Why are there so few books about prog?

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I know there are/were tons of zines and web sites about prog, but why so few books? And the handful that I know about all seem flawed in some fundamental way. By now even disco is better documented (in terms of its history and What It All Means, if not in terms of individual performers). Don't prog listeners like to read books?

(also, I haven't been here in a while - what's with all the polls?)

Patrick, Monday, 7 May 2007 14:45 (eighteen years ago)

(and also, what's a good way to learn more about prog, for someone who's not already a huge fan?)

Patrick, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:01 (eighteen years ago)

listen to any/all records made in the seventies with spaceships on the front. especially if there's someone playing an arp.

ian, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:30 (eighteen years ago)

Probably because it will take critics many more years to fully understand the advanced nature of the music.

Hurting 2, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:36 (eighteen years ago)

Paul Stump - The Music's All That Matters seems to be the best overview yet published, although it's fairly flawed as I recall (can't remember why, I think he was too defensive about prog not being critically accepted). All the bigger prog bands have had biographies published (Yes, ELP etc) but I doubt you get much insight into the music from them.

Matt #2, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:37 (eighteen years ago)

I've read the Paul Stump book. It's a good starting point.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:40 (eighteen years ago)

He's written books about Gentle Giant and Tangerine Dream too.

Matt #2, Monday, 7 May 2007 15:43 (eighteen years ago)

the paul stump book's the best one i've read, too. he historicizes the punk backlash pretty interestingly -- he claims that punk metastacized to fill the live act void left behind by all the supertramp and pink floyd types fleeing england in the mid-70s to avoid paying high taxes. it's not entirely credible, but neither is the whole romantic 'punk killed prog' meme, not when you read things like touching from a distance and see pictures of ian curtis wearing nektar t-shirts. listening to the future by bill martin isn't bad, either. he's a philosophy professor at depaul in chicago, and gets pretty esoteric (and proglike) with his readings of various 70s epics. i think there's so few books because for some reason there's a tendency by good music writers to be embarrassed by their taste for prog. who knows why that is. it is a pretty stupid nickname for a genre

kamerad, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:14 (eighteen years ago)

The world badly needs a prog book by someone who loves the stuff but doesn't buy the complexity = quality nonsense and all the other bull that seems to too often accompany a love of the genre.

Patrick, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:27 (eighteen years ago)

Pashmina should write it then.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:28 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.eurock.com/Display.aspx?Content=eurockpress.aspx

petey_carnum, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

Progressive Rock Reconsidered is an academic collection of essays. Lots of musicological perspectives which I imagne shoudn't be off-putting to a prog fan. There's a good piece on math rock in it too. You can browse through some of the book on Amazon.

Kevin John Bozelka, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:39 (eighteen years ago)

"Pashmina should write it then."

He would just spend half of it ranting irrationally against Primal Scream and The Clash.

Patrick, Monday, 7 May 2007 16:46 (eighteen years ago)

try Chris Cutler's File Under Popular

Stormy Davis, Monday, 7 May 2007 17:02 (eighteen years ago)

Ed Macan's Rocking the Classics is probably the best overview text.

Stump's is ok, but avoid anything by Bill Martin - I've heard his Yes bio is okay, but his overview of the genre (and, related, his book Avant Rock) are both unreadably bad.

Progressive Rock Reconsidered is heavy on musicology and short on substance. Not recommended even for someone who can wade through and enjoy the technical stuff.

The shortage of intelligent, coherent scholarship on progressive rock as a genre really is interesting - Macan's book is the only one I can unreservedly recommend, and even it is pretty limited in that it pretty much only deals with 70s English prog, ignoring the worldwide scene that flourish later that decade and has also been active since the early 90s.

Cutler's book is a decent read if you're more into the avant-garde end of things, but he's pretty esoteric at times, straddling a line between Marxism and postmodernism that I'm not sure is completely coherent all the time.

Best way to learn about prog is probably to check out these websites:

http://www.gepr.net/
http://www.progressiveears.com/

(shameless plug) And for more esoteric prog and avant-rock, I run a review website here: http://www.progreviews.com/

hervuli, Monday, 7 May 2007 19:18 (eighteen years ago)

The Macan book is great and I think Martin's Music of Yes is quite good.

Sundar, Monday, 7 May 2007 19:49 (eighteen years ago)

hi hervuli!

Dominique, Monday, 7 May 2007 19:55 (eighteen years ago)

Although it's reputation has suffered in these revisionist post-internet times, I actually enjoyed Julian Cope's Krautrocksampler back in the day.

Steve Shasta, Monday, 7 May 2007 20:03 (eighteen years ago)

six years pass...

Boy, six years on and nothing's changed on this front! I'm reading the 2011 revised edition of the Stump book, the defensiveness is driving me crazy--and there's nothing else! There's an untapped market for one of our more thoughtful posters, methinks.

J, Saturday, 14 December 2013 15:40 (eleven years ago)

There was that book Yes Is The Answer And Other Prog Rock Tales recently

Robert Adam Gilmour, Sunday, 15 December 2013 23:52 (eleven years ago)

Will Romano put out a 246-page Mountains Come Out The Sky: The Illustrated History Of Prog Rock on Backbeat Books in 2010. Includes lots of recent stuff (an entire concluding chapter on "progressivity" in the 21st Century) and the long discography in the back (297 albums) casts a wide net -- includes several obscurities from all eras, and also stretches the definition around albums by Tool, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Mars Volta, Queensryche, Pet Sounds, Music From Big Pink, etc.

xhuxk, Monday, 16 December 2013 03:07 (eleven years ago)

Beyond and Before: Progressive Rock Since the 1960s by Martin Halliwell and Paul Hegarty
The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock by Charles Snider
Prophets & Sages: An Illustrated Guide to Underground and Progressive Rock 1967-1975 by Mark Powell
Mountains Come Out of the Sky: The Complete Illustrated History of Prog Rock by Will Romano
The Music's All That Matters by Paul Stump
Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture by Edward Macan
Citizens of Hope & Glory: The Story of Progressive Rock by Stephen Lambe
Rock Progressivo Italiano: An introduction to Italian Progressive Rock by Andrea Parentin
Progressive Rock by Jerry Lucky
Progressive Rock Files by Jerry Lucky
Mean Deviaton: Four Decades of Progressive Metal by Jeff Wagner
Listening To The Future by Bill Martin
Yes Is The Answer And Other Prog Rock Tales by various
The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music by Bradley Smith
Progressive Rock Reconsidered by Kevin Holm-Hudson

...Actually quite a lot of books but the reviews to most are very mixed (the Jerry Lucky books had quite a few negative reviews); some books are mostly top 100 album lists (fine by me). Most of these books will have someone complaining about omissions of certain bands but Billboard Guide omits lots of canon bands and includes Throbbing Gristle and lots of other odd choices. Some books also accused of not being discerning enough.

Progressive Rock Reconsidered sounds like an interesting analytical book. I'm pleasantly surprised that there is a book on italian prog.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 17 December 2013 15:52 (eleven years ago)

I wish I hadn't missed the book on Scandinavian stuff when it was still at a reasonable price.
THink there was also one on South America though maybe that was more garage/psych.

Asbjornson's Cosmic Dreams at Play at least covers most of Europe, not sure if anybody else has done similar. Not sure if I'd agree with everything he wrote anyway.

Stevolende, Tuesday, 17 December 2013 20:36 (eleven years ago)

Which books on Scandinavian and south American music?

Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 14:58 (eleven years ago)

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/342/5/2/vance_the_best_show_puppet_by_devilevn-d4iiuhr.jpg

Iago Galdston, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 15:46 (eleven years ago)

I think the Scando one had a title along the lines of Encyclopedia of Progressive Rock in Scandinavian Countries. But I will have to look it up when I get to a computer instead of a phone.

Stevolende, Wednesday, 18 December 2013 17:34 (eleven years ago)

I was able to check out the discography in that Will Romano book using Amazon's "look inside" feature. Surprised to see my high school buddy's private press job show up at #266. Cathedral -- Stained Glass Stories. That's going pretty deep. Never actually heard it, and maybe I never will because it's one pricey record. I think it came out after my high school years and we'd lost touch.

Thus Sang Freud, Thursday, 19 December 2013 02:38 (eleven years ago)

I will check out that Romano book. Thanks, Chuck!

This Stump book is hilarious. Heavy Brit-focus with some continental stuff thrown in, but nary a definition of Prog in sight! He just spent three pages on Rush, and 2 1/2 of them were on Ayn Rand! I'm certainly getting enough out of it, though -- I'd never heard National Health or Egg.

J, Wednesday, 25 December 2013 15:19 (eleven years ago)

any of these have a good recounting of the drug exploits or sexual liaisons of prog musicians?

how's life, Wednesday, 25 December 2013 15:40 (eleven years ago)

eight years pass...

any of these have a good recounting of the drug exploits or sexual liaisons of prog musicians?

As one might expect from the salacious title, Fifty Shades of Crimson contains (albeit brief) nods to Fripp's bouts with promiscuity and venereal disease: "as the band's success grew, he found he was expected to 'carelessly and frequently rut'". Meanwhile a female friend of the band calls Greg Lake "a great big ego - a penis on legs". This connects with something I read in another book, describing ELP's habit of "passing around" any female unlucky enough to enter their orbit.
As for drugs, the author Pete Tomsett suggests that Wetton's cocaine addiction was one of the factors causing Fripp to end the group in 1974.

Halfway there but for you, Friday, 1 July 2022 14:40 (three years ago)

Lol "expected to"??

No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Friday, 1 July 2022 16:26 (three years ago)

Is there anything Fripp has ever done that he can't portray as something he was reluctantly dragged/pressured into?

but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, 1 July 2022 16:39 (three years ago)

Apologies, I left out a qualifier: "as the band's success grew, he found he was pretty much expected to..."
The book treats KC and solo music in a refreshingly down-to-earth way, he discusses Fripp's spiritual and philosophical concerns without mystifying them. I'm in the later chapters now, and there's so many former members by this point, that Tomsett has to jump from Fripp's soundscapes, to Asia, Earthworks, Gordon Haskell, etc.
He has some interesting KC/Fripp top ten lists in the appendix which I may copy to another thread.

Halfway there but for you, Friday, 1 July 2022 18:02 (three years ago)

Literally every account I’ve ever read of Greg Lake makes mention of what a horny bastard he was back in the day

frogbs, Friday, 1 July 2022 18:07 (three years ago)

Also a thorny bastard

how many bowling greens does one town need (Matt #2), Friday, 1 July 2022 18:10 (three years ago)

He has some interesting KC/Fripp top ten lists in the appendix which I may copy to another thread.

― Halfway there but for you

i'd definitely be interested!

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 1 July 2022 18:15 (three years ago)


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