=
×

Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Head To Head
Log In
Register
Unsung Forum »
Prog Britannia
Log In to post a reply
79 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Dec 29, 2008, 10:27
Re: Prog Britannia
Dec 28, 2008, 11:52
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".
In reply to:
Re: Prog Britannia (Stevo)		 Replies:
Re: Prog Britannia (Deepinder Cheema)
Topic Outline:
Unsung Forum Index