Prog Rock

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

Mojo had at least one prog special that I have somewhere. Didn't they cover Patto recently too?

i swear Mojo did an article on Van Der Graaf Generator once

"Pretty sure Mojo did a thing on Genesis too." Yes, they had Gabriel wearing a face stocking on the cover.

they've also done about 1000 paul weller covers. nothing against the jam or style council or anything

“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.”

I suspect that Robin Pecknold was simply qualifying his use of "progressive" as being not of the symphonic type. Still, the roots of GAPDY had more to do with the efficiencies of art rock than the lofty ambitions of progressive rock. I guess comparisons to the former (e.g., Roxy, Bowie, etc) were too obvious and boring to use as comparisons.

Prog issue of Mojo (or Uncut)? All I remember was the free prog cd, which was not bad. But I stopped seeing those magazines maybe 7 years ago.

Been dipping into Supersister - Iskander, Saint Just - Saint Just, Shub Niggurath - Les Morts Vont Vite. Good times.

The actual prog magazine is such a mixed bag but it pleases me that there's a magazine in newsagents that even mentions Supersister, PFM and checks in on Jon Anderson to see how he's doing.

The prog issue of Mojo i have is pretty early, format of magazine is noticeably different to current.
Covered the main prog bands with an article each. may have had some more general overview.

There's a live set by Shub Niggurath around too. From June '86. I think it's pretty good but haven't listened in quite a while.

Just found out that last year Robert Jan Stips released a live dvd of him playing the first three Supersister albums on pianos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0gaKit6UjM
https://robertjanstips.bandcamp.com/merch/present-to-the-highest-pudding-dvd-100-minutes-cd-75-minutes-robert-jan-stips-plays-supersister

... simultaneously?

It says that in one of the descriptions but it probably varies

I liked the second film but I totally missed this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_Warriors_III:_Canterbury_Tales

I listened to Gentle Giant's Acquiring the Taste for the first time in years today, and man it's fucking great.

yeah I'm astounded how pretty that record gets at times - "Edge of Twilight" and "The Moon is Down" in particular

http://www.mojo4music.com/3110/mojo-issue-222-may-2012/

they did a thing w/Hammill here but I swear they did a VDGG thing once (like I remember learning the band was super popular in Italy? does that sound familiar?)

that is true

I knew they were popular in Italy but it wasn't Mojo that told me that. Having said that, I'd be surprised if they hadn't been featured before.

One of the five main features and not even mentioned on the cover.

When was the major remastering? Would probably tie in with taht.
I'm remembering that Pawn Hearts gatefold image of three of them on a plinth heiling presumably Hamill as being a lead image for an article. Thought that was Mojo but could be Uncut.
I presumably still have it somewhere, not been through my old copies in a while.

"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.

...Kelefa Sanneh does not, wisely, make the case that prog rock is deserving of critical gravitas."

That Counterpunch piece is bs, such astounding ignorance. Prog's influence can be found everywhere, from post-punk to Janelle Monae to tons of metal bands.

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

This piece isn't as bad. The book referenced, The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock by Dave Weigel is pretty good -- I'm almost finished with it. Despite going into a lot of detail on lots of key albums, for some reason he skips over King Crimson's Starless and Bible Black and Red albums.

Any surprise bands/albums in there?

I love Six Wives Of Henry VIII

The book covers most of the biggies, plus mentions in passing a bunch of obscure Italian and other European bands. Do you mean bands that are questionable whether they're prog? I guess it spends more pages than I expected on Voivod. It excluded Henry Cow for some reason.

xxp

“We want our albums to last,” Robert Fripp, the austere guitar scientist behind King Crimson, said. In a literal sense, he got his wish: although the progressive-rock boom was effectively over by the end of the seventies, it left behind a vast quantity of surplus LPs, which filled the bins in used-record stores for decades.

lol that's p assholish

Also isn't true?