offline Points: 2689 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 06:57 | ||||||
It's simply a matter of personal opinion. Person A might prefer 21st century prog by any prog acts. Person B might prefer those bands who didn't even exist until after the end of the 20th century. Person C might be into early Neo (quite a few Marillion fans who prefer Fish-era, for example). Person D might like everything that's been released since they first heard prog thirty years ago. All these examples are post 70s, of course. I'm simply saying that no cut-off point (1979 or 1974 or whenever) should be valid.
Tchaikovsky used cannons onstage a long time before Emerson, Lake & Palmer were born. If that's not prog I'll eat my lunch
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rotten hound of the burnie crew
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Svetonio
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 20 2010 Location: Serbia Status: Offline Points: 10213 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 08:27 | ||||||
....also an example of that phenomenon is The Worm Ouroboros as a young band from Belarus - regarding Canterbury style.
Edited by Svetonio - April 13 2014 at 08:30 |
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Neo-Romantic
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 09 2013 Status: Offline Points: 928 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 08:31 | ||||||
Nice |
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The Dark Elf
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: February 01 2011 Location: Michigan Status: Offline Points: 13089 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 09:32 | ||||||
Very new wave sounding, and reminiscent of Talking Heads, particularly with Adrian Belew's participation.
Yes. Considering they never had a gold album in the first place, and after 1979 never charted again in the US and never beyond 57 in the UK for two albums released in 82 and 84. They would not even release another album until 1991. That, to me, speaks of irrelevance after 1979 in the public domain. Sorry if that is a mark against your bestest band, but reality trumps blind adherence to a fandom.
The Who reached their zenith with Quadrophenia. The following releases Who by Numbers and Who Are You are fine albums, but not masterpieces. When Keith Moon died, The Who died, but unlike Led Zeppelin, who had the common sense to end the band when Bonham died, The Who muddled on for a couple more albums. Unless you consider Face Dances or It's Hard anywhere near the quality of their previous albums. I don't, and obviously Roger Daltrey felt the same, saying, "It's Hard should never have been released". And if you have valid points, I would suggest they aren't made with cute little emoticons.
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Svetonio
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 20 2010 Location: Serbia Status: Offline Points: 10213 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 11:54 | ||||||
dig it, The Dark Elf |
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Guldbamsen
Special Collaborator Retired Admin Joined: January 22 2009 Location: Magic Theatre Status: Offline Points: 23104 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 12:05 | ||||||
As for the original question: yes I think it still counts as prog. Prog doesn't mean progressive rock anymore, but rather a certain type of music that encorporates some of the stuff people go apefeaces for on this site.
As for the actual discussion, I think the real meat lies in the new suggestions forum. It's there we're faced with the "natural" borders of the genre and are forced to look at various bands with supposedly prawk credentials. To me personally, asking any member whether they're inclusive or exclusive relies entirely on the subject matter. What band are we talking about? Which genre - is it electronic, pop prog, punk prog, funk prog or rhumba prog. People often come here to argue their case for personal faves and very often these turn into longwinded fruitless back n forth talks that always end up with the same result: My view of prog is different from yours ie my dad's stronger than yours... I'd be inclusively minded if we're talking outsider artists - a lot of em we already have in Kraut, RIO, Avant and folk - acts that don't really fit the prog sticker as it is yet still deserve to be here. If we were to have a (sic) place to file these things, it'd be allright with me.
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The Dark Elf
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: February 01 2011 Location: Michigan Status: Offline Points: 13089 |
Posted: April 13 2014 at 12:14 | ||||||
That's a great video, Svetonio. The song was written for The Who Are You album, and was played in concert after Moon's death. What is it you are attempting but failing to say? The Who are still trudging on with occasional tours, even though John Entwistle and Keith Moon are dead. Bands vomiting up memorial tours does not mean much to me. It's nostalgia, remembering what they were. It's an enjoyable rerun without all the original performers. It is not the incredible excitement of watching a band in their prime playing something like Quadrophenia or Who's Next for the first time live.
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