Is Sgt Pepper Prog? - Progressive Rock Music Forum

Tom Ozric wrote:

Dean, I can't fathom the thought of your lengthy responses on a (barely Progressive) album by a band you don't even really like. I dare you to start your thoughts on Slayer ! They're more Prog than the Beatles could ever hope to be !!

I'm interested in the history of Progressive Rock, its foundation and its development. This is because we never think about documenting history as it happens so have to reinvent and rediscover it through a haze of half-memories, myth and rose-tinted nostalgia long after. When a claim is made about a subject I want to test the robustness of that claim - seeing if it stands-up to close scrutiny and has any documented evidence to support it that can be checked and ratified. When so much of what we know is based upon hearsay, reported anecdotes and huge slice of received wisdom I respond to unsubstantiated claims by researching the story behind that looking for the vestiges of truth and reality. If the claim holds up then I'm more inclined to believe it, but if it doesn't then I become interested in the source of the claim than the claim itself because it is just possible that there is a vestige of truth behind each of these misremembered anecdotes. For example it was once claimed that many Prog musicians were classically trained when closer examination revealed this to be far from the truth: very few of them ever received any formal music training, let alone in Classical Music. Yet once that myth has been dispelled we can then look at where the origins of classical music influence in Prog Rock really came from. If no one challenges these claims, however credible they sound, then the stories will enter into the "history" as undeniable fact. When people say Sgt Pepper is important I want to know how and why it is important and that means researching into something that I don't have a great deal of personal affection for but was alleged to be of huge influence to music from that time and since that I do like.

The other reason is I'm an opinionated arsehole who has something to say on practically every subject under the sun.

As to Slayer... Reign in Blood and Seasons in the Abyss are undeniably two of the preeminent albums in Thrash Metal that had a measurable impact on Heavy Metal in general but (compared to Metalicacaca or Megadeaf) perhaps not so much on Prog Metal directly, which I believe is closer to Death Metal than Thrash Metal in its stylistic origins. I've seen Slayer twice now and was bored to tears both times so I'd much rather listen to Tori Amos's cover of Raining Blood than Slayer's original but then that's to be expected as I've always preferred other forms of extreme metal to thrash.

Now, are there any other rock and or metal music genres you'd like me to comment upon?

What?

SteveG wrote:

Dean wrote:

SteveG wrote:

The whole myth and the accompanying warped bigoted stereotypes of the hippie culture is mostly that. A myth. Most Americans were either in college to avoid the draft or actually drafted for the war, while a very tiny group ran off to Canada. The tune in, turn on and drop out crowd was a small part of the population that was intimately aligned with the anti war/anti draft movement. You know, the 4 people shot in Ohio in 1970 (way after the hippie scene was supposed to be dead, another myth) by the American National Guard while they protested the insane, illegal and immoral war in Vietnam. Shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. But why be concerned, even 45 years later. After all, they were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?

Edit: Btw, it was psychedelic rock that vanished in 1968, not hippies.

And the myth continues - the four people murdered in the Kent State shootings were students not hippies. The hippy movement brought the anti-war message to the fore but it didn't own the monopoly on it. The Student unrest that occurred in the late sixties and early seventies was not a part of the hippy movement but in some ways was a reaction to the indifference of society as a whole to the message it preached. Sure there is correlation, but we should be wary of drawing direct conclusions from that because what those students were protesting about in America wasn't the same as they were protesting about in Paris and Munich.

The myth continues, if you care to keep perpetuating it. To make myself clearer, strike out the line in my post " After all, they were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?" and insert "These students were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?"

It's kind of silly to mimic one's self isn't it? But you are correct. I'm speaking of American student demonstrators only.

And the mythinformation continues. I took your original comment to be a flippant rejoinder due to the implied sarcastic tone of the language used, but since you have altered that I now dispute your claim all together as I don't see that they were mimicking anything of the sort nor had they adopted any hippy values. And while on the subject of perpetuating myths, nor were they shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. While such incidents of putting flowers in gun barrels did happen, it didn't at Kent State on May 4th 1970 and the most iconic of those occurred 300 miles away in 1967 (and no one got shot as a consequence of doing it) - also it is highly improbable that any students would have got close enough to the guardsmen to do it on that day without being bayoneted first, as had happened on the previous day.

However, none of this is particularly relevant to the topic other than as an illustration of how memory isn't quite as exact as we'd like it to be.

What?

Dean wrote:

SteveG wrote:

Dean wrote:

SteveG wrote:

The whole myth and the accompanying warped bigoted stereotypes of the hippie culture is mostly that. A myth. Most Americans were either in college to avoid the draft or actually drafted for the war, while a very tiny group ran off to Canada. The tune in, turn on and drop out crowd was a small part of the population that was intimately aligned with the anti war/anti draft movement. You know, the 4 people shot in Ohio in 1970 (way after the hippie scene was supposed to be dead, another myth) by the American National Guard while they protested the insane, illegal and immoral war in Vietnam. Shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. But why be concerned, even 45 years later. After all, they were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?

Edit: Btw, it was psychedelic rock that vanished in 1968, not hippies.

And the myth continues - the four people murdered in the Kent State shootings were students not hippies. The hippy movement brought the anti-war message to the fore but it didn't own the monopoly on it. The Student unrest that occurred in the late sixties and early seventies was not a part of the hippy movement but in some ways was a reaction to the indifference of society as a whole to the message it preached. Sure there is correlation, but we should be wary of drawing direct conclusions from that because what those students were protesting about in America wasn't the same as they were protesting about in Paris and Munich.

The myth continues, if you care to keep perpetuating it. To make myself clearer, strike out the line in my post " After all, they were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?" and insert "These students were only mimicking useless wastrels and embraced their hippy values. You know, the people that supposedly cared little about and contributed nothing to society. Right?"

It's kind of silly to mimic one's self isn't it? But you are correct. I'm speaking of American student demonstrators only.

And the mythinformation continues. I took your original comment to be a flippant rejoinder due to the implied sarcastic tone of the language used, but since you have altered that I now dispute your claim all together as I don't see that they were mimicking anything of the sort nor had they adopted any hippy values. And while on the subject of perpetuating myths, nor were they shot and killed after placing flowers in the gun barrels of the Guardsmen's riffles. While such incidents of putting flowers in gun barrels did happen, it didn't at Kent State on May 4th 1970 and the most iconic of those occurred 300 miles away in 1967 (and no one got shot as a consequence of doing it) - also it is highly improbable that any students would have got close enough to the guardsmen to do it on that day without being bayoneted first, as had happened on the previous day.

However, none of this is particularly relevant to the topic other than as an illustration of how memory isn't quite as exact as we'd like it to be.

Dean, if the flowers in the gun barrels as metaphor flew over your head, then I'm afraid that you will not see the generalized wide spread peaceful behavior of the students as a whole. That whole being part of their culture. The counter culture of which the hippies and students actually shared. And that's no myth, as much as you wish it to be.