Prog Rock

not really prog, more jazz-fusion

He certainly plays a lot of beats on those albums, ha ha.

(x-post)

(x-post)

I've always wished someone would sample Bill Bruford's china-boy extravaganza on "One More Red Nightmare".

and the devi influenced tracks by brian auger's oblivian express.

http://www.suckadelic.com/main.html

I have the lotr one, which is only a little bit funny, unfortunately...

South Side Of the Sky
Going For The One
Ritual (!!)
OOALH
Long Distance Runaround
Soon

Vitalski: It's an obvious answer but do you have Yes' Fragile? The second side is a goldmine. Side 2 opens with the first drum and bass track evah! Also check out the intro to "Heart of the Sunrise" and "The Fish" and the basslines to "Long Distance Runaround" and "Roundabout". Neil Peart is another obvious choice.

I find Inner Mounting Flame more or less unlistenable once I got past how virtuosic it is.

Return to Forever (w/diMeola), for ex., sounds more like emotionless showmanship to me. Fun in some ways, in no way deep like Mahavishnu.

I saw them in Lowell at the Paul Tsongas Arena last weekend (the last gig of this leg of their tour; I think the one right after MSG), which they were videotaping I believe for a PBS special and later a DVD release. They played The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" (an early cover of theirs, but very much revamped) as an encore instead of "Soon", plus "Starship Trooper" as the final closer. Great versions of "And You and I", "Ritual", "Turn of the Century"...

Minuses: They did a shuffle-blues acoustic version of "Roundabout" (like Clapton did for "Layla" on his Unplugged)--sounds too cheezy to me. Dean's inflatable set looked very (ahem) Stonehenge like.

That aside, I continue to be amazed at what a great show these guys still put on, since they're all like 55-60 years old. Plus, the a/c that night was non-existent, so it was like 85-90 degrees on stage the entire time for them.

it actually exists. it's actually pretty good.

Area/Demetrio Stratos: C or D

Rustic Hinge's [recorded 1970, not released until '88, former Arthur Brown sidemen, almost certainly the first Trout Mask Replica-disciples] is excellent but you'll probably never find it.

Prog that rocks...

Alan Parsons Project "Stereotomy" (leans towards pop)
Alan Parsons "Try Anything Once" (absolute rock masterpiece)

Anyone watching the prog rock BBC archive footage, followed by documentary this evening?

answer to original poster's question -- Triode On n'a pas fini d'avoir tout vu (with proto-disco flutes!). it played between almost every outside set at terrastock in june and had people a little wiggly

Stuck this on in the background, we're gonna probably play Scrabble

Nice barnet, Moody Blues frontman.

Hardcore flute action, yes it's the Tull!

Wishbone Ash sound like Polvo!

But look like Creme Brulee.

Hang on, I didn't think any of this kicked off till 10pm? For fuck's sake.

An hour of archive footage with what seem to be Steve Wright penned glib captions, followed by the docu, in which Rick Wakeman will no doubt be aloowed to drone on.

Pretty entertaining so far though!

Ah, right. Bugger, missing the archive footage, then (and still up to eyes with work and reluctanct to give up just yet. Tits).

:-( sorry! First capes sighted too...

have any of these put in in an appearance on the archive footing of the show

John Peel / Alan Freeman / Tommy Vance

...and whispering Bob Harris

Not yet, but Jimmy Saville did one of the intros.

Hmmm Emerson Lake & Palmer suck the big one, sadly.

Soft Machine a lot better!

lol Bob Harris!

does Bob Harris look like a long haired hippy?

love Caravan.

i bet Comus are too obscure for this program

any sign of the van der graaf generator yet?

Harris looking well groomed. Genesis now, I think.

radiohead

Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Live Bern 1975

Robert Wyatt on the documentary :-)

I'm watching the arse end of Big Brother and taping the start of the doc.

Pretty good set of talking heads thus far. Some of the usual "greatest era" stuff, although most contrbutors seem to be able to analyse things a bit more than that.

Scored 321 in a 3-player game against hapless gf's mum (142) and gf (120), who won last night's triple-header and incurred the fitting response. I am the GODLIEST, she the BARMAID. Bam. All this to a lovely soundtrack too. :)

lol you so cool prog rock and Scrabble!

i know right it's totally happening here

at least King Crimson are sounding pretty good.

Jonathan Coe reckons Crimson is "progressive rock at its most melodic" Geir to thread!

Or actually on second thoughts...

uugh "thoroughbred musical statement" fuck you ELP guy.

Swallowing the "punk year zero" myth wholesale. Bit of a shame, except for Wyatt being reasonable and funny!

Yeah, Robert Wyatt came off very well on that.

I might actually have to download some King Crimson & Soft Machine after watching that.

A little bit annoyed at constant reiteration of the canard that anything using 3 chords is unsophisticated, whereas all "prog" as narrowly defined is the epitomy of questing musicianship. Also total lack of acknowledgement that anything punk or that came after punk could be in any way considered "progressive".

That's to be expected though really.

yeah fair point.

Funny, I'm playing Facebook Scrabble and listening to the new Enslaved as I peer in on this thread...

A little bit annoyed at constant reiteration of the canard that anything using 3 chords is unsophisticated, whereas all "prog" as narrowly defined is the epitomy of questing musicianship

Hmm: with the exception of Carl Palmer, I thought everyone was actually quite reasonable about it. Rick Wakeman made the point well, I thought: it's a very British trait to be embarrassed about/dismissive of technical skill. I mean, using three chords is unsophisticated, really. Trouble is, sophistication does not equate to quality ... the way it seemed to me, watching that, the music just got worse and worse until by the mid-seventies a lot of it wasn't just irritating, smug and showy but irritating, smug, showy and completely and utterly shit. I mean, there was a good reason why Tales From Topographic Ocean became an (unwieldy) byword for all that was awful about music ...

But some of the earlier Yes stuff actually sounded quite interesting, which is something I never thought I'd say. And it reminded me of how much I love King Crimson (Bill Bruford's explanation of the difference between playing in Yes and KC was one of the highlights of the entire programme).

Dude from Egg is a little ... intense, isn't he? And Carl Palmer really is a complete and utter tool. Fucking stainless-steel drum kit. Bell-end.

my 'radiohead' comment was a reference to that crimson song introed by annie nightingale. uncanny.

"Bill Bruford's explanation of the difference between playing in Yes and KC was one of the highlights of the entire programme)."

i couldn't bear to watch the doc so i'd appreciate knowing what this was.

I haven't heard the very earliest Yes albums but Fragile and Close to the Edge are good fun, and very pretty.

Yeh, it was Close to the Edge that piqued my interest. Bruford reckoned he'd achieved everything he wanted to do with Yes with that album, and left straight after.

"Bill Bruford's explanation of the difference between playing in Yes and KC was one of the highlights of the entire programme)."

You'd need to watch it to appreciate the arched-eyebrowed subtletly of his delivery, but his point was that Yes was basically a hippy democracy where absolutely everything was discussed at great length (eg should the bass be F natural with the organ in G# on top, or vice versa) whereas in King Crimson there was none of that: "You were just meant to know". He also said that with KC one was expected to develop a style unique to that group: ie they didn't want Bruford in the band because of what he'd done with Yes, but because what he'd done with Yes suggested that he could do something new and specific for KC.

Interesting, cheers.

Bruford and Wyatt were great, esp the latter - just loved everything Wyatt said and it was worth watching for that alone (the laughed hurt as he talks about he 'failed' as a pop star showing some real hunger there, great little take on the punks who followed on). Shame I never really could get on w/Soft Machine. Crimson rule. I wanted someone to ask Bruford about Cobain. Eno should've been on it as a link between glam and prog. No van der Graaf Generator mention wtf?!

The other people on it were a pathetic bunch, fucking hypocrites, talking about how uncompromising they were and crying when they couldn't get enough groupies! Little Richard knock offs were 10x more 'sophisticated' than most of the music on it.

No mention of anything German either, and Pink Floyd seemed to be the prog elepehant in the room, for whatever reason.

Well, its Prog Britannia. I think the German bands were better because they liked Stockhausen and acknowledged that riffs were good and sonatas were a dead man's game.

They cast Floyd in a pre-prog psychedelic/surrealist mode, along the lines of Pepper.

It was fun but flawed. A discussion of prog's lyrical limitations without a mention of Hammill is pretty much sacrilege, for instance.

I'm, er, acquiring a copy of Close to the Edge as I type. It's taken less than 10 minutes. Wonder if a few other people have been moved to do the same kind of thing this morning?

x-post yes true, and I suppose the German bands could have filled a whole (much better) documentary anyway.

As for Floyd, I personally prefer that earlier mode, but surely their 70s prog stuff shouldn't have been ignored?

Okay I went out on the piss and missed this but no VdGG = obvious fucking same old NME-line repeating BULLSHIT also I'm assuming there was no discussion of the early 80s neo stuff, failure to do which is also BULLSHIT also anything put together from a "whoa wasn't Prog funny and hippy and rong" perspective = BULLSHIT also whoever pointed out that a whole bunch of post-Okey Dokey Computer indie is utterly beholden to Prog for better or worser = BULLSHIT also no Geir = BULLSHIT

And there are more Zeppelin songs about dungeons and dragons than there are Prog songs you cunts

sorry, too furious to point out that whoever pointed out that post Okey Dokey Computer is beholden to Prog was right and if this doc didn't address that then it was eating its own bollocks

there is no "gnome and wizard" shit in the genre to the best of my knowledge.
― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 18 May 2004 13:54 (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

THIS GUY KNOWS WHAT HE's ABOUT

Honest to God, FUCK PUNK and its fuckshit idolators

It didn't really go beyond 1980, apart from some piss-taking footage of Yes playing "Owner of a lonely heart".

I Was a Teenage Armchair Jagger Fan :/

Grimly, what they didn't tell you in their simplistic "every prog band started honourable but got progressively (fnarr) more pretentious and bad" narrative is that Yes' best album came out AFTER "TFTO". Namely the completely overlooked and totally incredible Relayer. CTTE is fucking brilliant too tho, you should definitely lay hold. If only for "And You And I". ;-)

Noodle bringing some heavy jurisdiction.

Relayer didn't feature choice talking-heads Bruford or Wakeman, of course, so it was never going to get a mention.

I'm with your Relayer love LJ, but you cd advance the argument further by citing Going for the One which is canonically a Great Yes Album from 77, before we even have to hit people over the head with 90125's awesomeness in a oh shit mom they're making pop music style.

I love the way shit like this pretends the first 3 or 4 Roxy albums weren't Prog because it doesn't fit the lol behemoths story arc also.

Re the late 70s "OMG punk destroyed prog" bit I thought they could have talked more about the fact that a lot of the punks actually liked prog, e.g. John Lydon, but all we got was Phil Collins talking about Rat Scabies saying he was a big fan of his drumming.

I was a bit surprised about the lack of VdGG. Also no Gong or Here & Now. I guess Hawkwind you could claim are "space rock" and don't count for some reason.

They did mention Roxy Music at one point I think but I was in the kitchen so I can't add much more than that unfortunately (xpost)

Oh yeah, they mentioned Roxy as part of an entirely different thing, without realising that their concrete definitions of prog were BS. It was a very fluid 'movement'. Much like some of the stuff they were spouting.

I don't actually have those two Yes albums, something I gotta rectify. :-/ Also, seriously, no VdGG, no cred, and I've still only got two of their albums. (Still Life is so *perfect* that I can't really imagine anything else living up to it, but I really should investigate.)

I'd look this up online but I'd probably just get annoyed by it. They slagged off prog rock lyrics? Prog rock lyrics are no worse than any other genre's IE 99% is shit as per usual. No prog lyric is worse than "don't look back in anger" anyway. "Going for the One" is v v patchy but OTOH has "Awaken" which I think is hands down the best thing they ever did.

Godbluff I think is better than Still Life, Louis.

You watch footage of any 77 era Punk gig and I guarantee there'll be some longhairs moshing down the front. What's so annoying about the "Punk killed Prog" story is that only the crassest of lazy journos and 17 year-old NME fundamentalists still spout that shit, everybody else knows it's bollocks and can trot out the Lydon loved Hammill story and list the riffs that Magazine copped, before you even begin to think about how Fall-group and Pere Ubu and Television et al make the whole sorry myth ridiculous.

I hear ya re: Godbluff Pash but I'll still rep for Still Life uber alles.

Am now gonna spend the evening trying to make Wii Music prog jams btw

You watch footage of any 77 era Punk gig and I guarantee there'll be some longhairs moshing down the front. What's so annoying about the "Punk killed Prog" story is that only the crassest of lazy journos and 17 year-old NME fundamentalists still spout that shit, everybody else knows it's bollocks and can trot out the Lydon loved Hammill story and list the riffs that Magazine copped, before you even begin to think about how Fall-group and Pere Ubu and Television et al make the whole sorry myth ridiculous.

It was amusing listening to them talk about the "energy" of Punk, having just been exposed to equivalent energy, thrashing riffs and aggressive musicianship from a load of "soft Proggers". The two weren't polar opposites, they were different expressions of the same impulse, and far from fighting one another, they ultimately amplified one another.

Have been really digging Magazine of late fwiw. They maybe merited a mention here. But too concrete, too cliched.

Still Life is actually perfect and devastating from start to finish, ferocious and totally epic. It doesn't feel like they were striving for epicness, it just feels inevitable, like it had to happen that way, even as "La Rossa" or "Childlike Faith..." spiral off into their jawdropping, spectacular closing swells

"Childlike Faith" is back on as my funeral song. I'd guess that the Graafers refused to play ball, or where dismissed as too obscure. Also three of them made a complete fucking headkick of an album this year and there's no footage of them being anything other than thunder gods of the apocalypse so it wouldn't fit into the lol Keith Emerson on a Persian rug arc.

ELP should be fucking written out of music history if it means they give VdGG the airing they deserve

Ah yeah, apparently the 10+ minute song on the new record is absolutely astonishing, and the rest ain't far behind

Ah man ELP are their own thing and I can get with it, they're just as distant from VdGG in one direction as Atomic Rooster are in another. It probly helps to get ELP if you listen to The Nice first, they did a lot of tasty Psych-Pop tunes and are worth hearing even if you do hate ELP.

Incidentally The Nice were allegedly named after the first word heads would say after coughing up their lungs on a doobie, and how Prog is that?

It doesn't help that the only ELP I've heard is that fucking interminable live album. But they just seem to have nothing of VdGG's sophistication, righteousness, majesty.

(Or compositional skill)

Er ... people who didn't watch the doc: don't get pissy about it :)

also anything put together from a "whoa wasn't Prog funny and hippy and rong" perspective = BULLSHIT

Not a fair criticism (unlike some of your others, which are absolutely OTM): it was more from a "why is this so badly maligned, then?" perspective, or even just "OK, let's try to do something about prog in 90 minutes".

They slagged off prog rock lyrics?

Nobody was slagging off anything per se. There was a reasonably short discussion -- led by Tony Banks, IIRC -- about how they tended to look to Greek myth and sci-fi for inspiration because, umm, they were public schoolboys who didn't know any girls. A lot of the "ho ho it wasn't very sexy" or "ho ho he's dressed as a flower" stuff came from the interviewees themselves.

lol Keith Emerson on a Persian rug arc

Not mentioned. Sadly.

17 year-old NME fundamentalists

Ha. See, in 1991 that was me all over. But I have a vivid memory of Mark Radcliffe playing VdGG on Out On Blue Six one night and it blowing my (closed) mind. (I've just had a look and the only VdGG album I appear to have is Pawn Hearts, which surprises me, and suggests I need to go shopping.)

I'll admit I know very little about this stuff, but for fuck's sake: any documentary that inspires me to go and download a Yes album has to be doing something right. Yes, there did appear to be a lot of tooling going on by the mid-seventies, and I still think there's a reasonably good reason that ... Topographic Oceans became a byword for everything that was wrong about music. But fuck it, that was -- despite its flaws -- a bloody good documentary. Go watch.

(ELP, meanwhile ... nah, I've a feeling I was right about them. 1. Carl Palmer was a tool. 2. Greg Lake looked like the most punchable man of the 1970s in every piece of footage they showed.)

Yeah, for me ELP seemed to be the only act deserving of some of the vitriol displayed towards "prog rock" since the 70s. Wakeman is a prat, but a pretty clear-headed prat.

Ach, I thought Rick Wakeman was actually a likeable dude throughout the whole thing.

But yeh, ELP ... comparing Palmer and Bruford is interesting, because you've got the former sitting there looking smug in his daft shirt basically saying: "Yeh, we were making an artistic statement and we were the best thing ever", interspersed with footage of him making a racket on his stainless-steel drumkit and ringing a bell with his teeth ... and then you've got Bruford going: "Yeh, we just wanted to see if we could make more complex music," interspersed with footage of Yes and King Crimson sounding absolutely magnificent.

Only two bits of music they broadcast in that doc I liked = Crimson Hyde Park footage and 'Owner of a Lonely Heart'.

Don't worry its BBC Four they'll repeat this doc another few times and it'll get broadcast on BBC two. After Newsnight, of course.

It surprises me that someone could really like Close to the Edge and also find Tales from Topographic Oceans totally worthless. They're different but not that different to my ears. (And what makes them different certainly isn't the degree of "pomposity" or "self-indulgence".)

I like ELP's "The Barbarian". The Nice = classic.

Well, I've not listened to CTTE yet. I might hate it. And if I love it, I will go, kicking and screaming, to that topographic ocean. I'm basing my desire to hear the former on two things: 1) The fact the bits that were played from it on the documentary sounded top; 2) The fact Bill Bruford repped for it so hard. My dislike of the latter is based, fundamentally, on the fact that anything I've heard from it (including a couple of seconds last night) seemed bloody awful.

It surprises me that someone could really like Close to the Edge and also find Tales from Topographic Oceans totally worthless

Actually: has anyone said this, at any point, ever?

(Actually, yes: it seems several contemporary reviewers did. Ha. And I'm not saying I won't, either.)

Fuck it, I was going to listen to the London Chamber Orchestra playing Vivaldi while I did some work, but I'm going to whack on Yes instead. Here goes ...

GRIMLY'S CLOSE TO THE EDGE LIVEBLOG

1'57" Good grief, this is widdlesome. Not necessarily unpleasantly so.

2'00" Hah, Comedy "aah" noise ... here, they're Battles' granddads, aren't they?

4'00" This is absolutely fucking mental. Again, not necessarily in a bad way.

/mfl

6'31" Some GOOD FUCKING BASS going on here.

11'00" OK, this is patently absurd. But in a really, really good -- and, so far, occasionaly lovely -- way. I'm sold.

11'25" Actually, this bit (I Get Up I Get Down) is a bit like Mercury Rev dream of being. Probably.

12'13 ORGAN!

12'30" If this organ goes on for the next six minutes, I will be a happy dude.

12'50" Bugger.

13'07" ORGAN!

18'46" OK, that was staggeringly impressive and I really want to play it at ear-splitting volume quite soon.

Currently BBC iPlayer TV programmes are available to play in the UK only, but all BBC iPlayer Radio programmes are available to you

PISS

(and nice, grimly -- wait till you get to And You and I's climax...)

(and nice, grimly -- wait till you get to And You and I's climax...)

― Naive Teen Idol, Saturday, 3 January 2009 16:32 (2 minutes ago)

Heh, exactly what i was thinking!

Actually: has anyone said this, at any point, ever?

(My old popular music prof felt this way too.)

Glad you enjoy "CTTE" though!

29'46" Actually, I didn't think And You And I was quite as revelatory as Close To The Edge itself, magnificent though it was (and sorry for the lack of updates; I'm actually busy reading about children's symbolic representations, and realising I should be paying rather more attention to that than to ILX, or indeed Yes).

32'00" OK, I wouldn't even have guessed that Yes could sound like this (Siberian Khatru). Off the top of my head: it's like 10cc meets Talking Heads meets ... actually, I've no idea. Which is what I'm really liking about this: I don't necessarily have the reference points for it, and that's fucking refreshing.

Here. It's a surprisingly short album, this. So much for self-indulgence ;)

-1' 20" (easier now to count down from the end) HOLY SHIT that throbbing/chanting bit is incredible!

OK, that was immense. Fucking hell, I'm going to have to listen to TFTO, I guess. Wow.

Official liveblog prog albums thread?

I started off not going near Prog because it had such a bad reputation,, but after I got the internet, I discovered that a lot of my favorite music got taken the piss out of in a similar way.
So I developed a perverse pleasure in finding music that people hated((hated in a certain way)) and always ended up loving it. I decided to risk it with Yes and my mind was BLOWN by Close To The Edge. I still believed that most Prog was probably crap, but I just kept on buying more and more,, and eventually I decided to screw whatever anyone said about any Prog band and give them all a chance. I loved all the Yes albums I bought((about 7 of them)) and the solo albums I loved too, despite all the hate I had heard((Six Wives, Song of Seven)). I liked some of what I heard of ELP so I think they deserve a fair chance from me.

I still dont own a huge amount of Prog, but from the stuff I have listened to,,, I've found some of the most beautiful music moments ever.
I had a difficult time with this modern band called FROST and their album Milliontown,, which I bought because Chris Squire said it was a fine example of great modern Prog. First time I heard it, I hated it because of the almost boyband vocals and the overly clean sound,, but eventually it became one of the finest albums I bought last year.

So I think it's sad and foolish to keep any prejudices. The "punks liked Prog" argument is the best way to swing around a non-believer and Mojo magazine once had a whole article devoted to the Prog bands that punks liked.

Since Yes are my favorite Prog band, I couldnt help but notice some bands mentioning their love for Yes or doing a cover song....

Mark Eitzel -American Music Club
Mark Kozelek -Sun Kil Moon/Red House Painters
Nobuo Uematsu -Final Fantasy/Lost Odyssey/Blue Dragon
(((Uematsu is probably the most successful person who ever worked in videogame music,, and he lists Yes, Wakeman, King Crimson, Vangelis and ELP among his top influences. If you listen to some of the Boss Fight tunes for a lot of his games, you can hear obvious Focus and Wakeman in there. Crazy that all these kids are listening to so much Prog indirectly.)))

Battles
Grizzly Bear
Todd Rundgren
Keith Levene- PIL/Clash
(((http://www.furious.com/perfect/keithlevene.html ,,, this Keith Levene interview contains serious praise for Yes....

"""""I've always been into music. When I was eight, I was into ska, rock-steady and skin-heads. When I nine or ten, I was into 'The White Album,' the beginnings of heavy metal and Led Zeppelin and all that kind of stuff as it was coming hot off the press. This culminated in my absolute god-head band, Yes. I did all sorts of naughty things like not going to school. I used to work in a factory but I shouldn't have had a job- it was sort of illegal. They would take the piss out of me, joshing me 'cause I was the youngest. So I would argue with people there that were into Humble Pie and I'd be telling them "Yes is it! Steve Howe was the greatest fucking guitarist in the world." I was so into the band, the music- I didn't really care for Jon Anderson. I wasn't like I was into Emerson Lake and Palmer and every classico-rock band you could get. I was into Yes!

I was into Steve and also Rick Wakeman because he did The Six Wives of Henry the VIII. All my friends were so into music and so was I. By the time I was about 13, I was quite good at playing guitar. I got a couple of my sister's boyfriends to teach me a few things. I learned in one day- one morning I couldn't play and by that evening, I could play a tune like a fucking guitarist. I made one of the guys leave his acoustic guitar with me.

Then I took a rest from it. I was into music but I was just working, being a kid. I went to these five Yes gigs in a row at the Rainbow (London) around '72. It was the English Tales From the Topographic Ocean tour- one of their worst albums. It was the best Yes band- Alan White, Rick Wakeman, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Jon Anderson. It was just fucking heaven at these gigs.

I wouldn't go at the end- I'd just hanging around at the Rainbow and gradually crept up to the stage and starting helping. Then I discovered that the head boy from my old prep school was working for them. He hated me but I asked them if they needed help on the tour. They told me I could work with this guy Nunu, who was Alan's drum roadie. My job was to clean the cymbals and change the snare. I would sit behind Alan and watch him drum. He had every possible analog/acoustic percussion instrument you could imagine, including a moog drum (you'd plug it into a mini-moog and you didn't know what noise it was going to make). It was just INCREDIBLE, just watching your favorite band that got voted best band in the world, that you've been arguing about with people.

So I was going around with them as a roadie. I was trying to get on the Rick Wakeman "Journey To the Center of the Earth" tour. I saw the gig and I liked it. I was joking around with Rick and he said "Keith, you don't want to do this. While you were working, all you'd do is ask me about synthesizers. All you did was play our fucking instruments- you didn't set them up." So I went home and had a thought about this with my little SG copy (guitar) in my bedroom. I thought "Yeah, I'm gonna get a real Gibson." For me, it was such an audacious thought that I was going to get a GIBSON LES PAUL. """"""

Even as a heterosexual person,, the thing that struck me most about that documentary last night was how attractive that man from EGG was! He was a gorgeous old wizard of a man.

Remember that there is also a Timeshift episode about Prog on tonight which was originally shown on 2004 and will probably be very similar, but with different people being interviewed.

I once read some piece about the Flaming Lips where they said they'd all been secretly listening to Yes in private and were afraid to admit it to each other.

That Keith Levene stuff is awesome! Thank you, Robert. Didn't know about the Timeshift thing, either: will check that out.

NV: I'm listening to Still Life as I type this. I have to say, I'm finding it difficult to get a handle on it -- perhaps because I'm attempting to work at the same time. That's the other thing I think surprised me about CTTE: it was much more focused and groove-driven than I expected.

The whole "self-indulgent" thing that got thrown at progressive rock over the years is pretty bogus for the most part, I mean that Yes track "Siberian Khatru", there isn't a spare note in it. On their best stuff, Yes are like that, they were a pretty focussed band.

Still Life is tough in a different way, really. Yes are, as you noticed, very often funky and groovy and bringing the Pop. VdGG are pretty overblown in their way, it's just that their way is screaming apocalypto emo-frenzy dual sax screamingness interspersed with really beautiful noodly lulls. It's not immediate like Close to the Edge. I think you'll dig it, with perseverance, but I know it's definitely not everybody's thing. Obviously I'm not saying everybody should like all Prog, I just think it's a genre that's suffered probly more than any other from lazy inaccurate pigeonholing by the worst kinds of indie kids when really it's this madly rich varied seam full of life-enhancing music.

I think everyone eventually ends up liking And You And I more than CTTE :D

(Best bit of the title-track is the first four minutes btw)

VdGG aren't SO MUCH about the scream-lull push-pull imo (altho NV is the world authority on them) as the organic growth and development of mood. They're a rare example of the lyrics absolutely augmenting the music's drama, and given how good the music is, well, phew.

It's kind of more about emotional violence than purely musical - a lot of it literally is Hammill screaming into the void, and I think my opinion is coloured by seeing them on the reunion. The lull specifically I was thinking of was "My Room". It's kind of disarming in its context, I think.

I think you'll dig it, with perseverance

I think that's the thing: I'm genuinely interested in this stuff and can see myself coming back to it. (Hellfire, I'm listening to CTTE again already.)

Would post more but GAH need to get a shitload more work done and then go to the pub (where, I imagine, I'll spend a lot of time arguing with my best mate about this stuff). Interestingly, I had an e-mail exchange with an old school friend earlier today during which he said that, at 15, he really liked the idea of MUSIC AS ART and was sneakingly fascinated by prog, but decided he should toe the NME line. So yeh, perhaps the whole year-zero myth has become a self-fulfilling prophecy that's long overdue a dismantling. (Then again: do THE KIDS today give a shit about a) prog; b) 1970s UK punk rock?)

The myth of PUNK still taints a tremendous amount of journalism and the Indie Ethos, so I'd say yes. Sadly.

Emotional violence, absolutely. That's pretty much what I was trying to say. For example, "La Rossa" is one of the most emotionally violent things that will ever be written.

*hoping someone heeds the Still Life love-in*

The myth of PUNK still taints a tremendous amount of journalism and the Indie Ethos, so I'd say yes. Sadly.

Well exactly. It's not like I don't love most of the Punk bands, it's just that Punkism - to coin a word that we must bury now and never speak again - is so bleeding tedious.

Bill Bailey and Mark Radcliffe's Top 10 Prog. Far more interviewees....

Camel/King Crimson

Hawkwind/Rush

Rush/ELP/Yes

Yes/Jethro Tull

Jethro Tull/Moody Blues/Genesis

Genesis/Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd

A shame that Floyd were at the no1 spot, they're a bit too well known to profile in a list like that.

...this Dog singing with Floyd on stage is crazier than anything I have seen from any other Prog band though.
That clip of Jim Davidson almost put me off even considering buying ELP! Yuck!

I've read that there is Youtube footage of this...
http://www.daveling.co.uk/docdt.htm
...Steve Howe, members of Napalm Death and Dream Theatre and more. Greenway talked about funny looks on the face of Howe when they covered Metallica.

What do you guys think about Magnification by Yes? I loved it more than some of their 70s albums,, especially "Dont Go".

Noodle write me?

I have never interfered with anyone's Peter Gabriel.

Sheepishly admit to not having heard Magnification cos I thought the orchestra seemed like a lame idea.

Better check your email, Hongro fan.

I will mister, but I am sore hungover and going to spend the evening watching Police Squad and eating ice cubes.

See the thing about the "punk destroyed prog", whether it was a myth or not it didn't particularly matter as the interviewees were commenting on the punks as if that was a big component of what actually happened (the other being proggers got more stadium focused), and since the show was history from word of mouth of the people that were there...

I think that there probably was a lot more said about Punk and other interesting things but ultimately cut out. Even though I enjoyed the programme, it was sort of a wasted oppurtunity in that it seemed content to go along with the standard model of how they think Prog should be portrayed on TV to a certain audience. I dont think it was on their agenda to produce a genuinely insightful and accurate portrayal of the time.
I dont think there was some evil scheme by the BBC or anything,, but there must have been a reason why all those guys made fun of themselves so much,,,, because they dont usually do it to that extent,, say in the... Yes classic Rock dvd that I bought. Which was quite good and very long.

I forgot to mention that Thurston Moore mentions his love of Yes from time to time. I think someone already mentioned that here about him liking "Gates of Delirium",, which is my favorite Yes song too.

In just over an hour that Timeshift Prog special will be on and we'll have double to moan about.

This has become an intellectual discussion of prog music - it's like reading the elephant talk newletters. bleh.

what's next, an intellectual discussion of IDM music? God forbid

Yes, there's far too much pseudo-intelectual widdle on this board.

I think everyone eventually ends up liking And You And I more than CTTE :D

Madness!

that bailey-radcliff special is fantastic. thanks for posting it. it's a treat to see those guys joking around and goofing off. critics have ignored them for too long, and no one ever interviews them, so their personalities are lost to people like me who were born after punk supposedly saved rock music

I actually dont like "You and I" as much as the other two tracks,,, but I obviously still love it. There is maybe only 2 mintues of that album that dont have me on the edge of insane excitement.

this is the worst thread. are you guys all british?

I'm british. I agree that this thread would have been amazing if more of us were from somewhere like Argentina.

Magnification is fantastic, but no interesting time signatures in sight.

Who recommended I listen to Gates of Delirium? You sort of changed my life.

More later, including wondering who the fuck Egg was.

lol i think that was me

more along the lines of drum heavy stuff as opposed to the pastoral mellotron soaked epic gnome and wizard shit

Then the answer is no because all good prog is all about "pastoral mellotron soaked epics" and not much about exaggerated drums.

IT'S THE YES EPICS POLL

so you got there in the end AA!

"this is the worst thread. are you guys all british?"

I'm Italian. I got prog in my blood.

That said, even if I'm not an avid fan of Genesis and Yes, I totally love King Crimson and VDGG, and all those semi-forgotten acts like Catapilla and Curved Air.

Yes! Yes I did.

(hur, YES, get it)

No.

(j/k)

I do think it's funny how some people don't care for early genesis but claim to be a prog fan. I bet those people are more fans of The Mars Volta side of the spectrum of prog music.

I'm not sure if you're referring to me but I love Foxtrot and Nursery Cryme (and Wind & Wuthering), so it's just one patch that I don't care for.

as long as you like some early genesis you're okay in my book

I mean, using three chords is unsophisticated, really

Tell that to Neu!, they made do with one for a lot of the time

Anway, I enjoyed this prog prog., even tho I kinda agree with whoever upthread said "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" was the best tune on it

Ever since this went out I've been getting I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE AND I BRING YOU in my head at spontaneous intervals ~20 times a day.

Tell that to Neu!, they made do with one for a lot of the time

One of the worst things about krautrock.

Finally got round to watching Prog Britannia on IPlayer today and was pleasantly surprised, given how condescending it could have been. One thing no-one really mentioned was the influence of Broadway musicals on prog, which had grown out of light opera which in turn was a more accessible version of "serious" classical music. I'm sure these guys all grew up hearing West Side Story etc (they played The Nice version of America a lot in the doc admittedly), and it seems like the big unacknowledged influence to me, probably because it's so astoundingly uncool.

Songs Of West Side Story Soundtrack Album Track Listing
14. Rumble, The - Chick Corea's Elektric Band Vs. Steve Vai Monsters

they also didn't mention (although i think i saw clips of it) rick wakeman's king authur on ice thing and his great anecdote about the time when, due to illness, one side had more members than the other...

Come to think of it, were there any women in this show at all?

Or in this entire series of programmes? Oh, I think I saw Anne Nightingale introducing King Crimson.

holy nerd! BBC's Prog Rock Britannia in three parts on youtube

The 25 Best Progressive Rock Songs of All Time
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/141547-best-25-rock-songs-of-all-time/P0

There are likely a song or two that some readers won’t recognize, but I endeavored to not make this an exercise in obscurity (a person willing to rank prog-rock songs does not—or should not—need to further bolster his ambiguous street cred by listing songs nobody is remotely familiar with).

Seems to me a cop out just cuz dude was too half-assed to bother checking out Van Der Graaf Generator, Gong, Gentle Giant, etc. So it should be qualified as best populist prog choons or something. I made a playlist of the ones I have of above, but it's begging for an additional 25....

that list is rope tbh

Dunno if this has been posted somewhere yet but this 5-part Slate series on prog is really nice

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/prog_spring/features/2012/prog_rock/history_of_prog_the_nice_emerson_lake_palmer_and_other_bands_of_the_1970s_.html

Man, I can't believe I wrote off Mahavishnu upthread.

y'all have checked out this, right? http://everygreatsongever.tumblr.com/tagged/UK-prog
extensive series of UK prog mixes. I haven't even made it through the first five and he's up to vol. 17. fun stuff.

there were so many errors in that slate series

it's definitely not entirely accurate but it's still a good read

Man, I can't believe I wrote off Mahavishnu upthread.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Friday, August 24, 2012 10:56 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

Yeah, I thought that Slate piece was a mess. Errors, too much pride in liking ELP while still sort of making fun of the genre/the author himself, a poor job pointing out how different, say, King Crimson was from Genesis, or Gentle Giant from Yes, etc.

Mahavishnu is incredible. Not sure how prog it is. To my ears it is sort of Crimson-heavy.

I'm just glad to see The Nice get some credit; they weren't really a great band or even really a good one, but the fact that they're unheard of is ridiculous

mahavishnu is fusion not prog IMO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVnXVuj4Ps

fusion as well but whatvr

mahavishnu is fusion not prog IMO

funny because my jazz snob dad wrote them off as too prog. obv they are "fusion" as far as record store bins are concerned, but imo they are only about 11% less prog than 1974 era king crimson

i have this thread to thank for my new name.

i'm not really sure how to classify Mahavishnu either but it's clear that prog fans are like their #1 audience and that jazz dudes aren't really keen on them

yeah but marsalis/crouch jazz snobs think everything after bitches brew and ornette is basically insane clown posse

y'all have checked out this, right? http://everygreatsongever.tumblr.com/tagged/UK-prog
extensive series of UK prog mixes. I haven't even made it through the first five and he's up to vol. 17. fun stuff.

Seconding this, the writeups are really good too.

This seems like the closest to a general prog thread here, so . . .

If this started in LA I just might do it.

Cruise to the Edge

you'd have to hurry -- looks like the progtanic is filling up

http://cruisetotheedge.com/pricing-availability

Excellent liveblog ILM thread op too

I silently ridiculed this concept when it first appeared but watching it continue each year, I'm thinking it could well become the more successful type of festival for the North American prog audience (see the recent death of NearFest.)

Also, I wonder if Marillion's presence this time would make it slightly less of a middle-aged sausage fest?

that is the first and only time in history i expect to come across that sentence

My point being that one is likely to find more women at a (current) Marillion show than at one headlined by Yes, UK or homages to Gentle Giant, etc. All numbers very relative, of course.

i know what you meant dude, i was just joshing. don't think i've heard a note of Marillion since Fish left.

dark side of the honeymoon package includes grilled schindleria praematurus

every meal served with two complimentary scoops of and you and ice cream

I love when people bill themselves as part of a singular person (i.e. "Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel"). I know it means of his touring band, but that's always funny to read.

it's like he's squire to a knight of the prog table

The cruise organizers should've gone one further and linked every act on the poster in some way to Genesis.

if i organized the event we'd paint the ship up as tarkus and go joust this yacht party

http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?458487

So happy I found a reasonably priced cd copy of Carol Of Harvest (selftitled album).

Really digging Supersister. Listening to their debut and I have their second album waiting (hope it won't be long before I get the next two). Quite complex in places and fun.
There's a song that could be mistaken for Gong, with twee absurdist lyrics about gnomes and tea but it's not like the rest of the material.

Not that it really matters but they're easily the prettiest prog band I've ever seen (they were a bunch of young guys).

Enjoying the debut so much I just went ahead and bought the third and fourth albums.

those supersister albums are a treat. one of millions of bands almost lost to history because lester bangs and robert christgau didn't feel cool listening to them, the poor slobs

these new GOBLIN remasters are amazing, by the way. suspiria sounds brand new

Not so sure about that. I've been hearing very mixed things about their fame or lack of it. "She Was Naked" seems to be a genuine hit, apparently they did extremely well in Netherlands and Robert Jan Stips has been in several successful bands including Golden Earring. Yes, that isn't proper FAME but I think they have a more secure place than a lot of obscure prog bands.
Apparently Ian Curtis liking them has secured them to a degree. Most other mentions of Supersister on this forum are related to that.

But whatever the case I think they're way better than most B and C list prog bands. And even some of the A listers.

For some reason the final album Spiral Staircase is way more scarce and expensive than the rest.

Robert Jan Stips is possibly best known for playing keyboard for The Nits for most of their existence, who are well worth checking out if you like bands similar to XTC.

I think Stips was also some sort of prodigy and there was already a buzz around him before he joined any band.

Picked up Present From Nancy on this rec - this is damn tasty

very much like the first two Soft Machine records

Great.
I think it's quite funny how in one track they have someone shouting out a request for "She Was Naked".
Odd that there's no songwriting credit to Byrds for "Eight Miles High". Since they only sing a few words of it, does that make it legal?

I need to check out the other Soft Machine stuff. I've got Third and I was a bit mixed on it. I really liked parts of it though.

Track I like best on Present From Nancy is "Mexico", really great.

Weird: even before their first releases they owned a club that they played at every Sunday night. It was used for music, poetry, dancing, theatre and film screenings.

This new Beardfish record has some great moments... and some wtf moments. Anxious to dig into the new Steven Wilson.

Another Glass Hammer on the horizon, and shocker, it's supposedly their best one yet

is jon davison involved?

new steven wilson rules, though way less crimsonisms than that the last one

Been listening to Carol Of Harvest. Quite disappointing overall. "Try A Little Bit" is really drawn out with some rote singing and most of the 8 tracks aren't that memorable (the last 3 are bonus live tracks that have no studio versions).
What saves it are "Somewhere At The End Of The Rainbow" (nothing to do with the Wizard Of Oz version), a really beautiful song with a warmth and power unlike anything else on the album. Live bonus track "Sweet Heron" is pretty dynamic, with interesting effects.
The former track is really worth hearing.

Seems they have a reunion album from 2009 but it might be a different band.

"Another Glass Hammer on the horizon, and shocker, it's supposedly their best one yet"

they're still happening, even with Davidson in Yes?

GH have gone through a ton of vocalists through the years so I think they'll survive - Davison is only on three of the band's 15 (?) albums.

Schooling myself now on Anthony Pirog and Joel Harrison who are into prog, jazz, and old DC roadhouse & more guitarists Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan

i have bought a lot of ELP remasters recently.
still not sure if i like them.
its a lot more sonically raw than i expected.
how on earth did they become so massive !!?

It is weird that they were so big, apparently they got a lot of people into classical music. I've got the debut, Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery so far; in general I don't like the albums much but I'd still say I'm kind of an ELP fan on the strength of four or five really great tracks.

The Barbarian came up on shuffle and aside from the detour into Charlie Brown Christmas territory it's heavy has hell.

Listening to the second Supersister album. Very good.
Just as there was a Byrds quote on the previous album, the bonus track on this called "The Groupies Of The Band" has a part of Beach Boys "In My Room" in it.

Really been loving Mahavishnu Orchestra too. Re: the discussion above, I think they should be an essential for prog fans, they do all the right things. I think they were a big influence on Yes and some of the members ended up doing appearances in prog bands and "Hope" sounds so much like King Crimson.

Yeah, they're more rocky and tricky than most prog. Heavy as early Crim.

I think the Supersisters were 2fered on cd at one point. Not sure if that's still the extant ones.
There's some great stuff from Italy and Spain too. Il Baletto di Bronze's Ys is classic and Fusioon are interesting to name just 2.

Yeah all the albums were in double packs but the latest ones are single albums remastered+expanded. I don't know why but the newest version of Spiral Staircase is very scarce but you can still get the double pack version easily.
Some of the double packs may be the remastered+expanded ones but I doubt it. The double packs have weirdly different pairings for the Polydor and Universal versions.

Il Baletto di Bronze - Ys is one of the glaring absences in my prog collection. Don't know much about Fusioon.

Just put Il Baletto di Bronze - Ys on my Amazon wishlist then Le Orme, PFM - Per Un Amico (I have their second album) and Banco's Darwin.

have fun! each of those is fantastically rococo. this is one of my favorite baroque 'rock progessivo italiano' albums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKlt-zvJLzU

I think I would have bought this stuff faster if the names were easier to remember. I think the full extent of what I've got is a bunch of Goblin (a few), Libra (one), Jacula/Antonius Rex (all but one), Devil Doll (all), Semiramis (one/all) and Premiata Forneria Marconi (one).

Haven't bought from here in a number of years but when i did it was pretty good and had nice p+p rates
http://www.btf.it/

Supersister's "A Girl Named You" is so good, love this part, it's so pretty..

You know your name and i know mine
You play your games and i play mine
Knowing everybody likes it
But not like we do
And we do
When we do

I know your name and you know mine
I play your games and you'll play mine
Knowing everybody likes you
But not like I you
And I do
And I do

You know my name and i know yours
You play my games and i play yours, of course
But if everybody cancels the things that we own
We're alone
We're alone

Think these are slightly wrong though. I'm sure he says "but not like I do" instead of "But not like I you".

Thought there'd be a new Frost album by now but it's coming out next year.

old to semi-old celebrities you would travel back in time to have lots of sex with.

My pictures of Supersister

that is not a thread I would expect to be linked here

Any consensus on the best Premiata Forneria Marconi album? I've only got Storia Di Un Minuto and I like it a lot.

It's not often I feel an album needs it but I think that album could have benefitted from a remaster.

This album is actually way better than I remembered. I was mostly into it for the first two tracks but there's so much good stuff in there.

per un amico is the consensus fave. songwriting is all over the place but some super great melodies. after per un amico they changed their bass player- some people like their third italian album just as much, but it's a little too fusion-y for my tastes.

It seems there are only English lyric versions of Per Un Amico (Photos Of Ghosts) and L'Isola Di Niente (The World Became The World)?

To clarify to anyone who doesn't know, they recorded English language versions of these albums after the original Italian versions.

I thought the gold versions of the first 2 PFM lps that I bought from BTF 12 years ago were remasters. May have been limited editions too though.

robert: yes, but "photos of ghosts" has an english version of "e'festa" and "the world became the world" has an english version of "impressioni di settembre". also, "photos of ghosts" has an otherwise unreleased instrumental called "old rain".

here's a classic '72 pfm performance from italian tv:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbmEHrKK41I

yes, but "photos of ghosts" has an english version of "e'festa" and "the world became the world" has an english version of "impressioni di settembre". also, "photos of ghosts" has an otherwise unreleased instrumental called "old rain".

Thanks.
I've heard that Photos Of Ghosts is not very good but The World Became The World is as good as the Italian version.

Is Ars Nova the only all female prog band? I don't know if Feminist Improvising Group count as rock. But Ars Nova often does have male members but if I remember correctly they attempt to be all female when they can to complete the goddess theme.

Ex-Girl?

Listened to a few tracks, quite good.

Listening to the UK debut. Didn't realise this was the result of an attempted King Crimson reunion. Doesn't seem that special as some fans say but I love the opening suite, awesome chorus "Iiiiiin the dead of night, in the dead of niiiiiiiight!" then the payoff of "byyyyyyy the light of daaaayy, in the dead of niiiiiiiight!"

Jobson really shows his Zappa background in places.

i really don't like holdsworth's guitar tone. myself i have a greater love for their follow-up, where they pull out some serious soft rock moves, which, of course, makes the True Progheads hate the record, but for god's sake Wetton was born to be a lounge lizard!

There's a lot of live albums.

Iiiiiiiiin the dead of niiiight! Iiiiiin the dead of niiiiiiiiiight!

The whole album is growing on me too.

was it an attempted crimson reunion? I hadn't heard that. anyway first UK album is good. second one is ok too.

kind of bummed I missed the bozzio lineup on tour a few years back

Supersister's "Wow" doesn't seem to have a studio version. It's pretty funny, maybe they changed it all the time?

Again about UK's "In The Dead Of Night", the keyboard solo near the end is amazing. The album grew on me a bit. Really not what I was expecting. It's pretty gloomy.

i think there was a 7" studio version of "wow" in '73... after they released a live version on 1972's "Superstarshine Vol. 3".

I guess it's on my Iskander as a bonus track.

That UK album is pretty good.

Supersister's Pudding En Gisteren isn't as good as the first two albums. "Radio" and "Psychopath" are entertaining. "Judy Goes On Holiday" and "Pudding En Gisteren - Music For Ballet" have gorgeous flute and piano passages but I find them a bit uninteresting for too much of the time. This band has a thing for pudding and custard.
The bonus track "Wow (Live Version)" is brilliant, longer, with more parts and probably better than the studio version. So much fun. "WOWOWOWOWOWOW WOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!"

Again about UK's "In The Dead Of Night", the keyboard solo near the end is amazing.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 1 March 2016 21:24 (4 months ago)

I think this has become one of my favourite epics.

I know there's a thread dedicated to 'prog 2.0' or something like that but I can't find it, I think this would have fit in better there.

Anyway, is anyone else interested that Cheer-Accident have a new album? On first listen I'm not blown away but it does neatly tie together most of the creative strands they've toyed with - neo-RIO, progressive pop, studio experimentation, even hints of the jagged Chicago math-rock sound they had throughout the 90s. Definitely ordering the CD of this and spending some time with this.

Full stream here:

https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/putting-off-death

cheer accident are total rolling attention deficit material, will stick em there if you don't. & will check this out later

Interview with Dave Weigel on his new prog rock book

http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/david-weigel-prog-rock-book.html

*record scratch*

"Led Zeppelin weren’t super inventive. They were not a band that was trying to push boundaries that much. They were just a very loud rock band."

in any case i'm def interested in his book and look forward to reading it, nice to see a shoutout to third by soft machine

that's kinda true tho about Zep??

They were totally weird and inventive, that's basically the only defense of their rampant borrowing.

That is not true about Led Zeppelin!

yep, that's the kind of thing you say about AC/DC, not Zep.

haha weird. I guess I just don't see them that way. like what boundaries did they push? they don't seem weird to me at all

looking forward to this book but weigel's a bit glib in that interview. "carouselambra" is one of the last great prog epics of the '70s

if nothing else, they completely destroyed the boundary of what rock bands sounded like, just on the production front. Nobody sounded like them, and yet everyone who came after them had to contend with their sound.

As far as the music itself, they played blues (obv), proto-metal on their early stuff, folk rock, brought in Middle Eastern elements, orchestral arrangements, played James Brown beats (in 7 no less), tacked reggae, samba. Zep were about as progressive as a rock could be without actually being considered prog. Compare their output to, say, ACDC mentioned, Foreigner, BTO, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith. As straight up rock music goes, none of those bands could really compete with any aspect of Zep's sound or reach.

Compare their output to, say, ACDC mentioned, Foreigner, BTO, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith. As straight up rock music goes, none of those bands could really compete with any aspect of Zep's sound or reach.

Absolutely agree, 100%. But compare them and their tricks* to, say Yes, or King Crimson, of Soft Machine and they seem pretty straight forward.

*feel like 90% of their tricks are Bonham based, i.e. the fucking awesomeness of the drum sound, his different beats etc

I agree that he's off base w/r/t Zeppelin, but I like this quote:

I’d start with King Crimson’s Red or In the Court of the Crimson King. Both of those have really accessible riffs and rock structures and then zoom into outer space. And if you listen and say, “I wish they’d just get rid of the violin and flute sections,” then maybe progressive rock is not for you.

"They were just a very loud rock band." (xp)

xp
Sure, and compare them to Magma, and they're just a boring blues rock band. They weren't a prog band -- but I contend they certainly could have been if you nudge them one or two degrees in any number of different directions.

carouselambra" is one of the last great prog epics of the '70s

see, Carouselambra sounds pretty straight forward to me, not proggy at all.

Was just listening to "Down By the Seaside," and even that weird-ass song goes from kind of lazy river country to this strange minor key hard rock bit before going back to country.

Question: is Led Zeppelin more or less prog than Pink Floyd? imo, yes.

omg no

Yeah, I dunno! I know PF gets tagged prog, but a lot of the things I think of as prog they don't really do. Proto prog?

Bluesy space rock? Can a band be prog without a virtuoso drummer? Is that a prog paradox?

they may or may not be prog but they are way more prog/have more prog elements/leanings than zep!

The Who are proggier than both.

(ok, probably not, but there's no "Baba O'Riley" or "Who Are You" equivalent in LZ or PF's oeuvres)

"stairway to heaven" is one of the catchiest three-movement prog rock suites, right up there with "starship trooper"

"But I think John Wetton’s lyrics for King Crimson were dark and interesting."

what? king crimson is your favorite band and you wrote a book on prog. when did john wetton write lyrics for king crimson?

weigel whiffed that interview imo.

Oops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starless

I think that interview does a good job at highlighting some of the contradictions inherent in "defining prog" in 2017. Because prog's defenders, on the one hand, have a strong interest in defining progressive rock as a uniquely creative musical form, and on the other hand feel compelled to draw those lines so as to defend the definition created by, I don't know, the early '80s, a definition which was not based around "creativity". And the reason Zep got left out was not because they didn't employ the genre tropes associated with prog - mellotron, instrumental virtuosity, long songs, songs in odd time signatures - but because throughout their career they worked in a style defined as antithetical to prog: Blues. This is how Robert Fripp gets to be a prog avatar, because he's one of the least bluesy electric guitarists of the 20th century. This is why one of the unsigned reviews of Weigel's book questions his assertion that Jethro Tull were a prog band, on the grounds that they played blues.

So we have a situation, with prog, where the key signifier of the genre is exclusionary, and none of the genre's defenders will acknowledge or even recognize this.

Said it many times but a lot of neo-prog and prog for the core audience since then just sounds like generic rock.

If you think Soft Machine (whom I adore) are the really weird, hardcore, difficult stuff then you probably have no business writing a book about prog

I embrace the core sentiment that prog is the sibling of punk though

I know there's a lot of people who stick to the English stuff and a few other heavyweights but it seems to me that a lot of prog fans try to have an international grasp of the genre.

He never said Soft Machine were at the far edges, he just said they're less accessible than King Crimson and Yes.

I like this clip of Dan Britton explaining what makes "Stairway" sound so proggy, I love these kinds of breakdowns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jK1bpJvmVc

jimmy page and jp jones were both virtuosos. the key signifier of the genre is sci-fi / fantasy exploration, i'd say, with transportive/transcendent/progressive (as in political) lyrics and trippy (oftentimes virtuosic but not exclusively) music framing those expeditions. zeppelin is 'not prog' when they sing about banging chicks. they're prog when they're fighting the battle of evermore, moving through kashmir, watching the mighty arms of atlas hold the heavens from the earth

they're dorks either way. sometimes they stumbled on decent tunes

More than that, Zep were progressive because they had a total willingness to step beyond of the trappings of blues rock. In fact, there's an old John Paul Jones quote how about when III came out, he was glad nobody was ever going to compare them to Black Sabbath anymore. They were a band who wore "eclecticism" well, even when wrongheaded critics of the time thought they were just stealing stuff from other artists. The way I see it, Zep seemed a lot more open minded about music than, say, Yes, who would spend months recording every possible permutation of a chord sequence just to appease the various egos involved.

i have one of those archival soft machine cds, i forget which one, there's like a million, and in there is an interview with mike ratledge in which he expresses interest in moving into areas that are "not necessarily 'progressive'". this is an interview from 1969. from what i've read i kind of take from that that what we think of as "progressive rock" is not necessarily in line with what people thought about it when it was new. particularly the primacy of gabriel-era genesis, who don't seem to have been any more popular than van der graaf generator when nursery cryme came out, and were at some point elevated to the level of stadium bands like ELP and Yes.

zeppelin is 'not prog' when they sing about banging chicks. they're prog when they're fighting the battle of evermore, moving through kashmir, watching the mighty arms of atlas hold the heavens from the earth

― reggie (qualmsley)

the riff for "achilles last stand" came out of live versions of "dazed and confused", a "mah woman done me wrong" song. the thing that makes zeppelin interesting is that you can't draw a clear line between those things.

by the hammer of the gods, i swear lots of things make zeppelin interesting. they were eclectic as fuck. bands like iron maiden can still be "prog" (to me) even if not every single one of their songs is "heart of the sunrise" or "supper's ready". don't know why discourse around this musical mode is so touchy. maybe if i were older or british i'd have a better handle on all the stigmas

of course zep was inventive, he's defining invention and pushing boundaries on prog's terms which is one of the achilles (last stand) heels of prog

wire was inventive and pushed boundaries with pink flag just as much as king crimson did, booker t & the mgs were just as much virtuosos as yes

but prog has always been myopic about defining what constitutes virtuosity, boundary pushing and invention

was gong or nektar pushing boundaries more than, say, throbbing gristle or giorgio morodor? roxy music? neu?

What usually happens is that those bands will be claimed for Prog.

roxy music and neu! were claimed For Prog when the canon was established - neu! are krautrock, and the canon-makers unilaterally declared that Krautrock Is Prog. roxy music there has been a little more debate regarding, with some people claiming that they are not prog but "art rock", but the boundaries between "art rock" and "prog" are sufficiently nebulous, and "art rock" vaguely enough established as a genre on its own (i think now they call it "zolo"), that they've been grandfathered in, especially with eno working on the lamb and so forth.

throbbing gristle and moroder aren't and won't be prog - since they weren't working in the early '70s they can be conveniently be ignored on chronological grounds.

I thought zolo was more pogo-stick rhythm stuff, like early Cardiacs or Oingo Boingo

to me, "art rock" is essentially prog for people who think they are tool for prog

also many of the bands who are called Krautrock hate the term

esp i think Neu

my point is these labels are arbitrary and fun but i doubt the bands think about em all that much

Musicians generally don't like labels.

the arbitrariness of genre labels is greatly exaggerated. yes, "krautrock" is a derogatory term coined by an english music journalist, "zolo" was invented by some internet music nerd who wanted a genre that described both the cardiacs and kate bush, but at the same time even saying "labels are arbitrary" doesn't authorize me to describe momus as zamrock.

no no it's cool, i get it. i love thinking about this kind of stuff

manning the gates and drawing boundaries is fun and all but there's still so much obscure prog to rediscover that i hope someday they enter the conversation as seems to happen in every other genre

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/ashratom/usa_midwest___ontario_progressive_rock__1970s_early_80s_/

oh, man, ashratom is just amazingly knowledgable about prog-rock, i've picked up so much stuff from reading his reviews and lists. i don't quite understand why it is he has such a fondness for '70s midwestern semi-comm. aor but i'm certainly not going to question it. whenever i think i've heard all the '70s prog rock any sane person would want to hear in a lifetime, guys like ashratom will bring up a record like kracq's _circumvision_ and i realize that there is not ever an end to the great music out there even when you try to restrict it to something that should by rights be finite, like "1970s prog rock".

yeah that list in particular really turned me onto a lot of cool stuff

he used to run a few great blogs back in the day. while I don't share the enthusiasm for some of this stuff I don't think he's really led me wrong yet

momus as zamrock.

― Cyborg Kickboxer (rushomancy), Thursday, May 25, 2017 1:08 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

welcome to zamrock

. i don't quite understand why it is he has such a fondness for '70s midwestern semi-comm. aor but i'm certainly not going to question it.

you mean like starcastle and early styx and kansas etc? chuck did some good writing on that

starcastle are awesome, idk about the other two though

i mean i like "totus nemesis" ok but most people seem to prefer the kansas songs that don't devolve into noise-rock. and their understanding of christian doctrine is awful enough that i'd prefer it if they didn't promulgate their ignorance so widely.

ah Yezda Urfa on that list! wish Yes had it in them to make a stripped down gem like Sacred Baboon by '76

new sufjan / nico collaboration is pretty nice

http://www.salon.com/2017/06/03/sufjan-stevens-bryce-dessner-nico-muhly-planetarium/

Kelefa Sanneh on the Weigel book

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/the-persistence-of-prog-rock

As usual, everyone pretending VDGG didn't exist

at least Gentle Giant is in there! to me the bigger omission is the fact that an article about the persistence of progressive rock doesn't mention any modern prog bands, implying that the genre is essentially dead now. you'd think at least a couple sentences about what Steven Wilson is up to might be in order. still a great read though.

Opeth get a mention! And they sort of do fall under Wilson's canon haha

Animals as Leaders is a newish band that makes the playlist at least

The Sanneh review is good on the '70s bands (the absence of VDGG is a bummer, but I like that he agrees with me that Mahavishnu Orchestra - and Return To Forever, for that matter - were prog), but the purpose of including Lester Bangs' thoughts eludes me. And I say that as someone who devoured both anthologies of his work. Also, no mention of the Mars Volta in the concluding section is just bizarre.

totally

Coheed and Cambria also have some level of popularity but weren't mentioned. Looked at their wiki page and was surprised to see they formed in 1995.

Weird that mainstream critics never picked up on Coheed. I wrote about them for Alternative Press and featured them when I edited Metal Edge; to me they had the same mix of air-guitar complexity and big singalong choruses that Rush had in the '80s.

Don't know anything about Frank Ocean, is it proggy?

seems like the Zappa milieu is more or less the american rendition of prog… virtuosity, allegedly elevating dumb teenage twaddle into real music…only impediment is that he reveled in conveying his sneering jerk persona, which I don't think comported with the high-minded english prog ideal…

american prog soul shared between beefzappa, hendrix, cheer-accident, mr bungle and the allman brothers band (or something)

captain beyond

the fiery furnaces

pharaoh sanders

santana

joanna newsom

mandrill

The music on the Grunt label was a prog equivalent, or at least the JA spinoffs were.
So was the rest of PERRO.

Seems like there was a bit of RIO dotted around the States too.
& something like Hampton Grease Band, not sure what else there was like that or is that Zappa orbit.

Oho too.

Don't know anything about Frank Ocean, is it proggy?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 12 June 2017 19:23

seems like the Zappa milieu is more or less the american rendition of prog… virtuosity, allegedly elevating dumb teenage twaddle into real music…only impediment is that he reveled in conveying his sneering jerk persona, which I don't think comported with the high-minded english prog ideal…

― veronica moser, Monday, 12 June 2017 20:52

Thought you were describing Frank Ocean for a minute there

"Don't know anything about Frank Ocean, is it proggy?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 12 June 2017 19:23"

no. he can be weird but just being weird doesn't mean proggy.

I remember lamenting on some prog forum about the lack of good American prog from that peak era and they mentioned the Muffins, whom I hadn't heard of. I checked them out and was pleasantly surprised.

Might have been a lack in the 70s but surely there's loads of great American prog bands by now.

Echolyn, Glass Hammer, and IZZ come to mind

there's a fuckload of metal that's prog if you don't mind stuff getting harder & more aggro than normal prog

Battles and Deluge Grander were first American bands to my mind.

I think that article maybe should have spelled it out that prog found a nice refuge and place to grow within metal.

Agree with JCLC there, but outside of metal (and even within) the problem with most nowadays prog is that it sounds more inspired by neo-prog than the 70s stuff or anything with a bit of genuine experimentation or adventure to it. Even a lot of avant-prog could have easily been released at any point in the last 40 years.

I don't have a point btw I'm just grumbling

You could also argue that prog found some relevance in the 90s again through math/post-rock I think, I've never seen any prog documentary/article that acknowledges this.

phish are prog and they're one of the biggest bands in the US

The math rock connection is easier to make but did any post-rock bands namedrop much prog aside from Pink Floyd and some krautrock?

80's crimson

xp I think that still counts, though afaict math/post bands are mostly reluctant to admit any influence from prog, though Krautrock seems to have always had more indie cred than Yes et al

the first album by Todd Rundgren's Utopia is prog, I guess he was an anglophile though

regarding the lack in the 70s -- reposting this from just upthread because there is cool shit in ashratom's rundown that deserves to be heard

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/ashratom/usa_midwest___ontario_progressive_rock__1970s_early_80s_/

reluctant to admit any influence from prog, though Krautrock seems to have always had more indie cred than Yes et al

― ultros ultros-ghali, Monday, 12 June 2017 23:45

I'm curious if this is a fear of music journalists? Something more? I find it really weird that apparently lots of bands are embarrassed to admit their influences. Wouldn't journalists be likely to omit mention of bands that were too uncool to their readers?

Subhumans said there was lots of prog bands they would never admit to liking but I don't know if that was to their friends or to journalists and fans.

way too many people are frightened of coming out of the prog rock closet and it's really kind of sad

Well they were talking about back in the early 80s

no. he can be weird but just being weird doesn't mean proggy.

Hallelujah. Zappa is surely prog. And Utopia until they started getting poppy.

As usual, everyone pretending VDGG didn't exist

― imago

pretending VDGG _don't_ exist

seems like the Zappa milieu is more or less the american rendition of prog… virtuosity, allegedly elevating dumb teenage twaddle into real music…only impediment is that he reveled in conveying his sneering jerk persona, which I don't think comported with the high-minded english prog ideal…

― veronica moser, Monday, 12 June 2017 20:52

Thought you were describing Frank Ocean for a minute there

― Robert Adam Gilmour

new username time

prog is so entertaining and satisfying to listen to and expensive to record that critics and record companies needed to intervene to restore the extremely profitable commercial 3 - 4 minute pop song model. that's really what the supposed punk rock revolution was all about

phish are prog and they're one of the biggest bands in the US

Phish are "jam" rather than "prog," not that there isn't some overlap. But prog geeks mostly hate jam bands as far as I can tell, definitely the Rush fans in my high school had no use for the Dead. There's a cultural divide as much as a musical one.

"jam" is often a euphemism for prog imho. i'm not saying there's no stylistic distinction between government mule and radiohead but there is major overlap between the two modes. the dead's "terrapin station" is one of the great american prog epics of the 1970s, i'd say, up there with "marquee moon" and "come sail away"

a recent phish prog jam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzHWdxKddK4

cheer accident isn't really sneering like zappa

they are deeply weird and singular imo

as good as many of the greats

i'd argue for post touch & go math rock like don cab, even farther out mars volta (though they sort of split the difference between that tribe and post patton stuff)

there's matadorable prog too like

http://store.matadorrecords.com/pig-lib

IMO it's hard to be considered a "prog" band these days unless you're specifically playing a retro prog style, like symphonic prog, RIO, etc. Original prog bands were progressive compared to rock and roll, and since rock music being "artistic" was a relatively new thing, that meant (for a decade or so) you could try all manner of things and be considered progressive. Once the 80s hit, you either had to recycle the original bands' styles, incorporate new wave/punk, or go so far down the experimental rabbit hole, a lot of the original prog fans wouldn't have even considered you prog at all.

Now, there's nothing (musically) to react against, really. You can be as experimental as you want -- "progressive" refers (once again) more to politics than music. Even if you had the same spirit of adventurousness, experimentation, artistry (or whatever you want to call it) as King Crimson or Henry Cow or the original krautrock bands, there's no telling, stylistically, how that might manifest itself in your music. Likewise, you can play music that's ridiculously complex, and want nothing to do with "prog", or take no conscious musical influence from it.

still kinda interesting how touchy a subject it is but seems to me it's like how you develop an ear for jazz and know it when you hear it and who cares if not all jazz is awesome. lester bangs may have found keith emerson or whoever pretentious and rick wakeman wore a cape but that doesn't mean the latest mastodon album doesn't rule

Lester Bangs did like Magma and Tangerine Dream, I think.

Magma and The Boredoms aren't English-language so they get ignored in all these bloviating retrospectives as well

it is weird, reggie. There are some genres, like death metal for example, where it's not necessarily a band thing to say "we play a proggy kind of _______" or something, or admit to being influenced by prog bands. But anywhere that remotely valules being "hip"-- prog still has this aura of nerdiness, of being the definition of stuff that isn't cool, or something you can just put on when people come over to your house.

*valules - drugs to take when discussing metrics

It's weird, the Unthanks were practically walking on eggshells when they were explaining it's okay to like prog.

Metal is weird in that all sorts of uncoolness is accepted but then there's all these other things that are on shaky ground.

Trying to imagine the album art that would most outrage a prog-phobe in the 70s and 80s. Hand him some Fuzzy Duck, Starcastle and Matching Mole albums and the first Gentle Giant album, ELP's Tarkus and Gong's Flying Teapot.

"from the sun to the world (boogie no. 1)" by ELO can boost a party depending on timing

I find it really weird that apparently lots of bands are embarrassed to admit their influences.

I remember an old Flaming Lips interview where they talked about coming out to each other as secret Yes fans.

Have to admit I used to get a particularly amazing thrill when I considered some music embarrassing but was crossing over into loving it. I don't know if that feeling is possible anymore but it's probably for the best that I don't really get embarrassed by listening to anything now (as far as I can tell).

yeah that interview was in magnet and pretty hilarious. they were touring clouds taste metallic and confessed to each other in the van they'd been listening to yes before heading out. wayne says iirc that bizarre epiphany and talking about it inspired the soft bulletin (the mollusk-level for me in the '90s prog wars)

xpost

which is kinda funny because I remember an interview with Dean Ween where he said the same thing re: not wanting to admit you really dug Yes

When was Dean talking about? I can't imagine Ween as adults being embarrassed by liking anything.

the game was different before deaner and wayne etc scored with "push the little daisies" and "she don't use jelly". those two bands going major label seemed to loosen other people up to confessing what they like sometimes not just talking up what they think is cool (not that there isn't overlap!)

it was on his old website which appears to be down now. I can't remember exactly what it was but it was something like, "these are the records I would whip out when all the girls went away"

Now, there's nothing (musically) to react against, really. You can be as experimental as you want

― Dominique, Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Is this true, though? The difference, to my mind, is that nowadays experimentalism is automatically met with indifference rather than scorn or outrage. The mainstream still very much exists and in some ways is more dominant than ever.

dean's about a million and change bros' surrogate awesome older brother. but mary timony recorded queen-like prog as killer as ween, at least on the magic city. if there were any justice in this fallen country, besides trump not being president, critics would feel free to bring up happy the man in tortoise reviews and not as a zing. van der graaf generator's impact on the italian prog scene, a la the velvet underground on the new york dolls and such, would be more familiar, too. alas

xpost

xp
Depends on who's looking I guess -- you can totally ignore the mainstream if you want.

Agree about indifference (in a general sense), but it's because you can choose to pay attention to whatever you want. There are still "scenes", but it's no longer making a statement, or presenting a real alternative to the mainstream just making weird rock music. UNLESS you find a way to do it that generates clicks, press, money, etc. And in that sense, the style of music is a lot less relevant than the thing (whatever it is) that makes you stand out from the crowd for that brief moment in time.

all of this is me leading up to my argument that Kanye, the Kardashians and Trump are our finest prog artists

GTR > KKT

Depends on who's looking I guess -- you can totally ignore the mainstream if you want.

Agree about indifference (in a general sense), but it's because you can choose to pay attention to whatever you want. There are still "scenes", but it's no longer making a statement, or presenting a real alternative to the mainstream just making weird rock music. UNLESS you find a way to do it that generates clicks, press, money, etc. And in that sense, the style of music is a lot less relevant than the thing (whatever it is) that makes you stand out from the crowd for that brief moment in time.

― Dominique, Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Agreed, re: the 'thing' that distinguishes you from the pack and that is systematically something other than the music itself, assumed to be mere form rather than content (assuming that distinction still makes sense). Politics in particular is routinely presumed to determine aesthetics altogether (which I'd argue is problematic even from a strictly political point of view).

As far as choice goes, it's a quasi utopian situation for ILMers and the like, but it paradoxically creates a closed loop for busier and/or less curious listeners who may otherwise have had their minds blown by an utterly unexpected musical experience. It's easier than ever to make a beeline for whatever genre you're primarily interested in and stick to it from here to eternity.

This is all anecdotal, of course, but since I don't know anyone who cares about music the way most people on this forum do, I tend to assume that it's the norm. Anyhow, my sense is that the gap between melomaniacs and non-melomaniacs is wider than ever.

But anywhere that remotely valules being "hip"-- prog still has this aura of nerdiness, of being the definition of stuff that isn't cool, or something you can just put on when people come over to your house.

Heh, the only person I know who self-identifies as a 'hipster' has sung along to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with me while driving around Montreal.

IMO it's hard to be considered a "prog" band these days unless you're specifically playing a retro prog style, like symphonic prog, RIO, etc. Original prog bands were progressive compared to rock and roll, and since rock music being "artistic" was a relatively new thing, that meant (for a decade or so) you could try all manner of things and be considered progressive. Once the 80s hit, you either had to recycle the original bands' styles, incorporate new wave/punk, or go so far down the experimental rabbit hole, a lot of the original prog fans wouldn't have even considered you prog at all.

― Dominique

"prog" as a movement was a collection of non-unique signifiers that congealed. someone makes a disco record today and it's instantly recognizable, because nothing had ever sounded like that before, because it had a BEAT. particularly with "big tent" prog it's hard to name an immediately identifiable _sound_ that isn't specifically and detrimentally beholden to the 1970s ("oh, a mellotron!"), which further serves to rubbish any vanguardist claims the genre may once have made (also to disco's benefit: it was not first and foremost a vanguardist genre).

the missing link

https://www.cloudsmusic.com/biography

captivated by despisers, lost in the canyons of your mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUOEr0RMxJM&feature=youtu.be

https://youtu.be/UUOEr0RMxJM

But prog geeks mostly hate jam bands as far as I can tell, definitely the Rush fans in my high school had no use for the Dead. There's a cultural divide as much as a musical one.

Makes me wonder - were there any drugs specifically associated with prog in the 70s?

I recall pot being the predominant choice for suburban progheads like myself in the 70s and early 80s.

Yes, same here. But I don't know what the bands were using.

the road stories i've read from the era mainly fixate on prog bands being divided into pot camps and beer camps, with apparently not much crossover between the two. (and not much room for other stuff - you could have a coke habit _or_ a synthesizer, but seldom both.)

Wasn't it the Yessongs movie where Rick Wakeman displayed a fine collection of empty bottles on top of his keyboards?

interesting that psychedelics weren't part of the story

Dave Weigel's book is pretty good so far (intro and 2 chapters in). It's not as illuminating as all the personal essays in Yes Is the Answer, it's def a straight history of the genre; but worth checking out.

Don't quaaludes/mandrax and acid feature in there at all?

Yes Is the Answer reviews don't sound very enticing. Apparently a lot of the pieces are by people embarrassed by music they used to like or even never liked in some cases?

listening to Genesis today

Fucking "Supper's Ready"...really blows my mind how human beings could sit in a room and come out with this piece of music

another thing I love about old Genesis is you can always hear little bits of the canny pop band they would become, the little minute-and-a-half McCartney-eque bits in Supper's Ready really stand out among their peers

lol, I listened to that this morning too, after mentioning it on the Relayer thread,and the Beatlisms stuck out to me too.

tt made me listen to Foxtrot in its entirety yesterday, there is definitely something to her claim that it is one of the greats

I'd rather unfairly overlooked it beforehand

Watcher of the Skies always struck me as a Beatles-y melody.

"watcher of the skies" has "hello goodbye" vibes

I love "Watcher" and "Supper's Ready" but never quite got into the rest of it, "Horizons" excepted of course

Watcher of the Skies is let down by the lyrics -- not the content of them, but they just don't scan and aren't very singable. Otherwise, it's a brilliant song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLB_t2DcfU

i was checking an algiers vid earlier and this was the sequel, and i'm..."what is this proggy wibbling"? is this nu-prog?

that is dope

Foxtrot is the best Genesis LP.

supper's ready is a fucking mess. thank god they never did a "side-long" (*not actually a side-long) number again.

sorry you are wrong, it must be lonely in your supper's ready hating bubble.

i can forgive them willow farm or i can forgive them the greengrocer's apostrophe, but not both

"greengrocer's apostrophe" I have no idea what that means but ok?

Idg that either. "Supper's Ready" = "supper is ready", surely?

"Horizon's"

oh, "lover's leap" presumably, which I believe is how it's written out on the jacket.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lover's%20leap

Supper's Ready really does sound like a compilation of castoffs or various sections that didn't fit into other songs (similar to the middle section on The Battle of Epping Forest). Still one of the best sidelongs of the 70s.

Gross apostrophe abuses unlikely among the crymes of these poshos.

The return of the opening motif after the tense 9/8 standoff and Gabriel straining his high register is massive and cathartic.

yes, i meant "horizon's". both "supper's ready" and "lover's leap" are perfectly grammatically correct.

my loathing of "supper's ready" really does come down to "willow farm", which was, i'm told, inserted in there just so people wouldn't think it was another "stagnation" (really? how deaf would you have to be to confuse it with "stagnation"? we're not exactly dealing with an "in the wake of poseidon" situation here, guys).

the older i get the more i come around to it - though damn near every "side-long epic" could stand to have at least six minutes cut from it (probably including even "a plague of lighthouse keepers", which i love and all but i can't remember anything between "presence of the night" and "where is the god that guides my hand?"), and though "willow farm" is very much the musical equivalent of the magical underpant gnomes' "????", it's not _quite_ as compositionally incoherent as all that. it sure as hell isn't close to being as well-constructed as "close to the edge", but very little prog is, and at least genesis could always write a good tune.

the other thing, and this is snobby, but genesis before "selling england by the pound" come off as cheap and underrehearsed, which to be fair they were. for a genre as chop-heavy as prog they sure did sound sloppy - phil collins, who i know for damn sure is an excellent drummer, manages to make 9/8 sound as leaden as pink floyd. it's really odd how much more apocalyptic the "evil jam" (usually dismissed as second-rate wankery) is than "apocalypse in 9/8".

Huh, was it spelled that way on the original vinyl? It's "Horizons" on my digital version and in anything Google turns up for me.

I really enjoy "Supper's Ready", even though I don't think it's in the same class as "Close to the Edge" in composition or performance.

Tbh, if anything offends me on Foxtrot, it's probably the mess they made of Bach's G major cello prelude in "Horizons".

i like willow farm. nothing wrong with a touch of whimsey.

the most offensive thing about foxtrot is that it's not very well produced.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/23/prog-rock-pomp-and-circumstance/

Prog rock should get an additional pass because it spawned nothing. It came and then it went. Subsequent generations weren’t saddled with nutty synthesizer solos and odes to each and every one of King Henry’s wives. Prog rock remains a curio, eminently easy to avoid, to disregard.

what I learned from this paragraph, towards the end, is that the author is unaware of metal

this is the only decent sentence in the whole thing: "Prog rock was stoner music, pure and simple."

posted the article because i'm still shocked to see any attention paid to prog

It's definitely true that you never hear Pink Floyd or Rush anymore.

Yeah, you know with Pitchfork's recent best songs of the `70's list, there was zero representation of prog (maybe a single Pink Floyd tune?). If a person had no prior knowledge of `70's popular music and used that list as an accurate representation of the landscape back then, they would just assume that prog had next to significance.

*next to no significance

Have another cup of coffee, Austin. Don't mind if I do.

thank you, austin! personal confession: my favorite music magazine is 'mojo'. prog rock (besides floyd) may as well never have existed according to them

If a person had no prior knowledge of `70's popular music and used that list as an accurate representation of the landscape back then,

Huh, people use Pitchfork this way?

pitchfork kids, you know, they use it as a primary source on all music.

Yeah, you know with Pitchfork's recent best songs of the `70's list, there was zero representation of prog

gonna say that there's a real obvious reason for this as prof is a zero-sum albums game, much as i voted for "roundabout"

er prof = prog

I still don't understand how 'Roundabout' didn't make a best songs of the `70's list.

The tone of these articles seems so weird to me (although, interestingly, I think their basic premise about rock history and canonization stands in contradiction to Amanda Marcotte's). I mean, Yes was just inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. A lot of these bands still get airplay and fill large venues. There are plenty of people, especially musicians, who take the music seriously, even if they don't generally overlap with the set of people who write for Pitchfork or Mojo (or The New Yorker), which is fine; music journalists can write about whatever they want.

qualmsley I'm listening to the magic city and I like it but it's like...new wave? can you bear out the progginess of this record?

You can hear it a little in "Revolution of Hearts pts I&II" and "Clementine".

what sund4r said. plus in the interest of contradicting myself and calling out attention paid to prog, here's stereogum ~

As epic pop-prog moves go, The Magic City remains an unparalleled marvel, 50 gamma-ray soaked minutes of Medieval chords, rampaging keyboards, pedal steel, and Timony finding a greater confidence in her vocals. Veteran hand Mitch Easter engineered City at North Carolina studio Fidelitorium, but these tunes may as well have been cut to tape somewhere in California; there’s a lightness and buoyancy to them that’s light years removed from Pirate Prude, albeit the sound remains quintessentially Helium. From the cosmic country lilt of “Aging Astronauts” to fantastical caper “Devil’s Tear” to “Vibrations”‘ Ren Faire word salad-cum-scale-climbing confection to the syrup-flow transcendence of “Ocean Of Wine,” this was Helium at their most distinctive and their most accessible.

http://www.stereogum.com/1942561/from-helium-to-ex-hex-a-guide-to-the-music-of-mary-timony/franchises/sounding-board/

my favorite music magazine is 'mojo'. prog rock (besides floyd) may as well never have existed according to them

― reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, 25 June 2017 18:03

Wasn't it them who did a big Jethro Tull feature? Uncut and Mojo mix in my memory.

Didn't they do a Jethro Tull feature and get Nick Cave to contribute?

their coverage of jethro tull over the years has been overwhelming

http://www.mojo4music.com/search/jethro+tull

uncut seems to me at least to be operating in the 'let's use YES as a slam' vein. for instance, the review of the new fleet foxes album prioritizes this r. pecknold quote bit at the beginning ~

“I feel,” he wrote, “like 2009, Bitte Orca/Merriweather/Veckatimest, was the last time there was a fertile strain of ‘indie rock’ that also felt progressive w/o devolving into Yes-ish largesse.”

http://www.uncut.co.uk/blog/fleet-foxes-crack-reviewed-100543

kudos to uncut though for putting out that GENESIS special edition a few months back. i was shocked when i saw it

Didn't they do a Jethro Tull feature and get Nick Cave to contribute?

― Stevolende, Sunday, 25 June 2017 21:31

Yeah, which resulted in Ian Anderson presenting Cave an award at a Mojo ceremony. Cave was praising Tull's lyrics and it was suggested that he named his second son after the band, though he never said that himself.
He had a funny story about Fripp being one of the weirder people he'd collaborated with in another issue of Mojo or Uncut.

Pretty sure Mojo did a thing on Genesis too.

“I feel,” he wrote, “like 2009, Bitte Orca/Merriweather/Veckatimest, was the last time there was a fertile strain of ‘indie rock’ that also felt progressive w/o devolving into Yes-ish largesse.”

what does that even mean? that yes used to give away too much free shit?

"Please - I couldn't possibly accept one more guitar melody! It's too much!"

“like 2009, Bitte Orca/Merriweather/Veckatimest, was the last time there was a fertile strain of ‘indie rock’ that also felt progressive w/o devolving into Yes-ish largesse.”

GAPDYes

d-longstreth had no taste for yes back then

http://www.avclub.com/article/dirty-projectors-david-longstreth-doesnt-think-the-35143?permalink=true

or so he claimed . . . but merriweather totally sounds like an homage to "lightning strikes" on the ladder (which starts out with a bite from the kinks ("phenomenal cat"))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R0vQryCqw0

is that really a Kinks sample or did they sample it from the Melltron? I never really thought of that particular soundbite as a Kinks thing.

all those people (fleet foxes, dirty projectors, animal collection) are fucking charlatan cunts

My fave prog at the moment is southern rock prog of barefoot jerry