Punk nixes prog-rock => Punk gets proggy : Full circle?

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As I was strolling happily inside that prog-rock thread, one thought came to my head: if it was the arrival of punk that dictated the uncoolness of prog, why is that many punk, post-punk and DIY-aesthetic influenced bands do music owing more to Tangerine Dream and Yes than the Sex Pistols or the Ramones? Unwound, GYBE, Tortoise (and some new Fugazi stuff) come to mind...

Any thoughts about it?

― JP Almeida (JP Almeida), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 23:39 (twenty-two years ago)

same reason prog and hard bop happened. The technically proficient were tired of young bands ripping them off so they decided to get all complex, hoping it would set them apart from the mainstream folk.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 21 January 2003 23:42 (twenty-two years ago)

So it's kinda like "survival of the fittest", being the fittest those who could innovate, right?

― JP Almeida (JP Almeida), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:02 (twenty-two years ago)

It depends whether or not the increase in technical quality is superficial or not. Sometimes its evolution, sometimes it's just wank.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:04 (twenty-two years ago)

"punk nixes prog" = a fraudulent claim anyway, despite ten billion lazy journo claims in the interim

i. almost all punx prior to punk had been happily listening to prog, now suddenly they "weren't allowed" to
ii. many prog outfits went on more or less unbothered and probably sold MORE records to MORE PPL IN THE 80S (iconic but misleading bcz anomalous exception: ELP)

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:11 (twenty-two years ago)

"punk vs. prog" is all John Lydon's T-shirt's fault.

But then again, when I watch or hear some shitty '70s music, I usually end up yelling "will somebody please invent punk rock?"

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

"punk vs. prog" is all John Lydon's T-shirt's fault.

And yet Lydon's endorsements of Captain Beffheart and Can...

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

had his t-shirt said "I hate Pink Floyd but do enjoy Can" maybe history would be different.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Or perhaps Tortoise, GSYBE etc. are the prog striking back, getting the last laugh after Punk became the commercial cliche.

― phil jones (interstar), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:20 (twenty-two years ago)

ramones = plastic commercial manufactured crap that shania twain really likes

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 00:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I really do think that music (like many other things in life) goes through cycles. So, you had rock and roll in the 50's then flower-power pop on the 60's. Then prog appeared on the 70's, being pushed-off by punk at the end of the decade. Some ppl decided that there were too many guitars, so on the 80's, synthesisers were everywhere. You must know about grunge by now. Don't forget all the disco revival and electro-clash that followed.
Of course that this is a superficial perception of things, and that all styles (even in semi-obscurency) carried on during all this time, and some styles like hip-hop didn’t enter on this equation at all, but this is notorious just the same.

― JP Almeida (JP Almeida), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 10:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm talking about mainstream acknowledgement here, of course.

― JP Almeida (JP Almeida), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 10:07 (twenty-two years ago)

All the radio stations I heard punk rock on in 1977 played PLENTY of prog, and nobody complained.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 10:12 (twenty-two years ago)

"And yet Lydon's endorsements of Captain Beffheart and Can... "

But neither Beefheart nor Can are Prog.!?

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

"punk vs. prog" is all John Lydon's T-shirt's fault.
And yet Lydon's endorsements of Captain Beffheart and Can...
In his mind, I bet he didn't consider Beefheart or Can to be prog. He probably narrowed prog down to Rick Wakeman, ELP and an unending parade of rampaging aquatarkuses. He was notorious for hhhhhaaaayting Pink Floyd as well.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:01 (twenty-two years ago)

erm yes custos, he was, hence the phrase "all John Lydon's T-shirt's fault"

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:09 (twenty-two years ago)

can were as prog as fukc imo.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Magazine = best of both worlds

― Kangaroo Jaxx (Andy K), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:13 (twenty-two years ago)

No, mark s. You miss the point of what I was saying.
I think the reason punks hated prog is...well, because they hated prog. Lydon didn't MAKE them do it. Alot of proto-punkers were already bitching about it. Lydon became their (unwitting?) spokesman.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:15 (twenty-two years ago)

*sigh*

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Were they really bitching about the music tho or was it mainly the "They're all tax exiles who only play 3 Wembley dates a year"-type complaints? If they really hated Yes and Zep that much then why would their remoteness bother them? "Please come back to England and bore us some more"!!!?

― dave q, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

mark s is right. Punk didn't really have much impact on the prog ship which sailed on regardless through the late 70's. One interesting point though - why did the big prog bands get more commercial and accessible (shorter songs, even hit singles) during the same era. I'm thinking of Yes, Genesis, possibly Floyd. Was it anything to do with punk?

I don't really think people bitched about prog or mega rock bands at all pre-punk. Although when punk came along and me and my friends signed up for the whole thing, prog was the one genre that you had to (publicly) disown. We all kept liking reggae, soul/disco and chart pop too, even though we were on the face of it 'punks'. Soft lot we were.

― Dr. C (Dr. C), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

i think punk made the idea of pop and singles and the charts critically respectable again, as a format of artistic expression

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:55 (twenty-two years ago)

It wasn't just prog bands who got more commercial -- check out all the big name classic rock bands from the time. The real winners were the bands who came out of the gate commercial (Van Halen, The Cars, The Police).

― dleone (dleone), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 16:58 (twenty-two years ago)

The album that started it all...

http://thebrpage.tierranet.com/disco/img/ITU.jpg

― original bgm, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I found a copy of that at KUCI. It's not bad at all!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 17:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Suicide... prog or punk?

― David Allen, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 17:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Martin Rev was a fusion keyboardist before Suicide.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 17:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Phil OTM regarding punk-as-pop: surely it was the sudden 90s commercialization of ostensibly punk-descended rock that sent everyone scattering into progginess or 70s-singer-songwriter pastiche or bossa nova or what have you? This was the sound of the supposed punk lineage saying "well now that you kids agree with us we've actually reconsidered and come to the conclusion that the Carpenters were in fact wonderful."

[Music can only move "in cycles" in two ways: (a) insofar as individual coherent listener-bases -- ones that communicate within themselves and have common touchstones and experiences -- can move in a vague tandem, getting bored with roughly the same stuff at roughly the same time; and (b) insofar as any such base is also being trailed by younger and younger inductees into it, whose common experiences also also form a gradual shift. In this latter case it's very thorny to claim that X institution now = X institution later, in that the institution is constantly repopulated and its rules subject to massive revision.]

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:19 (twenty-two years ago)

That first graph: in other words during the late 90s I think "indie" as a supposedly punk-descended thing got to have the fun of completely rewriting its history, which sparked plenty of creativity -- suddenly the goal was to imagine the pre-80s touchstones not as the Clash or the Pistols but as Lee Hazelwood or Francoise Hardy. Honest-to-God "punk" attempting a similar revision ==> math, emo.

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:23 (twenty-two years ago)

punk is some ungodly cross between tramps (ie homeless) and bill haley and hawkwind (as it has been portrayed to me). prog is toffs playing harpsichord with a break for a drum solo (same again). i don't see the two as being mutually exclusive. actually i just don't see the two.

― bob snoom, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I found a copy of that at KUCI. It's not bad at all!

Excellent! I've never heard it but I still like to say it's BR's best for kicks. Just how proggy is it, anyway?

― original bgm, Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

god, I so wanna hear Into The Unknown. What little I've enjoyed about Bad Religion, aside from the forgotten classic "A Walk" is their proggier moments on that Todd Rundgren produced one.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:31 (twenty-two years ago)

think punk made the idea of pop and singles and the charts critically respectable again, as a format of artistic expression
Hmmm. Interesting.

The album that started it all...
Yeah, but (un?)fortunately, Purist snobbery coerced them to go "back to the known" with the next album.
Now, what I'm about to say might sound like the rantings of a madman (no...Custos...reeallly? and how is this new?) but I think that certain post-punkers of a more gothic stripe made a neo-progrock inevitable. Just as the original prog-rockers trying to become the next Dante or Shakespeare ("...a Tarkus, told by idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.") the goffs made it cool (*cough cough*) to be the next Oscar Wilde or Lord Byron.
So, whose with me on this one?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't really think people bitched about prog or mega rock bands at all pre-punk.
Alot of musicians bitch about whatever came before. Punk is no exception. In fact, punk goes out its way to trash whatever came before. Iggy Pop sez "I'd like to think I (stuck a knife/hammered a stake) into the heart of the (Love Generation/60's)."; Lou Reed and Robert Plant made similar comments about the merseybeat pop. Kurt Cobain sez "I think everyone was collectively tried of hearing Winger..."

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Wednesday, 22 January 2003 18:47 (twenty-two years ago)

If Iggy really thinks that, he's a bit deluded: the members of the, erm, "Love Generation" who were aware of Iggy's existence in 1969 probably amount to less than the number of punks in 1977 who knew who Tristan Tzara was.

I think Dave Q is on the money: prog-hate was no more intense among punks than, say, Stones-hate. What the "punks nix prog" thing conceals is that punk was just as ambitious and certainly just as "pretentious" (used as a compliment obv) as prog had ever been.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 23 January 2003 00:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Has anyone mentioned the Cardiacs yet?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Thursday, 23 January 2003 00:38 (twenty-two years ago)

funny that john lydon is brought up in reference to the destruction of prog because a recent wire article on keith levene (of pil) reveals that he was a closet yes and king crimson fan.... the article also talks a lot about how many of the punks were actually better musicians than they let on to be ...

i think it's funny how in very recent clothing, aggressive music or the true punk music of today (i'm afraid of what words to use here) can be found in the noise scenes... a part of which is the "brutal prog" crowd... weasel walter's flying lutenbachers playing old magma covers and so on... orthrelm or upsilon acrux... if they aren't prog, what is? (both really insanely complex math guitar music... that's not free... it's composed.)

i guess in the sense that punk is for anyone... sometimes that anyone isn't necessarily inept...
m.

― msp, Thursday, 23 January 2003 00:47 (twenty-two years ago)

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