Exclusionsist or Inclusivist?

I cannot agree that prog ceased circa 1979. I just believe three major things happened

What changed? Perception. 1977, UK punk, prog and the British media. As has been indicated Yes, Genesis were selling big time while the Pistils played to 200 in the 100 club. ANd would have been copletely ignored but for the fashion giving the press (a voracious animal needing constant food) grst to theri mill. A hack could be hip at a new wave gig but not dine backstage with Genesis. Better, drugs and a chance of getting laid. Plus punk and pop are easy to assimilate and write about and get to the pub on time.

There was a sea change. Tull nearly withered as A had to marketed under the Tull name, not Anderson's. Even now he is Jethro Anderson to many. Genesis kind of split (Collins / divorce / Vancouver, 1979) and reconvened under a changing direction (1980, Duke). Yes split, became Cinema as Atlantic finally figured out what to do with Trevor Rabin. Say hello to Chris Squire. But breaking in a new name? Ertegun might have been worried about hat but probbbaly more concerned at the requisite vocal identity (required in, er, pop music. What to do with you know who? Say hello to Trevor and Chris, Jon, they have an idea. ELP called it quits as did Gentle Giant. Even Plant felt Zeppelin's time was up in '79 / 80. Deep Purple were a fake band, Sabbath were falling apart and Heep were the heap in '80. Realy only Floyd were going and that was more due to Roger's energy than the normal PF lethargy. Plus his lyric on Animals were socially spot on and in a sophisticated way. He even got into the spitting thing. Punk Floyd.

You see it is still rock and roll, and / or pop and All In A Mouse's Night did not quite cut the street value God Save The Queen had. The times changed as heavy rock shed the blues (as symphonic rock immediately did in the 60s). It was really the art rock side of pop rock that kept the levels of sophistication going (Bowie, Roxy to Magazine). Rock still had it's ambition and the new art rock was called New Wave. Then the Neo Prog Scene emerged as some new wave acts got this new romantic thing and some bands wanted to be more intellectual. Which is why you can have Duran Duran and Marillion in the same record collection in 1986 - but not if you were a King Crimson fan from 1974.

Many names in prog are curios to the public now and the audiences reflect that. I mean I saw a Kiss vid earlier today (2 numbers). Grey haired baldies. (Not Kiss, that's all under wigs and make up - smart guys from the beginning!) but the audience. Not teenyboppers as they were 40 years ago when these tunes first appeared. Rock is always about the audience. Without whom drug dealers, record company execs, the press oh, and bands would fade away.

Maybe we can get too hung up on what is prog and all that. I remember when The Ladder got released and the shop staff had no idea who it was and put it under L. Oh yes, the band was - and is - Yes. Do Muse fans care about Yes? Maybe some, but probably not many.

Oh and this idea that Radiohead are a prog band is one of the odd consequences of that 1977 divide. Radiohead would be best associated with punk, new wave, indie rock but most certainly not prog (except maybe Kid A which seemed to have hijacked and recycled the European RIO and avant music for it's ideas). Porcupine Tree, absolutely, psych, art rock, symphonic as well as keeping it's orientation toward people (from In Absentia onwards anyway) . The amusing sight of SW (Rockpalasst) taking 10 mins to describe what kind of band P Tree are was amusing. In rock, people understand pop, metal, disco, rap, reggae, kazz, jam band, country. indie rock, rockabilly usw as labels. But prog? Nah. If your definition takes more than 2 words and as long as a drum solo you're a prog band. There's no identifying fashion.

I mean no one in the prog audience can define it. I just call it sophisticated rock if any one asks (they don't).

And it's all generation oriented. Classical music isn't. Rock is because it is all about the pop sounds of your life. That's over by the time the new kids are in town and all the audience have got married, jobs and have no time for records and associated activities. (Poor beggars).

The active life of a pop or rock band if good can go for what? 5 years on average? 10? But people have a relationship with music and a proximity to artists which had not happened before. Old age rock is in it's infancy still. And I don't mean the Net proximity. "Old" bands are around because of the timeless quality of being a "pop" fan. If they are doing what they are doing, people don't have to acknowledge their own impending decay and demise. So I don't.

There's a lot to this question and the prog audience are not excluded from this perpetual change so it's best to deal with it. It's a process like all writing. Evolve or die.

P.S. there's a lot to brand names. David Gilmour could not sell a 175 seat cinema show in the '80s. As the one who was Pink he ruled the world a year or so later. Asia provided symphonic rock in a form that pop fans may like but the old Yes fans hated because attention spans were geared to 20 minutes per "song" not 4. Oddly this still meant Topographic Oceans is disliked because it was 4 x 20 minutes which is like a whole CD's worth of music man and caused so much strife. In a world of pay for play it's evolve or die.

Amidst the huge confusion that is human perception but it's lowest common denominator thinking (socially generated money oriented activities) that rules contemporary music. Possibly sad, but true. We deal with it.

Voted for inclusive. I do think the main site is too inclusive in some regards, but at the same time I don't buy the other extreme of identifying progressive rock solely with the British prog scene of the 1960s and early 1970s. Even then, there are a lot of artists who started their career in the 1980s and 1990s who do continue that tradition but in the context of more modern styles. (Primus, Tool, late-eighties Voivod etc. just to name some most obvious examples)

rogerthat wrote: That seems to have become a bit difficult now because the older bands have a readymade, assured audience and are probably regarded as more reliable by promoters.  And yet, many of these older bands either aren't doing much studio work at all or it pales in comparison to what they used to do in their heyday.

A fair few factors involved there. Creating a new album of music takes alot of energy. Getting new material in the public psyche is very diificult. In the olden days Deep Purple (a great example) would the airplay and tour (and still tour incessantly. I'd hate to be a collector of all their bootlegs....

But a new album ... older fans hate change (Yes 90125, 80s Genesis). Some people have no idea Peter Gabriel was in Genesis while some clamour for a reunion. Fans of the same band? More or less.

New music in metal? Sometimes. Metal is great example of rock evolving to survive. There is also a collective marketing image (as one glance at CD covers in your city's CD store will reveal. It does in mine. Bit like how DVD comedies are all on a white background. It is one way of generated a market /audience.

None of this is all really new. Many classical composers had fairly short shelf (concert) lives in the pre-recording days as audiences remain perpetually fickle.

Oh, and a new album means platinum sales are what? 20,000 copies sold. The millions are gone as the other factor a permanently flat economy, record companies issuing mega size box set editions of albums against the public armed with the Net and a PC. The music biz set themselves up in direct competition with the public who told them to get stuffed and promptly pirated everything rather than pay for it all again and again. CD-Rs sound just as good as a CD.

A new album costs a lot and sales may not cover it. So touring (Yes and their Prog Love Boat concert type novelties) help to "structure" (assess / guarantee) income. It says a lot when it's merchandise that is the big generator rather than tickets and albums.

There's the failure factor. If you are Led Zep used to selling ship loads of records and sales dwindle to sod all then that's what the audience will get. (There are many consequences to piracy). Hence an overly hyped, marketed reunion - resulting in Celebration Day. One concert that lasted five years (marketing wise) and then got released to keep that going. I must admire PP and J for then touring the world saying they are not going to tour the world.

Another thing that's gone - if some ever knew it existed is rock mystique. Now a band must grovel for emails, and be sycophantic. What's worse they are really found to be the miserable bunch of lecherous, drunken, addicted swine (probably back to Kiss again here but a glance at Guns And Roses) just so their personality matched audience can relate to them. Tweets, "like"s on Facebook and be as real as an "ordinary" person. That's not good. The mirage has dissipated. The evolution is still calling.

uduwudu wrote:   Another thing that's gone - if some ever knew it existed is rock mystique. Now a band must grovel for emails, and be sycophantic. What's worse they are really found to be the miserable bunch of lecherous, drunken, addicted swine (probably back to Kiss again here but a glance at Guns And Roses) just so their personality matched audience can relate to them. Tweets, "like"s on Facebook and be as real as an "ordinary" person. That's not good. The mirage has dissipated. The evolution is still calling.

Chris S wrote: ^^^ Great post ^^ I don't think we should underestimate modern day listernership of prog. I have three kids who love Dylan, Floyd, Rush and even Yes....( Yes...cosmic induced Yes!) to name a few. Sure Mum & Dad helped educate them, but since the turn of the millennium they have been accessing prog plus current musical trends via CD/internet. Their mates appear well briefed too and. One of my son's favorite live gigs was seeing Steely Dan...he was 13. We should not underestimate modern listener's knowledge. Beside how do we measure sales in prog, if most kids have burned their parents music too or share the iCloud I digress somewhat but referencing new generations being oblivious to the late 60's/70's prog experience, does not sit well with me. It is all by association anyway.

Even then, there are recent bands who clearly are rooted in 1970s prog/psych-rock but still have an updated take on that original movement... like Colour Haze for example.  They're obviously a continuation of the Kosmische Musik scene but updated with quite a few guitar playing techniques and sounds from newer doom metal styles that popped up in the 1980s and 1990s (Sleep being a clear point of reference) yet the resulting music never approximates it.

Then there's the case of certain groups from the Japanese noise rock milieu evolving into a more extreme version of Kosmische Musik, avant-prog or Zeuhl. Acid Mothers Temple, The Boredoms and Ruins are perhaps the prime representatives of this phenomenon.

Its a no brainer really. Prog progresses on and only the really pedantic approach would suggest it ended in the late 70s. Yes that era was quintessential to prog, but it continues onto this day and has transformed, even reinventing itself. i think Porcupine Tree are just as important to prog as King Crimson. Or bands like Haken measure up to Rush. No problem with that, as they come from different perspectives of the same medium. Without the modern prog scene prog would be dead! We cant live in the past or wallow in nostalgia as it gets tiresome after a while. Its nice to dip the feet into new waters, and broaden the listeneing experience, while still being reverant to the decade where prog originated.

Edited by AtomicCrimsonRush - April 13 2014 at 06:44

Toaster Mantis wrote: Chris S wrote: ^^^ Great post ^^ I don't think we should underestimate modern day listernership of prog. I have three kids who love Dylan, Floyd, Rush and even Yes....( Yes...cosmic induced Yes!) to name a few. Sure Mum & Dad helped educate them, but since the turn of the millennium they have been accessing prog plus current musical trends via CD/internet. Their mates appear well briefed too and. One of my son's favorite live gigs was seeing Steely Dan...he was 13. We should not underestimate modern listener's knowledge. Beside how do we measure sales in prog, if most kids have burned their parents music too or share the iCloud I digress somewhat but referencing new generations being oblivious to the late 60's/70's prog experience, does not sit well with me. It is all by association anyway. Even then, there are recent bands who clearly are rooted in 1970s prog/psych-rock but still have an updated take on that original movement... like Colour Haze for example.  They're obviously a continuation of the Kosmische Musik scene but updated with quite a few guitar playing techniques and sounds from newer doom metal styles that popped up in the 1980s and 1990s (Sleep being a clear point of reference) yet the resulting music never approximates it. Then there's the case of certain groups from the Japanese noise rock milieu evolving into a more extreme version of Kosmische Musik, avant-prog or Zeuhl. Acid Mothers Temple, The Boredoms and Ruins are perhaps the prime representatives of this phenomenon.

Edited by Svetonio - April 13 2014 at 08:30

Chris S wrote: The Dark Elf wrote: Svetonio wrote: rogerthat wrote: I have read very detailed recollections of forum member TODDLER capturing how prog got relegated to a sideshow in the 80s, of how it became difficult to play Zappa songs in clubs...in America, mind, not just Britain.  The album sales figures speak for themselves and I don't need to reiterate it.  Only Marillion achieved telling success on that front and they still could not approach the success of Floyd or Tull.  Moving Pictures would appear to be the last blockbuster prog rock album for a very long time, to be beaten only by OK Computer nearly two decades later.  I am not convinced the collapse was restricted only to Britain.  The scene began to dwindle in Italy as well.  What prog was left in Europe was mainly the avant/RIO groups. A parallel development was the relegation of jazz in America.  So it wasn't just prog, long winded improvisational music generally began to face a tough time.  To believe that prog was as healthy and robust a music scene in the 80s as in the 70s is to deny this seismic cultural shift in music happened at all.  None of this is to support an overly British centric view of prog, especially the one that holds symph prog as the basis of all prog.  I am making neutral observations based on various articles and reflections such as TODDLER's that I have read about the time. You can not measure the popularity of someone like Frank Zappa with regard to the fact that obscure clubs in the early eighties playing post-punk (or whatever, I did not read TODDLER's post). Actually, Zappa was filled up the arenas from LA to Paris at that time. Pink Floyd released The Wall In 1979; Jethro Tull released Stormwatch; Bill Bruford released  One of a Kind; a ticket for a concert of "proto-prog" act The Who was a hot ticket in 1979, and so on. There was no collapse of the classic bands in 1979. It's a concoction that was later created to celebrate the British punk & new wave movement at the first place, but it can be useful for other things too, as you can see. Nobody was collapsed but there was a huge commercialization of British (symphonic) progressive rock i.e. Genesis. Svetonio, I'll have to disagree, up to a point. Although one can't use the year 1979 as the end-all, be-all milestone for the death of prog, one can certainly see that rigor mortis set in around that year. Pink Floyd released The Wall in 1979, but went straight to hell after that. Tull released Stormwatch in 1979, but that was the last album of their classic releases, and the last of their classic lineup. ELP was already done by 1978 (can you say Love Beach?), Yes released Tormato in 1978 (and the equally dreadful Drama in 1980), Genesis was well on their way to being commercial shells of their former selves (Hackett left in `77). King Crimson would not return until 1981 with their Talking Heads tribute album Discipline, and Gentle Giant, VdGG and Camel were already irrelevant (if they ever were relevant). You mention The Who, but from an album standpoint, their greatness as a band died with Keith Moon (Who Are You was released in 1978) as did sometime-proggy Led Zeppelin when John Bonham died (In Through the Out Door, 1979). As for Frank Zappa, his last gold-selling album (gold in Canada, mind) Joe's Garage, Part I was released in...you guessed it....1979. Discipline a Talking Heads tribute album?......Get real!!!!\

As for the original question: yes I think it still counts as prog. Prog doesn't mean progressive rock anymore, but rather a certain type of music that encorporates some of the stuff people go apefeaces for on this site.