Prog and Cars

A very interesting question; I love the discussion that's going on.

Love this topic as getting my first car get meant freedom and it went hand in hand with listening to Rock music. I live in a tourist town and in the Summer I would drive around the beaches to see and be seen while having the tunes cranked, usually AC/DC, RUSH, BLACK SABBATH, PINK FLOYD and IRON MAIDEN but certainly lots more than that. This was before I knew about Prog and I drove a '79 Trans Am with a four speed tany and Hurst shifter, wide tires on the back, jacked up with Crager rims and an upgraded stereo of course. The times of my life. I still remember the first Prog cd I listened to on my 50 minute drive to work. I didn't know what to expect as I put on "A Change Of Seasons" by DREAM THEATER but quickly was blown away to the point of laughing out loud at what I had discovered. It's rare for me to leave the house without grabbing a Prog cd for the drive. I'm now driving a five speed standard transmission Mazda3, it's a 2008 and a lot of fun.

Dean wrote: I suspect that the (historic) association between Rock and Cars is essentially a coming-of-age or rite-of-passage thing that reflects the youth culture of the day. This was somewhat aspirational since owning a car (or motorcycle) was a symbol of freedom from childhood that went hand-in-hand with ownership of a style of music that was specifically created for (and later by) them. Writing songs about those motor vehicles (or inspired by them) was an inevitability, no different than writing about the school hop or their sweethearts. So the Little Deuce Coup was a status symbol of being a teenager in the 1960s but, like Baby You Can Drive My Car and the car-songs by Marc Bolan, it was also a euphemism for sex (just as the phrase "rock and roll" was). This does not exist in Progressive Rock because it wasn't a youth-culture per se, when Hawkwind wrote about a silver bicycle or driving along Damnation Alley they were not writing "Car" songs in the same vein as Little Deuce Coup or even Red Barachetta, they were just vehicles in their science fiction based lyrics.

jude111 wrote: All of that is great that you wrote, especially the sex angle

We never owned a car when I was growing up (lived in NYC with great public transportation) so the whole romance-of-the-open-road thing for me was restricted to reading Jack Kerouac.

cstack3 wrote: I was born in 1955, and so I reached legal driving age in the US by age 16, which was 1971.   Our earlier cars only had AM band radios, and coincidentally, prog bands like ELP, Yes, and Focus began to generate huge AM radio hits in this time period.  "In the Beginning," "Roundabout" and "Hocus Pocus" all had heavy rotation.  Other bands, such as Tull and Flash, had minor AM radio hits.   In this manner, I believe that the American automobile experience definitely helped to boost the rise of prog.  A bit later on, our cars commonly became equipped with the 8-track cassette music system, which increased access to the music while driving.   I'm very glad to have experienced it at the age that I was, I have fantastic memories of Yes playing in the largest Chicago venues to enthusiastic crowds.  It was a golden age, the likes of which we probably will never see again.  Lady GaGa sells the biggest venues now.  Pity.

My first car was a red '65 VW with a Craig Pioneer 4-track tape deck and four speakers.

emigre80 wrote: We never owned a car when I was growing up (lived in NYC with great public transportation) so the whole romance-of-the-open-road thing for me was restricted to reading Jack Kerouac.

Edited by jude111 - November 09 2015 at 17:41

Nacionalna klasa do 785 kubika ("National Class Category Up To 785cc") 1979 movie & soundtrack, feat. Dado Topić (ex-Time)

Edited by Svetonio - November 09 2015 at 23:36