Has the flame finally gone out?

You're probably right Simon.

Edited by Guldbamsen - December 08 2014 at 06:52

I don't. All I'm saying is that appearances fool - especially in this day and age. Every fashion trend from the last century is trendy somewhere right now, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the person wearing it knows anything relevant about the actual time frame from where the style originated - let alone the music.  

Edited by Guldbamsen - December 08 2014 at 08:31

Sounds like my old gang of friends in Copenhagen.

Guldbamsen wrote: Most of the people dressing up in hippie clothes these days don't listen to the same kind of stuff they used to back then.  The following may come off as a gross generalisation, but in something like 99% of the time you meet those chicks, they're either on their way to a rave or merely attending some kind of outdoors rock festival. Go back to their place and see what kind of music they really listen to, and you get synth-pop and 80s music galore......maybe a couple of Beatles and Doors records if you're lucky The style of the 60s and 70s is still hugely 'in', but the kind of spiritual devotion to rock music that went along with the fashion back then is something you have to look long and hard for nowadays. It's still there but in smaller fractions and in most cases it's spread out to other branches of music than rock.

I just don't believe that all that young people in hippie clothes will booed if e.g. Steve Wilson to play at IOW Festival 2015 instead already announced Pharell Williams. It is up to the organizers and marketing guys who really are more and more mediocre. They maybe do not want a prog band on the stage because IOW is not a prog festival, or they fear loss of profits or who knows if they ever give a sh*t who's going to play - just that the biggest sellers are on the stage, and everything else except that super-super-mainstream they do not care. Although that legendary IOW 1970/1971 was full of progressive rock bands and although the young people show a desire for a "retro 70s". And young people will listen to all that organizers and sponsors a la Hard Rock Cafe will set at the stage. Just my opinion, of course.

Edited by Svetonio - December 08 2014 at 12:07

It would be nice if a majority of the younger generation understood the difference between Progressive Rock and playing progressive. As if to say...if you are playing guitar on stage with Billy Joel and you are playing a part of the song that is progressive, then it rates alongside playing a fast note pattern on the guitar from a YES song. Music is simply music, but it is often misunderstood by those who are not musicians in the sense that they don't conceive that many styles of music have a strong relationship with each other regarding NOT only the science aspect to music, but the natural developing stages of it. For example: How Jazz playing made it's way through "Top 40 #1 hits". Originally the term "progressive" was used by road musicians to describe to each other how to go about playing in a piece.

Edited by TODDLER - December 09 2014 at 12:58

I think it's dangerous putting labels on music at times.  For instance, I was watching McCartney's Wings "Rock Show" and they play "Band on the Run" with all those changes, and Denny is playing a double neck guitar and you hear the Moog and Paul with a LH Rickenbacker.  It's very prog, and looks very vintage prog and you see all these big Marshall stacks in the back.  It's live, very open and it's a band playing naturally in the moment without conservation or protection.  But what you have with Wings are some great songs.  Maybe I'm Amazed is one of my favorite songs.  It's a beautiful song, great structure, very well thought out with memorable passages and that great guitar solo that I am going to remember far longer than some pretentious guitar hero shredding a bunch of mindless notes across 11/8 meter.  Paul's bass lines walk around a lot like Squire's do and I am sure Squire was heavily influenced by how Paul played. 

However, Paul would play a lot of simple stuff and balanced his act out with less prog and more pop to play into the audience.  He certainly could have gone full prog post Beatles, but was always more interested in the bigger picture of writing great songs first, and if prog passages were needed to create and fulfill the piece then he would use them, but to me he did so in a much more tasteful way than say ELP. 

I don't need 3 hours of complexity to enjoy a rock show.  I do need some.  I respect a band that can do it, but I respect a band more for using restraint also. 

Another example is The Elton John Band.  Funeral for a Friend is about as prog as a song can get.  But it's a great piece of music.  All the notes and the arrangement and playing work toward the feeling of the piece, the lyric and are tied conceptually with proper intention.  But Elton's contributions to prog go unnoticed because he didn't follow the formula put down by the other prog groups from that era.  YES and GENESIS, TULL and FLOYD were the most successful and for good reason.  They delivered the whole package, lyric, concept, music that worked toward fulfilling the intention of the writer, the feeling and emotion.  As soon as it becomes a chops fest game over.  It's immature to do that, lacks confidence, class and looses the audience in most cases. 

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: Lyrics often good

Although this is not a discussion about Dream Theater I would like to say that their back catalogue has quite an extreme split musically for me. I like Awake , Six Degrees, A Change Of Seasons and Octovarium and would regards those as at least 4 star releases but there are those that feel if they were just chucked out. I only point this out as to me not all DT output is the same but people talk about them as if that were so.

Yeah, I get the impression overall that the metal culture is nowhere as open to outside-the-box thinking in music as it was 4 years ago with most of the acclaimed new bands being retro throwbacks now.