Reexamining Commercial Prog of The 1980's.

Dean wrote: So what was it? Public disinterest? Had the Prog scene become too commercial for the die-hard Prog fan and not commercial enough for Joe Average? Were Marillion more commercial than their Neo-Prog compatriots?

The Dark Elf wrote: Jethro Tull did some incomprehensible crap with synths in the early 80s, even if Eddie Jobson joined the band (and then later Peter Vettese). The albums A, Broadsword and the Beast and particularly Under Wraps simply was not up to snuff in comparison to the ten-year classical period (1969's Stand Up to 1979's Stormwatch). There was a discernible decline in creativity and an annoying uptick in brazen 80s synths.   It wasn't until Crest of a Knave that Ian Anderson came to his senses. The album still has that annoying 80s sound in places, but Martin Barre's screaming guitar carries the workload, thank god.

The Dark Elf wrote: Jethro Tull did some incomprehensible crap with synths in the early 80s, even if Eddie Jobson joined the band (and then later Peter Vettese). The albums A, Broadsword and the Beast and particularly Under Wraps simply was not up to snuff in comparison to the ten-year classical period (1969's Stand Up to 1979's Stormwatch). There was a discernible decline in creativity and an annoying uptick in brazen 80s synths.   It wasn't until Crest of a Knave that Ian Anderson came to his senses. The album still has that annoying 80s sound in places, but Martin Barre's screaming guitar carries the workload, thank god.

I can't agree more, but unlike some of the others, they were still a very worthwhile band to see live, even then.

SteveG wrote: My post and subsequent arguments were not intended to be all encompassing regarding this topic. I merely wanted to add another factor into this this topic which always seemed remiss to me. Namely the Record Industry's input into this complex issue, as they've always appeared as some kind of innocent bystander in Progressive Music's direction in the eighties. Something that was always far form the truth.

See, this is what I always thought. The record companies actively ignoring music that a significant faction of listeners wanted to hear in the eighties. As you can see, Dean has already objected to laying it at the feet of the record companies, and we had a back and forth over that quite awhile ago. What I saw as a teenager in the early eighties was an enormous interest in Prog in my white suburban stomping grounds. Mainly it was the geeks or the refer smokers that made the Prog fan ranks, but there were a lot of them. Someone spray painted Rael on a school storage building for cripe's sake. Perhaps the place I was in was an oddity, but I found it incredulous that there was supposedly no market for it. Since then, I've thought about it and come to realize that all the Prog we supported was from out of town. There were no local Prog bands, or at least not enough to have made an impression on anyone. Even Rush, which almost seemed like a local band actually came from Toronto. The point I'm working toward is there has to be an active underground that cultivates new talent (e.g. the Canterbury scene). That's what Prog was missing in the eighties and probably earlier. It's not to say individual talent can't emerge in the oddest places, but the Record Companies perhaps might have responded differently if they had found both a fan base and a cohesive base of talent to go with it. This is all very speculative, I know, but if I were interested in promoting a band I would want to follow the sports model, cultivate lots of upcoming talent, and value any rivalries.

Edited by HackettFan - February 11 2015 at 00:14

Gerinski wrote: I'm not too knowledgeable about the precise role played by the music industry in what happened to Prog bands in that period, surely they had a big say, but I guess that the bands themselves were a bit confused too regarding which way to go in order to keep making some money and being able to attract audiences on tour, and many adapted to those new times more or less voluntarily. At any rate, for whatever reason, memories and nostalgia being probably the main ones, I still enjoy many of those 1980's albums, even with their flaws, and often better than many current Prog albums (but I will not restart the Old Prog vs New Prog debate ).

Hallelujah!  

altaeria wrote: I never understand why prog guys get all upset if a song has a discernible verse and chorus anyway.  ....

Hi,

I have not studied this as much as I would like to but I am not sure that the "record companies" were exactly the problem, as was the distribution system that brought things to your local store.  The material was out there, but all of a sudden most of the "imports" took a dive, and things did not exactly disappear as other record companies came up in the mid 70's that helped, like Jem, Wayside and many others.

The best person to discuss this would be Archie Patterson (if he would, not sure of this), as he was a distributor for over 30 years of Imports and a part of this stuff in California and oregon.

The thing that hurt the most was the combination of the big three for DISTRIBUTION purposes, which was called "WEA" (Warner, Elektra and Atlantic) and we could see the results in Santa Barbara, as a lot of the individual albums by many artists all of a sudden disappeared and replaced with extra copies of Rolling Stones, Elton John and other bigger name groups, to the point where some folks in a local store even said ... no one buys it ... and of course they never had any to prove it! But one other store in there started doing imports and did rather well, for quite sometime as far as I know, although I left Santa Barbara within a year or so of it starting.

Here in Portland/Vancouver area, my only outlet for any "imports" was Tower Records that finally went under when they converted to top ten ... which I had specified to the manager was stupid because they were known as a specialty store ... and all the Kmarts and Fred Meyers and everyone else had copies of the same thing they would also have! Sheer stupidity!

All in all, I think the distribution channels were the bigger issue. But, by that time (mid 70's on) we were already well established with Tower on the Strip, Warehouse in Westwood and Moby Disk, and we did not need the local crap house!

Despite all this, however, Space Pirate Radio did just fine when it came to new material and it never really ran out of stuff to play, because the station did not know the difference between a hit and just another hit and new music! And by the 80's I was already completely weened out of Genesis and Yes, because the Europeans were far superior in qualilty and quantity!

You just had to get off the "radio syndromme", or the "top ten" idiocy and mind corruption to learn and find the other stuff. Plain and simple. And this was the main reason why by 1990 when I got my first computer, I was saying that all these bands needed to get their own website and tell these "record companies" to take a hike! And many bands did, albeit a bit too slow. Gong was about 5 years late. Marillion was about the same. Porcupine Tree was independent from the start I think. And it all coincided with the rise of the new "prog" and "metal prog" that we hear so much today ... in other words, there was new music out there we had not heard yet. 

Edited by moshkito - February 10 2015 at 09:18

TODDLER wrote: The Dark Elf wrote: Jethro Tull did some incomprehensible crap with synths in the early 80s, even if Eddie Jobson joined the band (and then later Peter Vettese). The albums A, Broadsword and the Beast and particularly Under Wraps simply was not up to snuff in comparison to the ten-year classical period (1969's Stand Up to 1979's Stormwatch). There was a discernible decline in creativity and an annoying uptick in brazen 80s synths.   It wasn't until Crest of a Knave that Ian Anderson came to his senses. The album still has that annoying 80s sound in places, but Martin Barre's screaming guitar carries the workload, thank god.   This is really funny! I wish I could meet more people in life who feel this way. I agree a hundred percent , but often have to deal with people's rolling eyes whenever I express this kind of honesty as you have. I really like your post! It expresses real truth.

Edited by The Dark Elf - February 10 2015 at 08:59

After their debut on an independent label, Pendragon were signed to EMI in the 80s, though only a live album was ever released on that label. Pallas faired better, with their debut (and I think sophomore) was released on the EMI progressive imprint, Harvest. None of those bands achieved the commercial success of Marillion so they were soon dropped. All of them subsequently signed to Indie labels of one form or another, again without commercial success.

Edited by Dean - February 10 2015 at 08:53

BLacksword wrote: It Bites were signed to Virgin and scored two top 10 albums, and a small string of top 10 singles in the UK... But overall I get your point about neo prog, with the exception of Marillion and It Bites it was fairly underground and unfashionable. It's not all down to music industry pressure though. Bands only sell out if they actually want to. Genesis wanted to, and they sold out very badly actually transforming into a pop group. Yes, didn't go that far imo, even on 90125. It was a stylish modern commercial rock album and as with mosty Trevor Horn productions at the time was quite arty and original sounding. As for Rush I know Alex was not happy about the dominance of synths in their music, but they did get back to letting the guitar take the lead and I don't read too much into their use of Reggae references in some of their early 80's music. The Police were one of Pearts favourite bands at the time. It's healthy for musicians to listen to different types of music, and what's happening at the time. It broadens their musical influences and allows them to 'progress' more. Had they just been listening to old men with beards and flared trousers playing organs and twin neck guitars their music would have stagnated and become completely uninteresting.  ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I purposely avoided reference to It Bites because they did not self identify with Neo-prog and are indeed listed PA under Crossover Prog, which is quite apropos for them and their music.

Edited by SteveG - February 10 2015 at 09:11