Why is it called progressive rock?

 

You're stuck on the label........Just listen to the music and you will hear the "progressive" attributes come out. Listen to the first albums by the big 3, Genesis, Yes, Pink Floyd (or any other group you prefer).....then go forward and you will hear what we hear and talk about.

 

I still hear it today when I go back myself.

Right here!

 

Hahaha ... thx

 

Actually I will defer this to a screen shot that Dean posted a bit back ... and I think the term was first coined in London and featured some groups that were doing something different. Somehow, the term stuck to those bands (though I can not find many that can listen to the Edgar Broughton Band and explain its progressivity!), and eventually was expanded to the majority of groups and work that was going against the grain in popular music and "top of the pops" or "top ten" from Billboard.

 

The actual surprise for everyone, was ... that this stuff was selling, and some of it was selling very big, and though it never reached the top ten numbers and advertising, in the end, by the time that Dark Side of the Moon hit the mega status, the whole thing changed somewhat and the title "progressive" kinda took hold.

 

The thing that is missing here, which is major ... is the birth of FM radio in America ... which in its first years from 1969 through about 1979, was not as total a commercial thing in America ... for the longest time, even in LA, the big name disk jockeys even made fun of the FM radio ... I remember one once saying ... if you want to listen to stuff that pretends to be music, just turn on the FM band for 5 minutes ... and this was one of the big names in LA. Eventually these stations took hold and helped define a lot more music, but within 5 years, the ones in the big stations became just like the hit stations and within a few more years FM radio was over as the exploratory thing that it was, which allowed larger cuts to be played and varied the music a lot more and often did not have a "play list" ... although stations like KMET/KLOS had a "basic playlist" that they wanted their DJ's to play from every hour, and you could cross out the one you just played, and keep the list going, so you would play 3 or 4 of these and then you could play other things in between ... but that leaves out the likes of KNAC which was the one station that stuck with all this music through thick and thin, and has never gotten the credit it deserved and the honor that it should have. When KLOS/KMET pretty much folded into just another bs station playing rock oldies (which included some better known progressive things, like Boston, Kansas, Pink Floyd, etc ... ), KNAC didn't ... and somehow they made it. They also were connected to the start of one of the biggest import labels at the time, and Moby Disk, and those connections I do not know enough about to tell you more. Archie Patterson of EUROCK, is probably the one that can explain/expound on this a lot more than I have since he was "there" and a lot closer to it than I was. He has not, however, spoken of these things, and I think there was some animosity there since he was a part of that first label ( I think) and eventually he put together his own, including distribution network. But this was already, leading towards the imports and the hardcore European scene, and not necessarily London at all ... important distinction here.

 

It is difficult to discuss this, since the majority of folks today do not have any concept or idea how this would have happened ... you realize that the FM stations made Abbey Road ... not the hits stations, right? Today, there is the internet, however the internet has failed to give you what the FM radio did for new music ... probably because of America and its ability for everyone to have a computer and post anything, and DAW's these days are a dime-a-dozen ... and the ability to understand how something DIFFERENT would have been found and created. Going through Youtube today to find something "different" is a nightmare! You would figure it would be easier, but the ability to discuss, inform and help people find the different things is difficult ... you now search for this or that and it gives you the top ten hits! And these, are rarely, the best ... just the most popular, another form of top of the pops of top ten.

 

My take on it all, and this is based on some artistic studies and my major in directing in theater, and a minor in film, for which you study a lot of the literature related to it, and world scenes, I eventually found that these scenes were not separate. If you separate the German scene fro film and theater, you miss out what Krautrock was and came from -- not to mention how it even was related to Tim Leary, which was another avenue that helped ADD to the whole experimentation of the scene -- it added "focus", which obviously was missing in the drug/sex infested California scene. And "focus" is one of the primary needs for creating new arts and processes. If you separate the arts in London at the time, which were massive, from film to theater to - obviously - the music, you will find the same thing ... it's hard to say that the Beatles changed the world, when London was changing right at the same time with them in the other arts! ... and if you compare Sgt Peppers to the other arts at the time, you will find, and understand what the cover of Sgt Peppers is all about ... we're forgetting all that aren't we? 

 

Those are the best examples of what "progressive" means ... and take a look at the cover of Sgt Peppers again ... it was a way of saying, this music is more than just she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah with a picture of 4 good looking guys on the cover!

 

The more I write about it, the more obvious the whole thing is ... but even what the Beatles did, was not as experimental as so many other things ... one can even go back to The Goons and find Spike Milligan inventing sound effects -- including the famous "sock full of custard" -- which supposedly added about 3 to 4 more LP's to the library of sound effects that the BBC had, and was already the de facto standard at the time, sounds of which you can find in Pink Floyd, Beatles, Rolling Stones and so many other bands!

 

My use of the word, is "looser" than others. For me it has to include the world, because you and I saying that something was happening in New York and London, and nothing happened in Paris, Rome, Tokyo, San Francisco or LA, or Sao Paulo ... pretty much means ... we don't believe the world is intelligent enough to have arts and music on its own ... and the true answer is ... they did! We just haven't heard it! And we don't think that Velvet Underground is "progressive" because it had other inspirations that did not include odd time signatures and a guitarist going crazy and mad ... but it had other things that did the same.

 

This is a valid process and scene, but it has to allow all of these others to be there. The day that we are capable of combining all these ... and show the world what great music and work this was and where it came from ... we will have done the music itself one of the greatest things we could possibly ever do for it. We will have honored it. We will also have honored one generation that is ridiculed, STILL, for being stoned and for its many sex abuses ... many of which ended up giving us some of the most unsavory moments in the history of rock music, and we don't have to mention that one in the Bay Area ... or any sympathy for it!

 

But simply calling it "prog" for me, is meaningless ... it is no different than way too many bands out there that were simply trying to sell and get attention, which is what the whole thing has become ... and I'm sorry ... that which was originally "progressive" was not about attention ... was about the music and the beauty (and the beast!) within ... I'm not sure I can say that about half the bands listed here and considered "prog" since most of them are simple copy of the same thing that was there before and nothing but ... or an extended solo here and there. Or worse, just a sound effect here or there! And even though a lot of the earlier bands we love had effects, none of them were there to simply change the music into something else ... they were there showing you that there was more to the music ... not just an effect to enhance a solo!