|
Unsung Forum » Prog Britannia |
Log In to post a reply
|
|
|
|
| Topic View: Flat | Threaded | |
zphage 3378 posts |
Dec 30, 2008, 00:44
|
||
|
Progressive music as a maturing of psychedelia from '68-72 was responsible for a lot of risk taking. Prog was the dead end, calcification of the progressive movement. It's main result was the breaking away from jazz, blues, and r&b based rhythms.
|
|||
IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2008, 11:24
Dec 30, 2008, 10:20
|
||
|
keith a wrote: 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. In terms of rhythmic complexity, voicings, chord choices, harmony, lyrical concerns and literary ambitions, sound of the bass guitar and non traditional use of the electric guitar Magazine owe a lot to Prog (specifically VdGG on the one hand and Crimson on the other) but nothing at all to neo-classicists like Yes or ELP. "Jehovahkill" is pure Prog in terms of the sheer scale of the ambition and reach though perhaps you find the term Art Rock less offensive. It's Prog like Kevin Ayers is Prog. Same impulses. Same palette. Different branding. People who think that Prog is all about mini moog concertos and ice skating dragon slayers are buying into a set of cliches that have little to do with the reality. It's like the tourist postcard idea of Punk or like that Cope anecdote about Mac running out of a record shop because the very idea of a Magma album offended his NME honed sensibilities. His loss of course but indicative of an almost Teddy Boy like mentality and a closed intellectual circuit in terms of what is, and is not, allowable in music. What made Cope and Devoto occasionally great, often brilliant and always worthwhile is their devotion to being extraordinary. Which, when Prog was capable of greatness, was its very calling-card. Be extraordinary. Be unpredictable. I don't care whether we call it Art Rock, Prog Rock, Pomp Rock or whatever but it's a thread that runs through English music from 67 to 77 and beyond and gave license to all kinds of crimes against music as well as works of iconic genius. But you can't have the one without the other. There has to be a license to be idiotic as well as brilliant otherwise you end up in that closed loop of nostalgia where what is acceptable is what has already been done. And that's pretty much where my list came from. Which is why I find the Velvets fixation of the early 80s especially perplexing. The Velvets wrote that book and closed it again. Why does anyone feel the need go back there and with such slavish devotion to the template? If the only reason is because it's easier to play that way than come up with your own scene then you need another reason. Of course all genres fail pray to that dynamic (including all the ones that I enjoy the most) it's just that Post Punk gets off the lightest because the senior critics and broadcasters of the last twenty years largely come from that era and have cast that sound in bronze as an object of cultural idolatory. Just as their predecessors did with Blonde on Blonde and Exile.
|
|||
|
IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2008, 11:27
Dec 30, 2008, 11:25
|
||
|
bubblehead2 wrote: 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 ! You're never alone with a live triple album, a grape coat to sit on and some joss sticks. Ommmm.
|
|||
|
keith a 9573 posts |
Dec 30, 2008, 12:26
|
||
|
IanB wrote: "Jehovahkill" is pure Prog in terms of the sheer scale of the ambition and reach though perhaps you find the term Art Rock less offensive. Not at all. I might, tongue-in-cheek, refer to Wire as an 'arty punk band' but 'art rock' just sounds silly, pretentious and pompous. Like prog itself I guess! I just don't see why Jehovahkill has to be labelled as either. It's a Julian Cope album, and all that that entails. And a good one at that. I really don't see how an album has to be classified as prog just because it's ambitious. Was Sgt Pepper prog? You probably think it was. That anything with ambition is prog. IanB wrote: It's Prog like Kevin Ayers is Prog. Same impulses. Same palette. Different branding. But is Ayers really prog? I have only a passing knowledge of his solo stuff, but from what I have heard it's more whimsy than prog, old fashioned songs with an English charm, and it's his Soft Machine antecedents more than the actual music that leads to any prog comparsions. Would anyone class Peter Skellern prog? Not unless he was previously a member of, say, King Crimson! IanB wrote: What made Cope and Devoto occasionally great, often brilliant and always worthwhile is their devotion to being extraordinary. Sure. But it doesn't matter how often you tell us differently - that doesn't make them prog!! IanB wrote: Which is why I find the Velvets fixation of the early 80s especially perplexing. The Velvets wrote that book and closed it again. Why does anyone feel the need go back there and with such slavish devotion to the template? If the only reason is because it's easier to play that way than come up with your own scene then you need another reason. Why does anyone need to go back anywhere? It's becasuse there are very few visionaries in life? In the meantime going back to the Velvets is no more a sin than goiung back to anything that you consider more worthy. It stands to reason if someone likes the Velvets more than VDGG, then they are more likely to like a band that is influenced by the VU than one by Hamill's lot. And vice versa. It's been a long time since I last listened to the Shop Assistants and I have no particular desire to do so, but whilst I would hardly expect to be blown away by them, I would expect to prefer it to anything by, say, Marillion with their obvious Genesis influences.
|
|||
|
keith a 9573 posts |
Dec 30, 2008, 12:27
|
||
|
zphage wrote: Progressive music as a maturing of psychedelia from '68-72 was responsible for a lot of risk taking. Prog was the dead end, calcification of the progressive movement. It's main result was the breaking away from jazz, blues, and r&b based rhythms. Which is probably why it's so sexless.
|
|||
Lubin 509 posts |
Dec 30, 2008, 12:58
|
||
|
Not really into it myself as I was there in the beginning and saw most if not all the bands live. I have moved on and find all but a few boring but just thought as an addition to the Friday night stuff BBC4 has programmes on On Saturday through to Wednesday as well. Peace , Lubin
|
|||
|
IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2008, 15:00
Dec 30, 2008, 13:33
|
||
|
Whatever the merits of your argument it would carry more weight if you had actually listened to more than a handful of the records you write about. Marillion have made something in the region of 15 studio records of which maybe three sound like one line up of Genesis or another. The last of those was released in 1987. Like or loathe them, if you said they sound like a blend of Blue Nile, Talk Talk and Porcupine Tree you might be closer to the reality and then we could have a conversation about how shit they are. Actually I am perfectly happy to accept you think they are shit and give that viewpoint credence and accord it validity if you had actually listened to any of their records in the last two decades. It may well be that I am just disappearing up my own nostalgia lined tailpipe. However while you insist on making it up as you go along I can only assume your entire critical viewpoint is based on a set of hard-wired prejudices. Which is fine. It just makes for a rather boring Spongebob and Patrick type debate. Pink. Yellow. Pink. Yellow etc. I would of course argue in return that the Mary Chain sucked harder longer on the VU tit than Marillion ever did on Gabriel's but so much easier to go for the crowd pleasing jibe than actually listen to the music. Overall I think the problem is that I just can't get it up for the Spartist view of musical history. Reminds me too much of squats, dog eared copies of City Limits and Socialist Worker, snakebite, cat piss in the kitchen and the self-styled hipsters with plastic shoes, faux cockney Strummer accents and Lawrence Corner coats. 25 years later it's way too grim and self-limiting a world-view for a bourgeois fucker like me. Even Burchill and Parsons have let it go. Happy new year.
|
|||
|
IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2008, 15:05
Dec 30, 2008, 13:36
|
||
|
keith a wrote: zphage wrote: Progressive music as a maturing of psychedelia from '68-72 was responsible for a lot of risk taking. Prog was the dead end, calcification of the progressive movement. It's main result was the breaking away from jazz, blues, and r&b based rhythms. Which is probably why it's so sexless. So only music made by African Americans can be sexual? Ho ho ho. Smack me on the patio and tell that to Ravel, Stravinsky and Debussy. Or Paganini. Or Caruso. Or Mahler.
|
|||
Deepinder Cheema 1972 posts |
Dec 30, 2008, 14:35
|
||
|
Dunno about getting bogged down in what is prog debate, the bands that have been mentioned might have been as diversely regarded by such adherents from an earlier age (of which there are none - adherents that is) if you applied the debate to bands like : The Honeycombs say versus the Unit 4 +2 debate, or the Koobas vs the Simon Dupree and the Big sound - theres no 'versus' or debate about them about them - only when the record companies starting with Island, then the majors came out with Harvest, Dawn, Vertigo, Decca Nova along with the MM,the NME, Disc&Echo, and dedicated publication like 'Let it Rock or even street life that a whole constituency emerged. I can happily reject the word 'Prog' and regard 'progressive rock' or music as quite different, as bands that I like still listen to like Focus, King Crimson, Mahavishnu, The Mothers and FZ fractional division therof, Miles, Terje Rypdal as far more vital than than what I call the jaundiced debate that prog has got into - look at some of the musicians taking the piss out of themselves ( see BBC4 trailer). Who coined Progressive music ? I think it was a good term hijacked in a curious way by 'Prog', whose derivation is obvious but I feel different.
|
|||
|
IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Dec 30, 2008, 15:08
Dec 30, 2008, 14:38
|
||
|
Deepinder Cheema wrote: Who coined Progressive music ? I think it was a good term hijacked in a curious way by 'Prog', whose derivation is obvious but I feel different. I would agree, Prog became a marketing term to cover the specifically neo-classical / pseudo-classical off-shoots from Psych. I too prefer Progressive as a catch-all but it the two are not mutually exclusive. A lot of worthwhile music got made under the Prog banner and all truly progressive music is by definition worthwhile as it is primarily forward-looking rather than a nostalgic re-creation of something already dead-ended. It's sad if some of Prog's exponents are going for self-mockery like a bunch of Bill Baileys. Their insecurity is tragic. You wouldn't see Fripp or Hamill or Vander stooping so low. Would never occur to them to be apologetic. I like your list and consider those artists to be of great virtue whether you like what they sound like or not. Unfortunately too many people think that all Progressive music is moog-men-in-capes in the same way that they think Zappa was a comedian with a Carlos Santana fixation. People talk about Mahavishnu and VdGG being unlistenable in the same way as they dismiss Webern or Sun Ra. Their loss. I hope they and their I IV V AABA are happy together. I would happily continue this through New Years but I have to disappear for a few days. Though you have prompted me to dig out Focus III, Tabernakel and that Peter Banks / Jan Akkerman collaboration.
|
| Pages: 8 – [ Previous | 1 2 3 4 5 6 | Next ] | Add a reply to this topic |
|
|
|
| Unsung Forum Index | |
