People always needed to dance but Prog even then had a different audience.  I only discovered ELP through a friend. Prog was popular album sale wise but the popular market was dominated by the singles charts where bands like Zeppelin, ELP,Yes and many others didn't figure to highly. Those bands were somewhat considered "underground".

Yeah "Head" is really "out there".

 

Interesting as in the US ,ELP had hits with Lucky Man and From The Beginning which garnered a fair amount of airplay while Fanfare For The Common Man was a massive hit in the UK.

 

A big reason Prog was successfull in the US because it was ostintatious and very visual. ELP and other prog bands knew how to put on a show. Americans love 'big' and progressive rock was very big sounding.

 

The UK did have a proper appreciation of the music amongst music papers/critics and those who had a clue but the problem with this country has been the grip that radio has on deciding what is good or not in commercial terms. Alan Freeman was given the 'dead slot' on a Saturday afternoon to indulge his love of prog rock.God forbid it should ever be considered mainstream. Bands in the UK always had to fight this. In America ELP Pictures At An Exhibition was played in its entirety on one of the local radio stations in New York.

 

The other point is the availabilty of large stadiums. America in those days had wonderfull venues for such bands as ELP to put on a show. Here you had... errmm... The Hammersmith Appollo (nee Odeon).

 

 

I don't know ... I think that what Rick fails to see is that America had 200 Billion people at that time and the potential for sales was too big ... and many bands thought that if they could sell anything in America, it would be a lot better than the nickels they got in England because the lords got everything else!

 

So, yeah ... it would seem that "prog" became important because sales were certainly bigger and better than London ... with the bad part of this being ... that American counterparts did not, or were not getting the press or sales in London that these were for their "success" in America ... which meant ... lots of pounds and dollars!

 

To say that all the "college" sales in England is by "boys" is kinda sad ... so the girls must be stupid and not know music? I would take serious offense to that Rick! But the "college" radio scene has been around forever and is also huge in America ... and responsible for a lot of local bands that otherwise would never get a chance! In fact, if it were not for these "college" radio, there would not be "progressive" music and you and I would be listening to muzak all day long!

 

It's weird to see him say that Americans are less embarassed ... for whatever reason, and I think he meant in terms of musical abilities ... since in America people are not as musically taught and have as much history of music behind them as they do in Europe, and that means that you can mess up in America and still look good ... you do that in London and the media is going to trash you under! Forever! But the worst rock band in America can be good if it sells a million!

 

Thank you.

 

It's the same in America, with the difference that college radio was already out and the late 60's and early 70's coincided with the rise of FM radio, that for 10 years was adamant about being against the top ten thing in the AM radio.

 

As such, a lot of things got played that were longer and more interesting, and at KTYD in Santa Barbara you could hear Willie Nelson, Pink Floyd, Beatles, Outfield, Allman Brothers Band, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Eagles  .... non stop ... long cuts ... totally opposite any of the "top bullsh*t" mentality! And this helped bands like Golden Earring, Supertramp, Average White Band, and so many others get an ear ... where otherwise they would NOT have!

 

And by the time you were hearing these get played at KMET, or KLOS in Los Angeles or a couple of the biggies in San Francisco, you KNEW that there was new music somewhere ... and ... with one interesting point ... that became a major lawsuit a few years later ... as local bands could not get airplay ... and those bands won that lawsuit and these biggies had to play them ... and eventually they didn't because it didn't suit their "business interests" (their own distribution network) ... and one day one station went "new age" and another went "oldies" ... rather than give in and appease a handful of local bands ... in the end, it only showed the corruption of the whole thing -- and one station was a major part of a media conglomerate as well, and they did not want to be out in left field and "lose TV viewers" if their radio station got trashed or known to ... whatever!

 

It was at that time that "progressive" music slowed down ... compared to anything from 1972, 1973 and 1974 or 1975 ... this freedom died, as FM became more and more commercial and hit oriented and today FM is the same crap as AM ...

[/quote]

 

The other point is the availabilty of large stadiums. America in those days had wonderfull venues for such bands as ELP to put on a show. Here you had... errmm... The Hammersmith Appollo (nee Odeon).

 

That's because some of those "football" owners are not smart enough to use their venues for 6 months out of the year ... I guess we can't have anyone but Wayne Rooney ruin their pitch! I don't feel sorry for that venues thing at all !!!!

You obviously do, since you can't do/say anything except think that no one is right and you are the boss and a turkey!

 

Go ahead ... ban me ... I'm not the problem! And you're troll'ing! At least I am adding information material if anyone wants to check it out. And yes, I was in America and I lived through that time and had the albums ... and it may not be important to you to help LA bands fight for their rights, but it was to me, and many other smaller bands that never get a chance!

 

What would you care? You think "prog" is not music that means anything anyway except what?

You have no idea what i think. And I have no idea what you are saying.

lulz

That should have been my response.

On topic, I think it's not a coincidence that, with the exception of Radiohead, the most popular bands that are seen as reviving prog are mainly from the US (TMV, Coheed and Cambria, Tool, Dream Theater, The Decemberists, etc.)

 

I agree. And there was a lot of "prog" in SF, LA, Chicago, NY that has never been discussed or accepted because it doesn't sound like the prototype progressive definitions that someone decided London had and no one else could have! The same also goes for other places across the world, even if the inspiration was different ... ie ... classical music! 

 

... However, these days it's probably bigger in the UK than it is in the US. Part of the reason is that it never really went away over there.

 

Possibly not.

 

America in the 4 spots mentioned above, is like 4 completely different countries and I think that tends to dilute the content and quality of it all, and prevent us from calling it "American" because the consistencies between those 4 places are so different that they have their own "progressive" nature. One could be more older music inspired and another appears to have been more drug inspired and the other more "art" or "artist" inspired ... and that makes it very difficult to have a concensus as strong as that which came from London.

 

The main issue in the US is pop charts for everything including your own tool! ... and thus the perception is that a lot of this different stuff is not important, or valid for a very large portion of the country -- thus NY artists tend to not make a splash in SF and vice versa. There are other issues, like it will be a cold day in hell that USA Today will even mention the word "progressive" in relation to music, unless they are trashing it!  And magazines like Rolling Stone do not care about the music and never did ... they were always about the "star" ... and the gossip around it ... excuse me ... and sometimes naked picture of an artist to make the point that they are more important because they can Playboy foldout themselves! And women on the verge of nudity always sell, don't they?

 

In the end, it hurts the perception about the music ... there is not enough intelligent discussion and review and Jan Ar$eh0ll is not going to hire someone to not kiss the star image in his magazine and neither is anyone else!  It's about the money ... and until those magazines are dead, and people like us take over and start something else, valid, important and help the discussions go beyong trolling and people making fun of the comments ... stuff like this will never get better.

 

I just think that ProgArchives is as good as anyone else ... but we have to set a higher standard ... in order to make this all better and more visible. But I'm not sure it can happen when we're doing the exact samething as anyone else out there ... ignoring it and trashing it as some folks would rather do than understand it. Not liking it is one thing, but trashing it is not necessary ... review something else and just be man enough to say ... I don't care for it and stop dropping turds on the threads!

But please, will everybody stop referring to the college boys who like prog as spotty!

 

I'm in the sixth form and I have no spots!  

 

There is no correlation...

During Prog's early 70s heyday I was still soiling my diaper, so I can't comment on what was or wasn't popular.

 

But as an American, I can say that the European bands had a certain "mystique" for me, simply because they WERE European, and seemed to be devoid of American influences like blues.  A band like Focus, who were from Holland (and yodeled) seemed very exotic as compared to the Skynyrds and Aerosmiths, etc, or even British bands like the Stones, who spent the early 70s pretending to be from Alabama.  So when a band like ELP came on the radio (I can remember hearing the full version of Karn Evil 9), it had a certain fascination for me.  I liked the US bands also, but when I listened to prog from Europe I felt like I was really going "out there" if you know what I mean. 

 

If others felt like me, maybe that was a factor?

 

Hehe ... it was an intentional mistype to get the idea out ... many bands in Europe think that the "big time" is if they can sell and make it in America ....

 

YES had its moments and did well ... but I'm not sure that YES would have been that great or that good if it had not sold so well in America. So much so that one of their EP's was a famous Simon and Garfunkel song ... you already know its name!

 

I think Rick's statements are ok. I'm just not sure that they are complete or as clear as they should be. I'm not sure that most bands can live on sales on English soil alone ... it's not enough ... and we can go to check out many bands that tried ... and died!

I would say you are wrong here, I don't know where you get your info from. Probably most UK bands survive on UK sales.

UK means England, Scotland, Wales and Norhtern Ireland btw.

The difference is phenomenally important.

 

Snow Dog doesn't know economics ... between selling 100 thousand and 5 million! He would understand why so many bands want to come to America so quickly!

 

Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow!

 

The other point is the availabilty of large stadiums. America in those days had wonderfull venues for such bands as ELP to put on a show. Here you had... errmm... The Hammersmith Appollo (nee Odeon).

 

That's because some of those "football" owners are not smart enough to use their venues for 6 months out of the year ... I guess we can't have anyone but Wayne Rooney ruin their pitch! I don't feel sorry for that venues thing at all !!!!

Okay I get what you are saying to a degree but I also grew up in those times and listened to a lot of Southern California radio stations that were not in SB that were doing some amazing things.  There was a station in Garden Grove KTBT, yes I said Garden Grove, that played all request.  They had no play list until someone would call them.  It is where I heard In-a-gada-da-vida for the first time and Quicksilver Messenger Service Who do you Love.  Lee Michael's Hello (remember him?) Electric Flag, Spirit, Fraternity of Man, King Crimson, Arthur Brown, The Nice and whole lot of other things I can no longer remember.  For the LA stations one you leave off your list is KNAC which all the way to the late 70's played all sorts of things including every Monday playing 4 hours of one artist and they did not stop at commercial releases.  Here is a great March 1972 article about them in Billboard Magazine (starts on page 23 if this doesn't take you directly there. Article is called Staff Makes Free Form KNAC-FM)

http://books.google.com/books?id=bSgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=KNAC+Disk+Jockey+John+Clark&source=bl&ots=-pJr9vPVnP&sig=4KQqKXEzUJIDQd2rka4jusHWd3c&hl=en&ei=L1KJTLPNLYT48Aa7g9yaAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=KNAC%20Disk%20Jockey%20John%20Clark&f=false - http://books.google.com/books?id=bSgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=KNAC+Disk+Jockey+John+Clark&source=bl&ots=-pJr9vPVnP&sig=4KQqKXEzUJIDQd2rka4jusHWd3c&hl=en&ei=L1KJTLPNLYT48Aa7g9yaAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=KNAC%20Disk%20Jockey%20John%20Clark&f=false

Other stations like this included KMET (early days format), KPPC and KYMS and 91X in San Diego (on a clear day lol).  The shift happened about 1973-75 and when the corporate people at KABC changed it to KLOS, the format police started to take over. Record labels also were also caught up in this forcing artists to pigeon hole themselves into one format or the other to get airplay on these rigid stations.

The late 60's and early 70's were a haven for progressive rock in the mainstream not to be seen again.  

 

The flipside to all that exposure is that Americans tend to not classify those bands as Prog, they don't own the albums or "know" the bands, they simply see them as "this band I remember that had one or two good songs". The bands are considered "Classic Rock" and are played alongside the Skynyrd's & Nugent's.

 

Case in point, Kansas. Aside from "COWS" and "DITW", 95% of Americans couldn't name another Kansas song...they're pretty much considered a flash in the pan, despite the fact that their first 5 records (at least) are Prog Rock gems! Rush = "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight"...Yes = "OOALH" and "Roundabout"...Tull = "Aqualung"...ELP = "Lucky Man". These bands may be part of the Mainstream concious, but that same concious holds them captive to the "they only have 2 songs" mindset.

 

 

I did find it rather odd that "Thick as a Brick" actually got to the #1 spot of the Billboard charts back in the day (correct me if I'm wrong, please ).

 

"Close to the Edge" managed to hit the top 10, I believe.

 

Let's not also discount Italy's love of the English prog going on at the time (Genesis, the most obvious), but that's a different topic.

 

I think that is where Guy Guden and his Space Pirate Radio first showed up ... using his English accent ... he was always good at voices!

 

Garion81 wrote: For the LA stations one you leave off your list is KNAC which all the way to the late 70's played all sorts of things including every Monday playing 4 hours of one artist and they did not stop at commercial releases.

 

I didn't ignore them, specially when this is one station that should stand up above them all anywhere in the world for their record and amount of music played! KNAC, as far as I could tell, did not have the luxury of the big corporate money to make a dent in music sales ... but it had enough clout in the music itself that make sure that the whole thing grabbed a foothold for the future and a foothold that never died. And in many ways, KNAC is probably a lot more responsible for the London scene making it in the West Coast, than anywhere else ... for KMET/KLOS it was a Led Zeppelin song, a Pink Floyd song, a Kinks song and a Moody Blues song, and they were back to their rotation of music ... and it was the extent of their hipness and corporate kissing!

 

KNAC also had other connections that were much more interesting. They were tied in some way to Moby Disk, and Archie Patterson (later Eurock -- now in its 35th year or more!) and later the record label Jem ... and that connection was not quite clear and I think that there were competing complications all around. Archie has remained the independent person since and his music choices and selections are the most eccentric ever, but one has to give him credit for the largest amount of new music and experimentation than anyone else out there! No other group gives you such an amazing list.

 

I can not speak for KNAC since 1980 or so and this is as much as I can tell you from my point of view. Guy Guden in his Space Pirate Show would have been a major contribution to KNAC, but I have a feeling that they turned down his format because Guy insisted on no commercials to the point where for a period of time his show was listener sponsored to prevent KTYD from placing commercials in that time slot. I am not sure that KNAC would even welcome such anarchy, and a process that would undermine their very own control of the station. Guy has never spoken about this, and I think that there could be a reason here and El Jeffe (spoken mexican style of course) probably has a lot to do with it!  Only thing missing was Sam Peckinpah and his slow motion camera!

 

In the end, it was the fractional egos that hurt it all. No one could get along with anyone else to get something done that was different and made a point that no one else had the guts to stand up for! London had the advantage ... fight the BeeBeebSee ... which goes back even as far as The Goons and further I'm sure ... and also had musical publications that were concentrating on a lot of new music and they were not afraid to make the artists look and feel better about their work than was really there. In America, a publication that stood up for music? ... is an oxymoron! Which is often my biggest complaint here ... so many "fans" discussing their "favorites" and simply oiling the machine with more money ... and sometimes that music is not as good, or great as other things out there ... but you'r enot going to hear it, or read it because it is not a part of the "favorites" or the "top ten" ... nothing has changed!

That's easy ... the Internet is eating all this apart and the Beebeebsee ... and deservedly so.

 

The over "spoken" mention of claiming this or that for a generation ... is something I can stand up for, since my generation has at least a couple of symbols that are major and important to my life and living, as they have fo rmany others who wrote music about it and sang it, and wrote it and painted it ...  ... they are:

 

1. Woodstock where we left all of our garbage behind and stated clearly that we don't really care  ...  we just like to get stoned and play around with the girls!

 

2. Dr. Martin Luther King. Maybe not as big in Europe as here in America, but it is almost the same thing as the Berlin Wall in Europe ... it separated more than a country ... it separated a soul! And there are major issues with it still and the music scene in America is a perfect example.

 

3. London 68/69. Between movies and art and music, there is no period more inspiring and intelligent and not afraid to create new things. The major issue is that we separate King Crimson and ELP and others as "progressive" and then think they can stand up on their own. Not likely to happen. History and intelligence (see my review of KC's first album on PA) will define KC a lot more than it will as "progressive" ... but that is something that this board and many others are really scared of talking about ... of all people here, only Dean has shown the time and place with pictures and images like I have ... and made a "time and place" live ... not only for me. But if you see The Royal Shakespeare Company and you never heard of Peter Brook and his studies into Gurdjieff and more importantly how Peter adapted a lot of that work into rehearsal techniques that defined a generation in acting and work ... and is still remembered today fondly. What is not quite visible here ... is how Robert used some similar working processes to help define the music and shape it into something new and different. In reality it was not that new ... it was just that the presentation was ... top rate ... and if you don't appreciate the spectacle you are not only blind, you are also ... a fool?

 

4. The Wall. Folks here never got to hear/see the 50's and 60's with the Voice of America and other radio things attempting to invade the Iron Curtain ... and music by many folks like The Beatles, Elvis, Chuck Berry and others were extremelly important to the whole idea and concept of "freedom" ... something that a lot of those countries did not have ... any artistic freedom whatsoever. Pink Floyd picked up on that but had already made a mark with an album that was not as important as it was nice to listen to. Lyrics were fine, but the feel behind it all was better.

 

5. Walesa and Poland and Kieslowski. If ever, there was a country that was growing to become westernized and due to make it at any time, the music and film industry of this country stands out as one of the most magical and important of the 20th century ... the film and the music was already studying who you were inside ... and that was major when it came to Walesa to fight the communist system and eventually help get rid of them.

 

6. VietNam and the IRA situation, and then Iran and then Iraq and then Afghanistan. All of it for oil! The IRA at least was about something else ... Epitath anyone?

 

7. The advent of the media ... tv became a deflowered teenager in the late 60's ... and naked too!

 

And there are more moments ... but those are major ... I was born in 1950.

 

So you can see why some lyrics by this or that or some music that is considered "prog" is not important to me ... life has a lot more than just a word ... for its art! That's one point. And a lot of what Genesis was singing about (except Lamb!), or ELP ... (skip the first 2 albums) ... was not important or valuable ... it simply lacked soul and importance. It was simply rock lyrics trying to make themselves relevant ... and that is not progressive. Art Bears and Henry Cow were a lot more progressive even if the lyrics were nothing and about nothing and simply true 52 word pickup in true form that Bowie never had the balls to use or sing with -- though he talked about it!

 

To be honest with you I am not sure that a lot of people can understand the depth in music, and its importance when all you heard is Rush, and Brittany Spears and the latest nude picture out there that is selling albums. Or the latest winner of American Idol! Or my favorite ... the dump James Labrie threads ... guess what ... he didn't have to get dumped ... the band appears to be done for a while!

 

Where is the depth? .... where is the value of the work? ...

 

All else is like you having sex with the girlfriend in college ... you remember it once and say it was nice ... but forgot all about it! ... how progressive that thought must be! The girl and the whole thing didn't mean much after all that! How empty you must feel inside when that happens! And some noise and loud guitar called metal is going to fill it up for you! Or some prog band!

 

Too bad that both of you can not read enough to appreciate the point, the hard work and the effort that it took to make the very music that you like ... available and appreciated today ... hopefully your future will be so full and meaningless that you will appreciate music and art ... for the whole of your life, not just for a meaningless, and selfish, orgasm ... with a girl (or otherwise of course) that you dumped!

 

How progressive of you to think you know it all ... and everyone else is stupid ... and never has to do with the topic because you don't know what the topic is!

And yet its you thats making the high and mighty declerations of what is prog and what is not, of what has artistic value and what doesnt, of whether I or anybody else has the ability to appreciate music (clealry only you are allowed to make these distinctions).

 

Why dont you get off your high horse and stop writing the same rant every time someone starts a thread, especially when your rant is filled with rubbish and has absolutely nothing to do with the threads you post in.  

 

You're both the ones that are showing the anger ... a mirror (without the make up of course) might be more useful!

 

The flipside to all that exposure is that Americans tend to not classify those bands as Prog, they don't own the albums or "know" the bands, they simply see them as "this band I remember that had one or two good songs". The bands are considered "Classic Rock" and are played alongside the Skynyrd's & Nugent's.

 

Case in point, Kansas. Aside from "COWS" and "DITW", 95% of Americans couldn't name another Kansas song...they're pretty much considered a flash in the pan, despite the fact that their first 5 records (at least) are Prog Rock gems! Rush = "Tom Sawyer" and "Limelight"...Yes = "OOALH" and "Roundabout"...Tull = "Aqualung"...ELP = "Lucky Man". These bands may be part of the Mainstream concious, but that same concious holds them captive to the "they only have 2 songs" mindset.

 

After performing for audiences over 30 years, you can easily make a conclusion revolving around the percentage of society that actually feels this way and according to me, that percentage is high. My personal observation is making reference geographically to the east coast. When you listen to the radio or watch TV, you might tend to think the whole entire U.S. developed this mentality. But I won't say that for sure due to the widely condensed areas in the U.S., where kids grew up on music with almost a kind of different cultral background. Religious towns, Christian and Satanic.

Many kids who grew up on a farm either in the south or the mid west, that heard Roy Clark play guitar could understand the personal talents from Keith Emerson to Brian Jones. Simply because they were exposed to musicianship at a very young age which was quite opposite from the rock audiences in the big cities here on the east coast, where you had thousands of teenagers that were fans of Classic Rock and identified ELP, Kansas, and Tull as the 2 song band.

I find it to be very sad when I think of kids who were in my age group that knew nothing about Progressive Rock and were Nugent fans....yet, danced to 7/8 time signatures at an ELP show. It showed to a large degree that the Progressive Rock movement was reaching as many people as possible. The attraction to rock fans was originally Keith Emerson rubbing a control ribbon between his legs, Rick Wakeman dressing in capes and surrounded by a fog machine, and Ian Anderson looking like a Rock n' Roll pirate as he leaped across the stage. However the original intention was for the music to reach everyone in the public whether prog or just classic rock. It seemed that kids who were teenagers in 72' and listened to Hard Rock were in fact paying close attention to the Prog concept albums of that day, as opposed to the teenagers in the late 70's and throughout the 80's which,....more of them had identified with the 2 song per prog band mentality. This all seems very true to me.

 

Now, when I asked for my pass from my company this year and they asked who was playing, I smiled from ear to ear said "Kansas!" I got puzzled looks..."Kansas? They're still around??" I responded "Yeah, I LOVE Kansas!! I'm a big fan! to which they replied...wait for it.......

 

...."They only have two songs!!"

 

I kid you not....LOL!

Overall there just seems to be a few cultural characteristics which allow for it to accept obscure fine music.  America used to have it.  Japan still does (but decreasingly), South America is still the power-house for acceptance of music.