Days of Future Passed
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Forum Description: Discuss bands and albums classified as Proto-Prog and Prog-Related
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=27578
Printed Date: November 24 2024 at 12:27
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Topic: Days of Future Passed
Posted By: DeepPhreeze
Subject: Days of Future Passed
Date Posted: August 21 2006 at 13:28
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Why isn't Days of Future Passed considered the first prog album? I recently re-listened to it and the progressions/transitions are clearly evident. Sure at times it does sound better suited for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, or some movie about Britain's bustling industrial empire, but it's definitely prog. In my eyes, it's the first true prog rock album. Anybody else agree? |
Replies:
Posted By: akin
Date Posted: August 21 2006 at 13:32
| I partially agree. It is a prog rock album, but not the first, which is Seventh Sons' Raga (aka 4 AM at Frank's) from 1964 |
Posted By: Kleynan
Date Posted: August 21 2006 at 14:33
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I agree that it's prog. Just not the first, and that's a dispute that proggers will never solve. ------------- 
You've just had a heavy session of electroshock therapy, and you're more relaxed than you've been in weeks. |
Posted By: Certif1ed
Date Posted: August 21 2006 at 16:17
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Those "transitions" are more than a little crowbarred in, wouldn't you say?
And the songs themselves are ordinary rock/pop songs with rock/pop lyrics. OK, when I say "ordinary", I actually mean really, really good, but with standard structures, harmony, melody and rhythm. In other words, not Prog Rock, or even progressive. ------------- The important thing is not to stop questioning. |
Posted By: soundsweird
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 00:13
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Unless you were "there" at the time this album came out, knowing what was being played on the radio, performed on TV, and featured in movies, it's really impossible to understand the importance of this release. Now people look back at it and say "pop songs dressed up with orchestral arrangements". At the time, however, this was viewed as trippy, deep, psychedelic music. A lot of people who didn't like classical music suddenly realized that it could be just as climactic and powerful as loud guitar-based rock. The underground FM stations were popping up everywhere, and this album was one of their favorites. I dare say their use of mellotron made it much easier for King Crimson's debut to be embraced by the record-buying public. People nowadays look back and see the Moody Blues as mellow, flower-power hippies, but at the time, the were cosmic, ahead-of-their-time rockers. The fact that some parents actually liked their music did nothing to dilute their credibility with their young fans. I would call this album very progressive, based on all of the intangibles involved.
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Posted By: bhikkhu
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 00:24
That's the way I always viewed it. Even hearing it years later, the accomplishment was quite impressive. ------------- a.k.a. H.T. http://riekels.wordpress.com" rel="nofollow - http://riekels.wordpress.com |
soundsweird wrote:Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 11:06
I was there and trying hard to sell the LP, when employed as a record shop assistant. On first release in the UK, DOFP didn't sell particuarly well. The record was heard and seen as bit of a sell out by a has-been pop group (ages since Go Now had been a hit), who had lost their main singer (Denny Laine), and here had been merged together with Decca's old fart hi fi house orchestra, well known for their Phase Four label popular music albums. The MB's did a Who and headed to America at this point, and really had their initial renaissance on the West Coast as a psychedelic band with all that Timothy Leary's Dead.... stuff, Tuesday Afternoon etc. Yes, Nights In White Satin was major British hit - but the psychedelic aspects were pushed hard when viewed on the TV - oil wheels, colour inversion etc., (BTW a hit just as the UK was getting colour TV). However, (a point I've made elsewhere) the inclusion of Nights In White Satin on the first prog sampler late in 1969 : Wowie Zowie The World Of Progressive Music, was (1) probably the first reference to MB being 'progressive', I would guess with their management parking them in this new genre, (2) Decca Records reminding the British public that the Moody Blues still existed, beit temporary removed to California. They came back with a bang and took off properly in the UK with (I think) the single Ride My Seesaw.
So being here in the UK, I wonder about MB's creditials for making the first prog LP, especially when both ITCOCK and the (Keith Ralf), first Renaissance album had been issued, as well as Nice's first proper prog album Ars Longa had been released, before the revision of opinions about Days of Future Passed. It was often said the famed surge of the mellotron in Krimson's Epitaph, achieved something with the instrument, that the Moody's could dream about, which to many dented their creditials as not being quite fully blown prog. Indeed suggesting one album as the start point for prog implies a revolution, when clearly there was an evolution with progression from psychedlia to underground to prog and other types of rock (including heavy rock).
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Posted By: soundsweird
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 18:48
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Well, that's the difference between England and the States. "Go Now" was a pretty minor hit in these parts, and just everybody I knew treated "Days..." as a debut album. I'm sure the addition of copious amounts of drugs made the album sound a lot more cosmic than it actually was for a lot of Americans... I guess I'm lucky to have jumped on the Moodies bandwagon early, especially considering the fact that I was only 14. Then again, I was taking lessons from the percussionist for our city's symphony orchestra.
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Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 19:35
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The MB's had at least one LP out in the UK with Denny Laine providing
vocals and guitar - but until DOFP was released and eventually
digested, they were thought as a pop group who aimed at the
singles market, and probably played second fiddle to the other
Birmingham band the Spencer Davis Group. Interesting how Americans and Brits swopped sides of the Atlantic for their music by the mid 60's. Amused to see the threads here about bands "selling out", however, without success in the States few British musicians survived more than a few years on European and British Commonwealth sales. (Note: The Shadows were bigger enough in Canada for Neil Young to start out in a Shadows covers band - but who had heard of them south of the border in the mid 60's?). Then of course the likes of Paul Simon spent quite some time in the UK as a folkie - his earlier lyrics reflect some of the absorbed Englishness, and his early hit Scarborough Fair being borrow from Martin Carthy. I believe Spooky Tooth had at least one America in the line-up. |
Posted By: Nanook
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 20:10
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"I believe Spooky Tooth had at least one America in the line-up."
As did Traffic, Dave Mason. That's interesting about Neil Young, you don't usually imagine him in a covers band. It seems like he's been around forever. ------------- Bring me my broadsword, and clear understanding. |
Posted By: maani
Date Posted: August 22 2006 at 21:41
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Dick:
Excuse me? Days of Future Passed was 1967. Ars Longa was mid-1968. In the Court was May 1969. Renaissance was late 1969.
Thus, the order would have to be:
[Revolver: 1966]
Sgt. Pepper: June 1967
Piper at the Gates of Dawn: August 1967
Days of Future Passed: November 1967
Ars Longa: 1968
In the Court: 1969
Renaissance: 1969
Peace.
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Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: August 24 2006 at 10:38
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[Quote] Dick: Excuse me? Days of Future Passed was 1967. Ars Longa was mid-1968. In the Court was May 1969. Renaissance was late 1969. Thus, the order would have to be: [Revolver: 1966] Sgt. Pepper: June 1967 Piper at the Gates of Dawn: August 1967 Days of Future Passed: November 1967 Ars Longa: 1968 In the Court: 1969 Renaissance: 1969 Peace. [Quote] MAANI (This is the third time of writing. The two previous responses, once written had me hitting the send button, only to be told that I’ve been logged out – and most annoying those words sent irrecoverably to an electronic black hole. I’ll cut and paste this from a windows file*.) You have to remember I’m responding to a thread ask about those who were there about the credentials of DOFP being the first prog album. Since I was there, and in my late teenage way nobly trying to promote and sell this record as a record shop assistant, I’m relating my firsthand experience about reasons why this album didn’t sell particularly well the first time around. The distinct initial perception of this being an album by a has-been pop group, put together on the possible whim of a record company executive with the Decca Record house orchestra, best know for churning out lush covers of popular music on Decca’s Phase Four Stereo record label for British middle aged, middle class folk who had the new fangled, high fidelity stereophonic gramophones. As a reminder Decca were very slow in recognising pop fans might also like their albums in stereo rather than mono; the Rolling Stones Aftermath had something like a 6 week delay between mono and stereo releases, and I think with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton it was more like a 12 month gap. So apart from being released in a distinctly psychedelic period, there was a feeling of sell out, by a band not then heard as underground. To repeat, apart the pothead anthem Nights In White Satin released as a single, the MBs had to seek fame and fortune in the USA, where they did in deed achieve fame and fortune - I would suggest without the previous history hanging round there necks. So I most strongly suggest, the labelling of the album ‘progressive music’ was much delayed, and then after more obvious candidates for the title had made their mark. But as illustrated (so far) by another recent thread, the use of ‘progressive’ (beit with the words ‘music’ or ‘rock’ in tandem), was far less common than thought nowadays. In the period 1966 to 1970, you would more likely heard and read ‘underground’ or ‘psychedelic’ ‘music’/’rock’ – with the term ‘progressive music’ being used far less often and then by trendies). And as to ‘art rock’. |
Posted By: maani
Date Posted: August 24 2006 at 12:11
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Dick:
First, I empathize with your problem of writing a lengthy post, only to be "kicked off" before it posts. That happens to me often, so I, too, have taken to writing my posts in MSW and then cutting and pasting them into PA. I have told the Webmasters about this problem, but they seem unable to do anything about it.
Re DOFP, I understand that you were speaking retroactively "in the moment"; i.e., when the album first came out. But the question of whether DOFP is the first "progressive" album (or among the first) is now a historical question - what it is now, given the history of "prog" - and not a question of what it was then. True, then it may not have sold well, nor was the appelation "prog" possible. But that is moot.
DOFP is, without question, among the first "prog" albums from a historical point of view - i.e., now that we have a definition (however arguable) of "prog" and the perspective of three or four decades to use.
Peace.
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Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: August 24 2006 at 13:44
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Maani
I'll let you into a little secret. I got permission to Letraset a new section card into our LP display racks 'Progressive Music' - some time in 1968. I recently confirmed the date because the first two Canned Heat albums were included and Boogie With Canned Heat had only just been released in the UK - DOFP was slipped into the section by yours truly more for section to promote sales. Sold a lot Canned Heat from the section, very few DOFP. So I was mindful DOFP had progressive music elements then, while most other young music fans weren't. I would suggest DOPF as the first progressive music album would up againt some stiff opposition from albums (nowadays not considered prog), e.g. by Canned Heat, John Mayall, Pretty Things SF Sorrow. BTW Pink Floyd would have been the Psychedelic section and we were still waiting for a UK Soft Machine release.
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