Prog Rock

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.