Prog = Literature - Progressive Rock Music Forum

I belive You, it is hard to write good POP songs, especialy if you want to make not only POP music, but HITS.

But i disagree that Prog Music havent been good at it.

Peter Gabriel : Sledgehammer/Big Time

Yes: Owner of a Lonely Hart

Zappa: Baby Snake

Genesis: some great pop songs

Bryan Ferry (Prog related): lots of great POP songs

Bowie (Prog related): lots of great POP songs

Edited by tamijo - October 17 2009 at 03:52

Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours

No i didnt know that,

Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours

moshkito wrote:

... Originally posted by Luke. J

(face it, proggers, progressive rock's classics aren't modern anymore Wink

)

Geee .. neither is Beethoven, and Mozart ... gee ... did I forget anyone else? With all this top ten stuff I've heard it so much I can't stand it anymore! Ohh heck, Shakespeare is not classic and the Bible is definitly old ... do we need to go further back to illustrate?

It's the same thing with all the arts ... today we might think that that Picasso is passe and boring ... but all that means is that you are not taking the element of time and place in consideration ... and how things developed and came to pass and be ... and got to where they are now.

You need to take the essence of it all ... or the whole thing is as meaningless as your life ...

And this is exactly what makes it hard for "modern" people to listen the, from pop-culture's angle, ancient rock music of Genesis, Jethro Tull and Yes. They are not connected in either way with the background, it is unusual for them, and for some unusual equals crap. Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare were all part of popular culture (at least of those who could afford it) in their times. Progressive rock today is about as old-fashioned as medieval music in the 19th century. In other words, it is too old to be modern, in other words, it is unusual and therefore not considered part of popular culture.

Maybe the quote could be misunderstood to "man, get outta ya time machine and arrive in 21st century", but this was not intended. Just that classics will not arrive in modern age because of their style, but only if because of their context. People just cannot relate to Yes or Genesis these days..

moshkito wrote:

... And this is exactly what makes it hard for "modern" people to listen the, from pop-culture's angle, ancient rock music of Genesis, Jethro Tull and Yes. They are not connected in either way with the background, it is unusual for them, and for some unusual equals crap. Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare were all part of popular culture (at least of those who could afford it) in their times. Progressive rock today is about as old-fashioned as medieval music in the 19th century. In other words, it is too old to be modern, in other words, it is unusual and therefore not considered part of popular culture....

Agreed ...

Heartily agreed ...

I don't agree. At all. Firstly "those who could afford it" where a minority and were not representive of "popular culture" but "elite culture" (in its truest sense). Secondly people who do not appreciate Progressive Rock today have no problems with the classic rock, pop or R'n'B of the past - their disconnection has nothing to do with time or age.

moshkito wrote:

That's why a lot of times I say that too many people are writing and saying things from the perspective of their "fandon" ... and "favorite" group.

And so they should - anyone who listens to music will make a connection to a particular group or artists (or group of artists) and will see everything through that perspective, because what people are fans of is defined by who they are and not the other way around. And that is true of every genre in history, even back to Bach - who had his supporters and dissenters, for every Mozart fan there was a Salieri fan and both where people motivated by what they heard.

moshkito wrote:

There is nothing difficult about listening to other musics and interpretations and cultures, specially today with the Internet ... 100 years ago, no one would have known but 5 to 10 composers and a couple of folks that played in the local bar ... so to speak ... and when considering what is available to day ... including this board ... I kinda think that we should get a bit better ... about some of these discussions, unfortunately, too many of the responses can best be said to be trolling, than a proper response.

One minor point - the class boundaries in those days was enormous - you either knew 10 composers or a couple of folks that played in a local bar - not both. While we imagine that the working classes of the 18th and 19th century liked nothing better than to gather around the pianoforte and listen to a Beethoven sonata after they got home from 16 hours toiling at Mr Cartwright's new fangled Power Loom in the dark satanic mills of old England, the reality is they'd never heard of him and probably only knew a few hymns and some bawdy folk songs. The Internet wasn't responsible for opening up music to the masses - the wax cylinder and the 78 were the medium, and general education was the motivation.

Whether people know 10 artists or 100, whether they are fans of 1 band or a whole genre, they can only talk about what they know and what moves them to speak. Repetition of the same statements without further qualification isn't trolling, it's just tiresome.

moshkito wrote:

But it is important, for us here as well, that we spend more time showing a sense of understanding having to do with the history of the music ... prog is not prog ... prog is good music like any other ... and dows not sound bad or old any more than anything else ... however, a lot of pop music does sound dated and bad -- and in general most of those have more to do with the production and the time than it did the music itself ... sometimes there was no care to make it better ... if such a term can be mentioned.

Music is a product of its age, you cannot change that - revivals sound like revivals and can never be "the real thing". The production on early Genesis albums sounds like it does because of the technology involved - that is part of the charm and signature - because that is how it was presented and delivered, the "production" was part of the process. The re-recorded versions of classic albums that a few artists have put out remove something indefinable from the product, that makes them a facsimile of the former recording.

moshkito wrote:

While I am not ... a musicologist ... I would be hard pressed to know a chord from any guitar ... or keyboard ... but in terms of having pend time and appreciating music from 700 years ago, or Dream Theater today, or a Michael Oldfield, or The Pipes of Pan in Joujouba ... in the end, it changes you some ... somewhere along the way you learn to appreciate a lot of music and you find real quick that a "style" means absolutely nothing to you .... and one of the faults in an area like this is creating "groups" so that we know what is what ... but yes, it is needed sometimes, and they do call it romantic, baroque and what not ... with one major exception .... the late 20th century blasted the history of music ... and then some ... all of a sudden you can hear sonic structures doing Albinoni .... and we're gonna call that "neo-goth" because the guitar had a sound effect that made it sound like ... neo-goth ... and now you can see the ridiculousness of the whole thing ... but if it SELLS records because it is goth or neo-goth ... what the heck ... all the power to those groups!

The 20th century resulted in a massive upheaval in how music is created and presented. On the creation side this was as drastic as the changes that occurred during "the Age of Enlightenment", with wider diversities in what could be achieved by deconstructing the old rules and formulating new rules, until those rules became deconstructed and reformulated and so on. On the presentation side it had the opposite effect in many regards, it led to definitive versions of music, because they could be played and recorded as the composer intended them to be heard. Conversely, earlier music, such as Baroque, played on modern versions of orchestral instruments is not how the composer envisioned it, (unless it is interpreted by a Early Music orchestra using traditional instruments). What we hear when a modern concert orchestra plays it is an interpretation and an approximation and not what the 17th century audience heard.

The classification of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic etc. were after-the-event delineations "invented" in the mid-19th century - the changes from one era to another were not abrupt, they blended and overlapped - the 20th century didn't change the history of music, it just brought it to a mass audience, all the hard work of making it easier to understand had been done in the previous century.

btw: I'm a little confused by your last few sentences on Goth and Neo-goth (I appreciate that you are using them as a hyperthetical example, but they are pre-used terms). The term neo-goth only exists as a derogatory fashion term for mall-goths and is not appiled to any musical form I know of, (although some bands have tried to adopt the tag, it has been in the main ignored). Gothic music (namely Gothic Rock and Gothic Metal and the associated subgenres of Dark Wave and EBM) has no relationship to the Neo-gothic (or Gothic Revival) era of the 18th century, or the Baroque period of classical music, but grew from the New Romantic scene of the1980s and while it is related to the Gothic fiction of the Romantic writers such a Byron and Keats and the dress style of Victoriana - Goth's music influences were 100% 20th century in origin. Even the associated dark-wave subgenre called Neoclassical has little relationship to any accepted forms of classical music other than a loose influence (ie it sounds classical).

However, my minor confusion aside, I think you are underestimating the buying public in that they may buy the emergent style, but they won't keep buying it, and they will only buy a select few of the copy-cat artists that follow - most (if not all) of the genres and styles that arose in the 20th century (have we had any in the 21st century yet?) were adoptions rather than marketing inventions.

moshkito wrote:

But the sales ... in the 20th century are now DEFINING the history of music ... and our definitions will change as will the acceptance and application of its names and identification ...

Sales of one form or another have always defined musical history - music survives when it is popular and popularity has always been measured by what the composer or performer can be paid for his craft; whether that was Blondel's price of a meal and a bed for the night, Mozart's ticket sales for his latest symphony, Glen Miller's sheet music sales or Eminem's platinum status for his latest album. But whether that artist can bring any influence to subsequent generations will be a combination of popularity, critical aclaim and a degree of luck.

moshkito wrote:

And yes ... musical knowledge is not always necessary ... but having an appreciation and beauty for everyone's views and abilities is important ... and the only thing I personally don't care for is when someone says that a piece of music is trash ... and it makes you wonder whose trash we're talking about, that's all.

That, I agree with

What?