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zphage 3378 posts |
Dec 28, 2008, 03:26
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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2d7eeeba-d14f-11dd-8cc3-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 When rock went in search of a new role By Peter Aspden Published: December 27 2008 01:30 | Last updated: December 27 2008 01:30 The first proper rock concert I ever went to was in the winter of 1972, and it was a fulminant affair. Emerson, Lake & Palmer were not known for their sense of understatement. They could be literally explosive. Two years earlier, in their debut gig at the Isle of Wight festival, they fired cannons into the bemused audience, who thought they were there to wear flowers in their hair. Times were changing, and fast. There was nothing quite so hostile when I saw them at the Hammersmith Odeon, but plenty of bombast all the same. It was, as I recall, very loud, very forceful, utterly thrilling. The star of the show was the group’s keyboard player Keith Emerson, whose party piece was to stab daggers into his organ, and then zip around the other side of it and play extracts from Bach backwards, as his powerhouse rhythm section pounded on relentlessly. It was fabulous. But you probably had to be there. To watch ELP live in those days was to witness the emergence of a bold new trend in music-making, which would, for a brief period, dominate the world’s album charts. Years later, it would come to be known as prog rock. It is a jokey label, the diminution of “progressive” adding a sprinkling of irony to the movement that, believe me, was utterly absent at the time. Prog rock was a deadly serious affair. There was no room for irony. We declared ourselves to be fans of progressive music because we felt that rock music was genuinely progressing: beyond 12-bar blues, beyond boy-meets-girl lyrics, beyond, on a good day, the boundaries of the universe itself. The singles charts were the province of the feeble-minded (not unlike today), and we progressives were determined to do something about it (very unlike today). Here were the essential tenets of prog rock: virtuoso musical skills, applied to any song with limitless indulgence; poetic flights of fancy that turned language into an enemy of meaning; brazen yet leaden showmanship (see Spinal Tap); and extremely long hair. A splendid new BBC4 documentary, Prog Rock Britannia, screening on Friday, chronicles the movement and debunks some of the myths around it. It illustrates how many of prog rock’s most distinctive tropes were born of necessity rather than intention. Those endless twiddly solos, for example: Soft Machine vocalist Robert Wyatt reveals that the band’s keyboard player Mike Ratledge used a fuzz-box that fed back every time he took his hand off the keyboard. He simply had to keep going, a bit like Sandra Bullock in Speed. Then there were all those fey lyrics about magic castles and court jesters: why did rock turn so dramatically away in its subject matter from the raw sexuality of its beginnings? Blame the English private school system. Its inhabitants couldn’t tell raw sexuality from a raw carrot. They wrote about what they knew, and what they knew was everything that was contained in a classical education. “We plundered Ovid,” confesses Tony Banks, old Carthusian and Genesis keyboard player, revealing a song-writing strategy that had been curiously overlooked by Little Richard and Fats Domino. Prog rock, as we all know, met a sticky end. The wish to keep progressing, further and deeper and louder, was costly and ultimately futile: during one of their famously extravagant tours in 1977, ELP employed an entourage of 130 people, spending $20,000 a day. Carl Palmer’s drum kit was so heavy that every stage had to be specially reinforced. Prog rock became literally weighed down by its ambitions. More significantly, life in 1970s Britain didn’t pan out quite as envisaged by the prog rockers. They imagined – and commissioned for their gatefold sleeves – the lush, dreamy landscapes of Roger Dean, futurist Arcadias of harmony and quietude. Instead, they got the three-day week, stagflation and rubbish piling high on the streets. Punk was the response, both to political inertia and over-long solos. So we are left with a troubled legacy. And yet, there are elements of prog rock that cannot help but invoke nostalgic longings. Its ambition, certainly. Among the names quoted as influences in the documentary are Edward Lear, TS Eliot, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Thelonious Monk, Benjamin Britten, Lewis Carroll and Bonanza. Prog rock may have overstretched itself, but its scope was compelling. These were literate boys, using their education to produce something that hadn’t been seen before. That’s not a bad aspiration to have, and a lot more noble than the (invariably well-educated) punk guitarists who pretended only to know how to play a handful of splenetic chords. Messrs Emerson, Lake and Palmer each have their own websites today, and they make poignant reading. Carl Palmer has just been playing in Ascoli Piceno in Italy, where you could buy VIP tickets that entitled you to a seat at the soundcheck, and dinner afterwards with the drummer. Greg Lake, the searing voice behind King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man”, toured with Ringo Starr. Keith Emerson writes movingly of friends recently lost, Mitch Mitchell and Pink Floyd’s Roger Wright. They all send messages of peace and love, and hope to see us in 2009. ‘Prog Rock Britannia’ will be broadcast on January 2 on BBC4
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 28, 2008, 09:44
Dec 28, 2008, 09:04
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That's as even-handed a critical viewpoint as you are going to get. Yes, lots of it was crap and very little of the musical output was worthy of the seriousness with which it was approached by its creators* but you have to respect the sheer scope of the ambition and the lack of me-me-me singer songwriter pablum. For the doubters look at it this way. Without the musical and economic climate produced by Prog then there's probably none of these .... "Nadir's Big Chance" Magma's MDK "Stormcock" John Martyn's echoplex guitar "Correct Use oF Soap" Fripp's "Exposure" "Liege & Lief" Stereolab Spiritualized "Jehovahkill" "Sons & Fascination" "Tago Mago" "Bat Chain Puller" PIL Radiohead Eno's Ambient releases Kate Bush Thomas Koppel's piano music "Low" "Yellow Shark" Nonesuch and that's just off the top of my head. Not a bad legacy even if Prog itself makes you want to choke on your snakebite. (* you can say the exact same thing about any genre that is serious about pushing the frontiers)
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Stevo 6664 posts |
Edited Dec 28, 2008, 12:13
Dec 28, 2008, 11:22
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IanB wrote: Yes, lots of it was crap and very little of the musical output was worthy of the seriousness with which it was approached by its creators* but you have to respect the sheer scope of the ambition and the lack of me-me-me singer songwriter pablum. i've been intrigued for years by a buzzword(?) term used in some of the forcedexposure reviews back when it was a zine - garage-prog. Since my understanding of garage is as an ongoing process mimicing the more seriously researched work of current icons and substituting a great deal of energy for po-faced research demonstration I've wondered what this would sound like and apply to. I'd think immediately of the bands I think of as avant-garage Simply Saucer, Debris, MX80 and the Cleveland scene esp RFTT/Pere Ubu but wonder about others. Key focus would probably be a level of irreverence to the 'sacred texts' and ingestion of more Link Wrayesque rocking. Possibly the idea of VU influence would enter too so you'd get bands like Eno & the Winkies, Roxy Music with Eno plus several of the Krautrock scene. Would love to know more since what I've heard from the area has been amongst my favourite listening. Just reminded that I've got a copy of Cold Sun's cd arriving when I return to Galway not sure if that fits. & possibly the whole d.i.y. scene which I know less about than I should(&maybe should've tried keeping up with the Mutant Sounds website) IanB wrote: For the doubters look at it this way. Without the musical and economic climate produced by Prog then there's probably none of these .... "Nadir's Big Chance" Magma's MDK "Stormcock" John Martyn's echoplex guitar "Correct Use oF Soap" Fripp's "Exposure" "Liege & Lief" Stereolab Spiritualized "Jehovahkill" "Sons & Fascination" "Tago Mago" "Bat Chain Puller" PIL Radiohead Eno's Ambient releases Kate Bush Thomas Koppel's piano music "Low" "Yellow Shark" Nonesuch Not sure about that list. might depend on an understood chronology. When did Prog start ferrinstance. My understanding would have Psychedelia as a buzzword in advertising through (US meaning) '67 therefore getting tired by '68 when Progressive Underground came in but I'm not sure when prog started being used would think it was a bit later. thought 'Prog' capital P wasn't til early 70s, at least partially because of vaguerie of the duration of 'proto-prog' which seems to go up til at least 71 in several usages I've seen. In short things like Liege & Lief from '69 would appear to be before the big wave of prog so unlikely to be a result of. & when did John Martyn start using echoplex? Would think possibly as a result of trying to emulate new thing jazz which he was into -Solid Air being based on Pharaoh SAnder's Astral Travelling amongst other things. Though possibly he was doing slightly better financially thanks to Island's success elsewhere. IanB wrote: and that's just off the top of my head. Not a bad legacy even if Prog itself makes you want to choke on your snakebite. Not all of it anyway. & some of the bigger names have tracks you might rethink if you isolated them from the bandname & the rest of their ouevre. Genesis seemed to be getting a bit of a reassessment here a while back but I guess they did put out a fair amount of toss at certain points. Even Yes have the odd moment when they don't smell of wee, odd moment though, oh & great guitarist. & ELP were interesting live early on I guess. I'm left thinking that with the remix culture that cropped up over the last 20 years, how much would be better served by going back and remixing. Though re-editing might be better idea. Sacred Cows who needs them. Well the nostalgia market though they seem to swallow a lot of shite as long as the signifiers are there. I ought maybe to go into the area of european Prog where some ideas picked up/started in the UK scene were explored more satisfactorily & you at least don't understand how trite the lyrics are. (At this moment I'm thinking of East Of Eden a UK band who were quite great instrumentally but lyrics sucked the big one as I was reminded recently by seeing their POP2 performance & I would think that symptomatic of a lot of bands from the time. Trying to expand the range of influence without a bullshit detector or whatever) IanB wrote: (* you can say the exact same thing about any genre that is serious about pushing the frontiers) I've edited this so I've lost the asterisk source but yeah does seem true that experimentalism does tend to lose its way quite a bit.Not sure about ratios one thing one of the lecturers saiud when I started college was the 20%/80% thing that only 20% of anything is ever essential(possibly by definition, won't go into etymology here) whereas 80% is at least/best context providing. Hopefully the essential 20% is aware enough of the other 80% thatr it knows where to re-explore and what to consciously avoid/work around. I think also that a lot of the greatest bands ever have had the tightrope walk effect of either you're going to see one of the greatest gigs you ever saw or you're going to see an unmitigated disater, but either way it would be memorable. Stevo
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 29, 2008, 10:27
Dec 28, 2008, 11:52
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Stevo wrote: Not sure about ratios one thing one of the lecturers saiud when I started college was the 20%/80% thing that only 20% of anything is ever essential(possibly by definition, won't go into etymology here) whereas 80% is at least/best context providing. Hopefully the essential 20% is aware enough of the other 80% thatr it knows where to re-explore and what to consciously avoid/work around. I think also that a lot of the greatest bands ever have had the tightrope walk effect of either you're going to see one of the greatest gigs you ever saw or you're going to see an unmitigated disater, but either way it would be memorable. Stevo Agree entirely. The best Prog walked that line or like VdGG simply pretended it wasn't there. I should give more thought to this but where the strands of British Psych and Prog part company for me is where a focus on content / intent overtakes a focus on idiom. This is a bit of a generalisation but I tend to see Psych as something that is primarily about establishing a mood from an instantly recognisable musical tool box. There are rules as to what certain instruments are meant to do and what the sounds they make are supposed to signify. Then there's the drug thing. It's music to take drugs by or to experience a heightened sense of inner space. In that sense "Ummagumma" and "Meddle" are still Psych records whereas "DSOTM" clearly is not. The former two are largely about invoking a visceral repsonse. They are not Program Music like say an "Appalachian Spring" or a "Sea Symphony". "Dark Side" obviously wants to appeal to a class of thinking rockers and to ask how-are-we-to-live questions. It's not anti-drug music but it's probably our-music-should-be-enough-for-you music. Anyone who went to a lot of shows pre-Punk will know that any ambitions to replace drugs with quasi-classical rock orchestrations was on a hiding to nothing. So Prog seems to be more about utilising anything at hand to serve the compositional process and wants to be a music of inquiry expressed through complicated lyrical ideas with equally complex music. Laughable as a lot of that complexity might have been the aim was to give more. Prog all but dispensed with the two chord organ vamps overlayed with an extended guitar solo which are the mark of long form Psych recordings and which is where a lot of the best Krautrock staked out its territory. In a way it was a very Grammar School thing (which is why "Rotters Club" is so accurate) and bands had to pass a technical "11 Plus" to qualify for the new genre. Which I guess is how Metal got to be so big. You can run a metal band or a noisy Blues Rock combo with one virtuoso and a singer with great hair. For convincing Prog you can't really carry (m)any passengers. They tended to be bands who could read music and write it down. Which makes remembering complex arrangments a lot easier for starters. So there's a schism of sorts led by a fairly bourgeois impulse towards musical self-improvement which was ultimately superceded by the production of lps and concerts that were designed first and foremost (perhaps solely) to demonstrate technical prowess and the sheer mass, length and girth of the Progmeisters' power in the market place. Thus Prog's decadence into blatant ego-wankery. You can trace that in the movement from something as subtle and as literary and as distinctly "other" as "Pawn Hearts" to something as completely vacant like "Works" "Love Beach" "Duke" or "Big Generator".
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Deepinder Cheema 1972 posts |
Dec 28, 2008, 12:47
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Mini Website from BBC 4 'Prog Britannia' Pete Sinfield looking like Father Christmas as Ed Asner ..un-recognisable http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/progbritannia/video/prog2/
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bubblehead2 2167 posts |
Edited Dec 29, 2008, 20:50
Dec 29, 2008, 20:49
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What a terrific article, thoroughly enjoyed reading that ( probably 'cos it corresponds with and articulates my own feelings about prog )....wouldn't know raw sexuality from a raw carrot, LOL! I was listening to Close To the Edge earlier in the week and was surprised at how much i was enjoying it, until that is, the singer opened his gob and all my prog prejudices returned in spades. Now, i'm not keen on JA's voice anyway, but jeez, those lyrics, nonsensical cosmic piffle is putting it kindly. If i'm gonna listen to pretentious bombast then give me some good ol' jazz fusion anyday,hehe. Gotta say the idea of being 'progressive' is laudable but unfortunately prog turns into pomp all too easily for my tastes ! That said, i can't wait to see the, er, prog itself.
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magiceye 183 posts |
Dec 29, 2008, 21:02
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bubblehead2 wrote: Gotta say the idea of being 'progressive' is laudable but unfortunately prog turns into pomp all too easily for my tastes ! That said, i can't wait to see the, er, prog itself. Couldn't have put it better myself. Nice quip too! No doubt it'll bring back some memories, hopefully not all of them too embarassing, of when I was a po-faced and pretentious little prat back in the early to mid 70s. That's as opposed to me being a po-faced, pretentious big prat some 30 plus years on, you'll understand.
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bubblehead2 2167 posts |
Dec 29, 2008, 22:47
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magiceye wrote: I was a po-faced and pretentious little prat back in the early to mid 70s. That's as opposed to me being a po-faced, pretentious big prat some 30 plus years on, you'll understand. LOL ! Only too well i'm afraid. ;-) It's a comfort not to be alone, mind !
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bubblehead2 2167 posts |
Dec 29, 2008, 22:52
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Cut 'n pasted from the BBC4 website... Prog Rock Brittania: An Observation in Three Movements NEXT ON: 02 Jan 2009, 22:00 on BBC Four SYNOPSIS: Documentary about progressive music and the generation of bands that were invloved, from the international success stories of Yes, Genesis, ELP, King Crimson and Jethro Tull to the trials and tribulations of lesser-known bands such as Caravan and Egg. The film is structured in three parts, charting the birth, rise and decline of a movement famed for complex musical structures, weird time signatures, technical virtuosity and strange, and quintessentially English, literary influences. It looks at the psychedelic pop scene that gave birth to progressive rock in the late 1960s, the golden age of progressive music in the early 1970s, complete with drum solos and gatefold record sleeves, and the over-ambition, commercialisation and eventual fall from grace of this rarefied musical experiment at the hands of punk in 1977. Contributors include Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Pete Sinfield, Rick Wakeman, Phil Collins, Arthur Brown, Carl Palmer and Ian Anderson. Must admit the program title's appropriate ! And prior to the doc itself.... Prog at the BBC NEXT ON: 02 Jan 2009, 21:00 on BBC Four SYNOPSIS: Compilation of some of the greatest names in progressive rock, filmed live in the BBC studios in the 1970s. Includes Yes, Genesis, ELP, Caravan, Barclay James Harvest, Gentle Giant, Family, Atomic Rooster and more. Heaven and hell in a hour one package by the looks of it.
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keith a 9572 posts |
Dec 29, 2008, 23:49
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Stevo wrote: IanB wrote: Without the musical and economic climate produced by Prog then there's probably none of these .... "Nadir's Big Chance" Magma's MDK "Stormcock" John Martyn's echoplex guitar "Correct Use oF Soap" Fripp's "Exposure" "Liege & Lief" Stereolab Spiritualized "Jehovahkill" "Sons & Fascination" "Tago Mago" "Bat Chain Puller" PIL Radiohead Eno's Ambient releases Kate Bush Thomas Koppel's piano music "Low" "Yellow Shark" Nonesuch Not sure about that list. Understatement of the year there, Stevo! Personally I can't see how, for example, prog is even remotely responsible for Jehovahkill (regardless of what I may or may not think of prog). As for Magazine...well this is fast becoming one of music's great cliches. Just because Devoto has apparently stated that he liked Yes and just because Magazine slowe d things down after the 1-2-3-4 straightahead punk scene doesn't make Magazine 'prog'. Other than one or two numbers on Second Hand Daylight I think the Magazine/prog connection is well and trtuly over-stated. When I listen to Magazine these days I think they sound more like a post-punk Roxy Music (though this likeness passed me by at the time) than anything remotely Yes-like. Incidentally, I played The Yes Album recently and although I didn't hate all of it, I did wonder what exactly made me think all those years ago that there was something akin to pleasure to be dervied from lisrtening to it.
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