Punk: A Logical Extension of Prog?

Slartibartfast wrote: More like illogical

And when the broken hearted people,

Edited by SteveG - March 11 2015 at 15:33

Whatever. I'm outa here

Because I do have an opinion on how much was just myth making and how much was reality. I believe the mainstream narrative on punk is too romanticised and simplistic and that is the point I intended to make. The appearance of a mutually exclusive dichotomy was simply an exaggeration. As for whether the developments were good or bad for music, for me to opine on that would be to presume to know what music would be good for people in general and I certainly would not want to be so presumptuous. I am just saying the truth about the transition from prog to punk is probably somewhere in the middle rather than the generally accepted view which is lopsided in favour of punk. It may be a mundane point to make but I would like to all the same. I also have a rather naive way of looking at all music as just different ways of expressing emotions that are common across genres. So the notion of a genre warfare seems rather silly to me and little more than the musicians way of winning more listeners over to 'their' side.  The trend in favour of greater and greater fragmentation of music (with not particularly edifying consequences for the artists as it reduces the size of their potential audience) also seems to have gained strength post the emergence of punk, even if it may have been there before the event.  Whether that was directly a consequence of the way punk was pitted as a musical adversary of prog I do not know but it seems plausible that it would have had something to do with it.  As somebody else said in the thread about prog lacking metal's success in recent years, punk is far more polarizing than prog (about which the worst that can be said is indeed that it is pretentious or overlong or noodly and boring) and therein its greatest strength and weakness.  I will go out on a limb in that regard and say that I do regard fragmentation as more bad than good for music overall.  Not in terms of music appreciation but in the way it affects how music is distributed to listeners.  But a music that plots itself in an adversarial corner probably cannot ever bring all kinds of listeners together no matter how good it is.  

Edited by rogerthat - March 11 2015 at 10:51

I am ,like everybody else in this thread, only opining in general so it would help a great deal if you didn't interpret everything I say as directly attacking your own opinions.  I am not saying you said all prog was pretentious but that the net effect of punk-driven myth making amounted to that being held up as the generally accepted view of prog.  That is what we read in the mainstream: that prog is pretentious and all but a musical bad word.  I think to mention it so apologetically, as if they are sorry they liked it in the 70s, is just delusional because you can't change history.  It happened; prog was an important part of 70s music culture.  

ExittheLemming wrote: Not an entirely implausible scenario and yes, there is always that cocky schadenfreude from the younger musicians when they are clearly supplanting the old guard in the marketplace. This is natural, this is good, this is healthy see Fathers and Sons by Turgenev from (gulp) 1862 for evidence that anything less always leads to conservatism, sentimental nostalgia, complacency, decline, apathy and unthinking conformity. The Nice, King Crimson, VDGG, Hendrix, Arthur Brown, the Who, the Stones, the Kinks, the Doors and Pink Floyd etc all had the same irreverent attitude to their forebears that the Punks had. Trouble is, Punk revisionists didn't have to work that hard at concocting a legend around Prog's alleged 'pretentiousness' or in some instances, the overripe and rotten fruit from the abandoned cosmiche orchard: Works Volume 1, Tales from Topographic Oceans, The Wall, Tormato, Love Beach, Stormwatch, Rhapsodies, Passpartu, (OK some of these can be dismissed as demonstrably w.a.n.k.y reactions to the burgeoning new wave aesthetics at the time) I don't think you're a Prog snob, but word to the wise, never shell out for the ammo that can be used by your assassins The Clash developed into a truly great Rock band with a punky and confrontational attitude not dissimilar to Oasis. Why PA members have a problem enjoying such brilliant music because they may have reservations about classification is beyond me.

For the record I won't say that progressive rock has been "brutally consigned to oblivion by the mainstream", but maybe this depends on your geographical location? I get the impression prog rock is to some extent more popular in Continental Europe than elsewhere - at least in the Anglosphere. Notice Van der Graaf Generator getting way higher on the charts in France and Italy compared to back home in the UK, or that I remember reading the Rock In Opposition movement actually achieved some degree of mainstream crossover success in Sweden?!

Like I said on the thread's first page, most punks I know aren't adverse to more technically involved music or ambitious songwriting at all since quite a few hardcore punk groups of this generation match that description. I even posted a link to the bandcamp page of a grind/HC band I'm friends with IRL that happens to be very strongly influenced by Gorguts and Voivod, who have been quite well received by the punk milieu in my country while also pulling off some pretty damn complex arrangements.

This thread has reminded me to finally go investigate listening to The Stranglers, which I've been meaning to for a while. Not sure how much I can contribute to the rest of the discussion, other than share my anecdotes from whatever experience I have interacting with a lot of people from the crust/grind/hardcore milieu here in Denmark. Which is a couple generations removed from the original 1970s punk era discussed here, which I also think focuses mostly on the UK/US too.

All I can say is that I think the common ground between punk and progressive rock came in part from the 1960s psychedelic scene, where the garage psych scene was influential on punk later on. Notice that it was Lenny Kaye, an associate of Patti Smith, who compiled the Nuggets anthology which is like the definitive chronicle of that scene. Then there is the fact I've never met a punk who didn't love Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Progressive rock then came from the British psychedelic rock scene beginning to incorporate classical influences starting with The Moody Blues, Traffic and their ilk.

From my vantage point in history, I get the impression the rest of the overlap was in the early-1970s glam rock movement. Like I said earlier, it's pretty clear even to someone my age that its rawer and more aggressive sector like the New York Dolls and The Sweet were a huge influence on punk, but also that the subculture had an artier and more technically proficient overlapping with prog rock as seen in a group like Queen. Hell, I could just mention that David Bowie collaborated with both Robert Fripp and Iggy Pop.

Then again, that's just what it looks like to a member of "Generation Y" who knows most of this information second- or third-hand from interviews and books and reviews.