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Prog Britannia
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Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Edited Jan 08, 2009, 17:10
When prog met punk!
Jan 08, 2009, 17:09
Seems to me the "punk vs. prog" years of 1976-1980-ish should actually be one of the most interesting parts of the story. The story of punk's reaction to prog is oft-told hyperbole, but how did prog react to punk? Responses varied from VDGG's "Vital" to ELP's "Love Beach"!!!

By saying the story "ends" in 1977, they're basically playing into that boring old Official History Of Rock peddled by Rolling Stone and NME, which is frankly more about STYLE than MUSIC.

The haircuts and clothes that were considered cool may have changed abruptly, but prog and punk have both persisted beyond their respective "chapters in the book", and both had roots that go back a long way before their Official Start Dates.

Journalists have an annoying tendency in general to try to impose "larger narratives" on events so that their "significance" can be "understood." But that really should be reserved for novelists and other fiction writers. The real world is a constant flow of different things happening at once, and there is no "master narrative of the history of music." It's a construct of TV documentaries as much as anything.

(Which is why I have such a particularly low opinion of most "rock journalists"! They couldn't make it as musicians or writers, so now they try to make a living telling people which records are "cool" . . . . when most of them are really just tools for record company marketing anyway . . . so pathetic!!)
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Re: Prog Britannia (dave clarkson)
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