ELP: more punk than punk

henry cow very nearly toured with the pistols: both virgin acts, one in the eye for Punk as Orthodoxy as it had already emerged in 1977; it was seriously considered by both sides...

on the othah hand it is 9.oo o'clock so only early by my own peerless slugabed standards

I haven't seen the whole review but from that quote he is talking garbage. The sex pistols and the stooges have aged terribly. And anyway, the sex pistols and the stooges were different.

I heard a track of this album on mixing it (and I thought it stood up better than the stooges): Marcus russell (the reason why i still listen to the program since I can't stand robert sandall's continous attack on improvised music) said it stood up well compared to your basic prog.

Anyway: If henry Cow are prog then it's worth a listen. I'll definetely get it.

I don't particularly agree that prog was bloated or bombastic.. Well, maybe tales from topographic oceans or the drum solo on Tarkus. But thats not what the problem with it was. I bet a large amount of the folks I stood in the audience wih of the Clash gig I saw in 1977 had a Genesis album, I know I did. I still do.

To aid understanding of my point the phrase 'people object to' can be replaced with 'critics object to'... Even I wouldn't go as far as suggesting critics can't qualify for membership of the human race - though I will cede it as a debateable point.

If critics aren't human what could they be? Sometimes I wonder about them maggots that are used in hospitals to cleanse infected wounds, clearly they do a lot of good by removing the necrolising flesh, but I'm not sure the maggots' motivations are of noble intent.

This is probably just a metaphor rather than a biological description.

For "rocked very hard", you may insert your own non-rockist term for "sounds passionate and not embarassing, and makes me wanna bop up and down without shame".

mark perry on the sniffin glue book points out that you can hear the influence of ELP on the first clash album (i can't, actually, but i don't believe he's just joking...)

this is old tired borrowed bad reasoning alex => gareth and ethan will not be swayed by it because they is listening using um "innocent" ears not unexamined received wisdoms (how punky are unexamined received wisdoms anyway? even punk-derived ones?)

he throws knives at his organ = he does not confuse himself with high art?

the "real musicianship" issue is totally a red herring now (yes i think in the 70s it did have a use, which was to destabilise jazz as the primary anti-art art music of the day...): the dichotomy might be "showmanship for entertainment's sake" (emerson fire-eating) vs "showmanship for art's sake" (iggy crowd-baiting/cutting self)

what is rick wakeman's attitude to brahms in 'cans and brahms'? "i'm better than this guy" or "here's some nice stuff"?

Surely they were teasing the grundy audience (a valid assumption?).

They wanted to be taken seriously as a rock band and comparison to classic composers don't come in to it.

'mark perry on the sniffin glue book points out that you can hear the influence of ELP on the first clash album (i can't, actually, but i don't believe he's just joking...)'

I think he is.

in the context of the passage, perry is simply pointing out that he and every other punk musician of the day had spent a great deal of time growing up listening and discussing (and of course liking) all the supposed anti-punk stuff (he's primarily laughing at the lie of "culture year zero") => if he's just joking abt the clash and ELP, the point is less effective (and less funny) than if he's actually serious...

however i don't know the specific sense in which he might be being serious, so it's a bit moot!

I have no idea whether ELP influenced the Clash, but punks were certainly not consistent in the bands they castigated and then borrowed from. What influence Mr. Perry hears would make for a more pointed argument though, as I admit I'm curious?

I have no idea what Wakeman's intentions were (and frankly who cares what his intentions were--why bother analyzing the 30+ year old motivations of this guy; shouldn't these songs just speak for themselves) but I certainly remember thinking when listening to Yes that someone wanted me to be ridiculously impressed with the uber- complicated chord progressions. I'm wasn't. I'm still not.

But did they want rock to die. I think they wanted to do away with the excesses of the era (prog) and chart pop. And in what way did they want rock to betaken seriously since it was already taken seriously as a commercial proposition.

I'm comparing what the Pistols actually explicitly said about their relationship with classical music with what you feel Yes must implicitly have been saying: when I wonder what exactly Wakeman was thinking when he made 'Cans and Brahms', you say who cares and what's that got to do with it...? Yes of course elements of strutting and audience wind- up and in-jokes are part of this: but they also are in ELP, and (the Wakeman end of) Yes. The gap just isn't that big: these are NOT opposites, culturally or any other way, they are more like intensely jealous siblings. There's an awful lot of buried utopian anger in prog (not so buried in the case of henry cow).

i THINK this is the same species of argument and not merely contradictory but i must momentarily retire (with immense dignity) to poke about at some of the less, um, grounded angles...

"With this record I attempt to be subvert the notion of not being taken seriously..."

Good night.

Punk wasn't an attack on chart pop. It was an attack on what was passing for 'serious' rock music. The problem with the original pitchfork comment is that it narrows down that attack on 70s rock music to 'prog' and 'bombast' and it was much more than that. Bombast was a lesser and not always neccessary component (were The Eagles bombastic?).

Though the critique was much wider and covered more types of music, punks objection was 'they are boring'.

ELPs capacity to be boring is astounding - the knives in the keyboard and the whirling in the air grand piano thing and the Persian carpet for Greg Lake thing and the drumkit made of steel thing wasn't enough to cover the turgidity of 12 minute piano improvisation on side four of 'Welcome Back'.

From definition 1 I'd say the Sex Pistols take the cake, because there was so much instrumental whackeroo on Yes and ELP albums, there wasn't much time for "language". From definition 2, on the other hand, prog is the clear winner, as there's not much padding to the Stooges or Pistols.

I think the original assertation is stretching the truth a bit, because I wouldn't equate over-the-top with bombastic, the way we typically think of bombastic in music, partially because it also conflates the image with the records. But others are right, the journey from prog to punk isn't necessarily one of burning bridges...you can theoretically go back the other way--just look at the career of the Who for a proto version of this, or take a look at Wire. Ah, continuum!

It was an attack on the banalities of chart pop. Again, by the time I was born, punk was over. But from the various accounts I've read (so a lot of misinformation) then yes it was that.

Cos they are wrong, Punk (UK, 76-78) loved chart pop - at its best it WAS chart pop.

(eg "punk" has become essentially meaningless as a descriptive term partly because it has been cynically overused and exploited [eg by The Expolited] but also because it's a great sounding word and people like it)

i am very pleased with this thread so far.

Alex maintains a split between social provocateurs and musicians = Alex is prog at heart!

Ahem, the Ramones?

Do explain this. I'm not following the logic of this line of reasoning and I'm pretty sure I should be insulted that I'm being called "prog". Attempts to quickly hide all his Magma CDs as quickly as possible all the while mumbling "I've been found out"

Oh Dominique, if you are married or male, I do apologize for implying that you were not so.

I have of course arrived much too late to add anything of interest to this thread, i'm afraid, so I'll just blah. "the slightest sex pistols album" is prob. "The great rock & roll swindle" it isn't bombastic, it just sux0r. Thee quote jess, er, quotes above seems to me to be a bit silly. "Endless soloing" as quoted by alex, above seems to me to be more a feature ov fusion/fuzak and heavy metal than most progressive stuff I like anyway. A long instrumental break does not necessarily = "soloing". ELP suck, but not as much as the clash. I am too tired to make sense, so am off to bed.

Just thought I'd suggest that.

Discussion on the Rolling Metal Thread made me revisit the dusty ELP records I picked up in a lot last summer.

Shit is great.

man...really? jeezus i love lots of prog but to me it's funny that this thread starts using the wackest prog band* their is as the crux of the debate...ELP is pretty yucky to me. to even put them on the level of a magma or king crimson or gentle giant even yes is unthinkable to me.

not as bad as "journey to the center of the earth" by wakeman, but his solo career is just another world of suck, he's not even fucking human i swear.

I was playing "Tarkus" from Welcome Back my Friends and rocking the fuck out the other night. My neighbor actually came over and asked "what the hell is that? It's awesome!"

maybe i haven't heard "the right albums"...it's like zappa...i'm always hearing the "wrong" zappa albums

Tarkus is grebt. I cannot get within 100 miles of anything else though.

Ms. Leone's

Dang.

-- dleone, Tuesday, March 26, 2002 1:00 AM

lol

i think yes has always been a very "pop" band, critics who knee-jerk dismiss them usually gloss over that.

Yeah, it's easier to call them copy-and-paste prog.

I don't get why critics or even punk fans wouldn't like Yes. Maybe the later stuff, but Close to the Edge is totally punk. Probably more post punk, I guess. It sounds like This Heat at parts, there's tons of dissonance.

I can get the Pink Floyd hate, because they were boring, but not Yes.

>>ELP is pretty yucky to me. to even put them on the level of a magma or >>king crimson or gentle giant

ELP was a heavy band. Gentle Giant often defined a Brit version of twee. And I like Gentle Giant very much. Much as I like them, ELP's early Seventies albums utterly erase GG in terms of brutality. King Crimson, to a certain extent, too. ELP never made a record as boring as Islands.

ELP were a trio who played through stacks of Hiwatts and it sounds it a lot of the time. They also had an aptitude for classic rock radio, mostly because of Greg Lake's voice and their inclusion of at least one song on every album that wasn't strict prog.

See if you can identify the song among the first three ELP albums where the band goes into a rip on Led Zep's How Many More Times. It's there.

The "welcome back" segment of Karn Evil 9 on Brain Salad Surgery and the "Welcome Back..." 3 LP live album is as good a slice of exciting 70's hard rock as one can find and there are a lot of good examples to choose from. A fragment of it was in the jokey Dr. Pepper commercial run during college football on ESPN.

And this is coming from a guy who has no problem rupturing his liver on a Friday night to the 2:30 3:00 blooz & boogies on the first four ZZ Top albums.

i'm always hearing the "wrong" zappa albums

There are no "right" Zappa recs, dude.

I was up at Mark S's just before Xmas and he played me an utterly ace-sounding late sixties mod/psych pop thing which I'd never heard before; he told me it was from the first Yes album. They've always been pop really - when they stretch out for the long run they're more approachable than, say, Crimson but they don't quite have the same quest for actual adventure (i.e. don't have improv chops). "Wondrous Stories" conjures up '77 for me just as surely as "God Save The Queen" or "I Feel Love."

As indeed does ELP's "Fanfare For The Common Man AKA Theme From Reporting Scotland," a number two hit single in the summer of punk which in itself is pretty punk.

You know, when you are heavily influenced by classical music, you aren't supposed to improvise. The entire improvisation in the music of, say, King Crimson, is a total misunderstanding of the meaning of their musical influences.

Symphonic rock (I like that name better than "progressive") is supposed to keep to the notes and not improvise!

ELP's best is Love Beach. Their most consistent, fully-realized work. It's a masterpiece.

"And this is coming from a guy who has no problem rupturing his liver on a Friday night to the 2:30 3:00 blooz & boogies on the first four ZZ Top albums."

Love that, because it describes me perfectly. Also love ELP, Yes all that stuff. One question, people in the earlier posts claimed Yes "noodles", I've never heard that and I have all their stuff. It's all pretty well conceived to these ears.

that's why Yes was so good -- they wrote great pop songs and good odysseys!

(jon anderson is kind of a ding-dong though)

Not only did Yes not "noodle," they were an incredibly tight band. Every piece fits together seamlessly; there are no extraneous wanky solos on Yessongs except during spotlight segments. During the actual songs, everyone is contributing to the greater whole. ELP are more wildass than Yes, and like I said on the metal thread way more noise-happy; there's some stuff on the live album that would make Wolf Eyes shit themselves with joy.

Agreeing with the last two posts, except for maybe the ding dong comment. Yes is totally um-wanky. even at their most "wildass" (Gates of Delirium) it's real tight.

Gates of Delirium is absurdly tight. (thanks to the person here who put me onto it)

I don't get why critics or even punk fans wouldn't like Yes.

I know right? Where's that YouTube vid of early Yes that Alex in NYC linked to that "explains why all the old punks liked Yes."

jon anderson is a fine singer and frontman, but he's a ding-dong

http://www.dbrock.net/artistes/photos/image_0154.jpg

I'm very very tempted to respond to Geir's post but, well, you know.

i bet jon anderson is a nicer dude than lou reed.

i bet jon anderson is a nicer dude than lou reed.

and rick wakeman's probably funnier than ol' lu. or jung lu. or whatever lu, really.

<I>I'm very very tempted to respond to Geir's post but, well, you know.</i>

just picture geir as a big amoeba sitting at a desk in his parents' attic, staring at a computer screen, and your desire to reply to his nonsense should dissipate.

Tarkus is grebt. I cannot get within 100 miles of anything else though.

-- Autumn Almanac, Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:54 AM (20 hours ago) Bookmark Link

REALLY? i love Tarkus but i've always lovd Trilogy more. that might be my young self speaking -- i need to reexplore them. but also, the self-titled is pretty gorgeous as well. and it's not like ungraspable, at all. in fact it seems easier to listen to than tarkus. with some gorgeous textures.

i always found it odd that Tarkus is like a big name around here... it definitely took me a bit of time to wrap my mind around that album.

Yeah. I need to give the rest a bit more time too. ELP has never been a priority for me.

holy crap i never would have guessed a surmounter dug elp

"Noodling" is what the krautrockers, post rockers, San Francisco hippies and later incarnations of King Crimson did.

the title song to "Tarkus" rocks -- the rest of the record kinda blows, though. not b/c the songs are necessarily too proggy, but b/c they're kind of half-baked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwsflF5Fyho