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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 30 January 2016 CE
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Jan 31, 2016, 22:11
Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 30 January 2016 CE
Jan 31, 2016, 22:07
Fatalist wrote:
IanB wrote:
Fatalist wrote:
IanB wrote:


Dream Theater - The Astonishing
This goes to reassert everything that has nagged at me about US Prog bands since I first heard Kansas. The singers nearly always sound like they have been recruited from a particularly anodyne branch of musical theatre. The sing like they are inhabiting a role not living it. RJ Dio is probably the only singer from America who makes Prog subject matter sound in any way convincing and he wouldn't have been seen dead around such a lightweight musical palette. Whatever you say about the Andersons, Hammill, Lake, Gabriel et al in their pomp - they sang like they meant it, man (even if they now say they didn't really).


Ha, prog is only real prog if it's sung with an English accent, discuss ;-)


That would rule out of all Europe and the French Canadian scenes before we get started. And Geddy is a totally credible singer however daft those Rush lyrics get.

Not about accent I don't think. More about the divide between imagining oneself into something potentially risible but going with it regardless and playing dress-up. I think it might have something to with people who came up through playing covers in bar bands finding the whole thing a bit fey.


Sorry, I was being facetious. On saying that, I think in the popular imagination (and certainly whenever it gets referenced/given a brief overview in the mainstream media), there's something quintessentially British about progressive rock, certainly in its initial phase - not just the classical and literary allusions (done just as well by some of the European groups), but that combination of questing, colonial spirit with a certain uptight prissiness (though that obviously doesn't apply to everybody). The cultural loam of the US at the time just didn't seem able to grow the same seeds.


It's true. I think our Prog went over on the same boat as Python and there are things that it was very clearly ok for the English to do (including dressing up as women / foxes / pixies / dog star children) that real, red blooded, hetero rock n rollers wouldn't touch with the proverbial barge pole. That's also I think why they produced no male Glam acts of note. Even Jobriath is more Broadway than Ziggy. Prog and Glam are both genres where you have to go all-in all the time come what may or not at all.
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