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fudgenuts64 
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 Topic: Did Genesis release the first neo-prog album?
Posted: November 24 2014 at 18:15 |
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I know they usually are credited to being the band neo-prog bands are influenced by, but was Genesis a neo-prog band themselves in the late 70s? Possibly proto-neo-prog? Listen to some tracks on Wind and Wuthering or And Then There Were Three, even Trick. A lot of stuff is VERY similar to what bands like Marillion and IQ would be doing just years later. Can we say Genesis went from Bee Gee's rip off to symphonic prog masters to neo-prog founders to the most successful prog pop outfit in the 80s and beyond?
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verslibre
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Posted: November 24 2014 at 18:58 |
 fudgenuts64 wrote:
I know they usually are credited to being the band neo-prog bands are influenced by, but was Genesis a neo-prog band themselves in the late 70s? Possibly proto-neo-prog? Listen to some tracks on Wind and Wuthering or And Then There Were Three, even Trick. A lot of stuff is VERY similar to what bands like Marillion and IQ would be doing just years later. |
Neo-prog was a label that wasn't even derived till (the late?) '80s. It was just a way of categorizing the second wave of progressive rock bands, IMO, i.e. those who weren't the pioneers whose careers stretched as far back as the '60s. Genesis was just doing what they were doing. (Fish was also influenced by Peter Hammill.)
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Aussie-Byrd-Brother
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Posted: November 24 2014 at 19:05 |
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It's probably easier to say that those three albums - Trick, W&W and ATTWT - were essentially a starting template for what Marillion, Pendragon, I.Q etc all started doing years later. There's plenty of qualities on those three albums that would become trademark Neo elements later on.
Edited by Aussie-Byrd-Brother - November 24 2014 at 19:06
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SteveG
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Posted: November 24 2014 at 19:16 |
I think the problem, and confusion, with the term neo-prog is that it's come to represent bands that are 'Neo-Genesis'. In other words, prog bands that formed in the eighties and were heavily influenced or almost totally influenced by Genesis. Even PA's definition of neo-prog says as much. The fine details seem to be exactly when the term came into being, which I always felt was a snub to eighties bands like Solstice, who couldn't be more different from Genesis if they tried. (The original version of the band did not even have a resident keyboard player!  . That's how different they were. They were folk based, with a fiddle player and a shredding guitarist.) So, I've always been a little unhappy with the term neo-prog, but it's all we have to work with.
Edited by SteveG - November 24 2014 at 19:38
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LearsFool
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Posted: November 24 2014 at 20:09 |
I guess the Hackett and early Collins/Banks albums could be considered proto-neo. Spectral Mornings, Saga, Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes, and Camel's post- Rain Dances albums are mentioned as other big influences on neo on neo's page, so that's even more. I'd only call it all proto at most.
And as for first full neo-prog album, Twelfth Night's Live At The Target.
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Surrealist
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Posted: November 24 2014 at 23:25 |
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Neo Prog is poppy Prog?
Then Neo Prog is what killed Prog.
All the great Prog bands stopped making quality Albums.
"Love Beach", enough said.
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Tom Ozric
Prog Reviewer
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Posted: November 24 2014 at 23:34 |
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^ Coming in to Love Beach in 1988, after my first ELP album, Pictures, then BSS, wasn't so bad. Sure I perceived the change of sound and shorter, snappier tracks, but my (Karn Evil) first impression wasn't so bad of it. And to this day I can only cringe at the lyrics (which I thought were cool when I was 16). The music is fine with me.
I thought that Saga's debut was the first sign of what was to become this whole Neo rigmarole.......
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verslibre
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 01:23 |
Lear'sFool wrote:
And as for first full neo-prog album, Twelfth Night's Live At The Target. |
I don't agree with this because a) it is entirely instrumental, and there's a space rock factor present; and b) Twelfth Night, besides Solstice, were one of the 80s UK bands that didn't sound like Wind/Trick-era Genesis. This is particularly apparent with Geoff Mann's writing and singing style. I believe the consensus on the first proper neo album is that it's either Marillion's Script or IQ's Tales From The Lush Attic.
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verslibre
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 01:27 |
Tom Ozric wrote:
I thought that Saga's debut was the first sign of what was to become this whole Neo rigmarole....... |
Early Saga was influenced as much by Styx, Queen and Gentle Giant as much as Yes, ELP and (to a lesser extent) Genesis. No doubt that's why they're classified as Crossover Prog on PA.
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richardh
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 01:51 |
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Genesis and UK were the bands that pointed towards the future for prog. Neo prog is just future prog where there is a more direct approach with keyboards adding texture rather than being at the front of the music. There is also this move away from symphonic stylings which became very obvious about 1978. That all said the first generation of neo prog bands were creating their own version of symphonic prog when you think of Marillion - Grendel and IQ - The Last Human Gateway. So neo didn't just happen because the bands heard ATTWT and thought 'lets copy that'. The likes of Mark Kelly , Clive Nolan and Martin Orford were well aware of the whole prog scene and most likely saw what they were doing as being derived from the classic prog scene and not what came later. It was just that neo evolved (or devolved if you prefer) into something that was a bit like late seventies Genesis although I think that UK debut is a closer match personally.
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Gerinski
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 02:49 |
If by Neo-Prog we mean Symphonic Prog which was more accessible, stripped from the extremes it reached with stuff like Tales From Topographic Oceans, then I guess that yes, A Trick Of The Tail was a clear shift by one of the top and most influential symphonic bands, in just one album from the complexity of The Lamb to the accessibility of Trick (even if Dance On A Volcano is anything but accessible), which gave a signal to the musicians who would form the next generation of bands for a possible direction to follow.
I think that another element which contributed to the appearance of what we now call the Neo-Prog sound was the technical evolution of the instruments, the shift from the Hammond and Mellotron backgrounds with Minimoog leads into the new sounds of the digital synths, the possibility to include electronic drums etc.
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Svetonio
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 03:26 |
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No, Genesis didn't released "the first neo-prog album", because they weren't started as a band in e.g. 1980
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Moogtron III
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 04:08 |
I think one fundamental difference between classic prog and neo, is the absence, or almost absence, in neo, of acoustic instruments. With that in mind, Genesis maybe made the transition to proto neo (  ) with the departure of Steve Hackett, who was important for the acoustic element. (No "Blood On The Rooftops" intro on the post-Hackett Genesis albums). But it's a process, and yes, I suppose mid-period Genesis was very influential towards neo.
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SteveG
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 08:27 |
I think I have to defer to my previous post to clarify this posted question. If neo-prog is defined as "Neo-Genesis" by everyone in the rock media world, then how can Genesis be neo-prog? Simply stated, how can the originator also be a follower?
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Walton Street
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 08:30 |
you guys are making my head hurt. Until I joined this forum i'd only heard the terms prog-rock or art-rock.
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SteveG
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 08:37 |
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^Get a big bottle of aspirin, it only gets more complex from here on.
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Walton Street
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 08:42 |
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i'm just going to refer to all of it the way I always do: 'My comfort music'
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LearsFool
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Joined: November 09 2014
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 09:36 |
verslibre wrote:
Lear'sFool wrote:
And as for first full neo-prog album, Twelfth Night's Live At The Target. |
I don't agree with this because a) it is entirely instrumental, and there's a space rock factor present; and b) Twelfth Night, besides Solstice, were one of the 80s UK bands that didn't sound like Wind/Trick-era Genesis. This is particularly apparent with Geoff Mann's writing and singing style. I believe the consensus on the first proper neo album is that it's either Marillion's Script or IQ's Tales From The Lush Attic. |
Good point. Consensus I've seen likes to include Twelfth Night in talks of early neo, and then that's a big reason why Eloy gets mentioned as an influence. I guess calling Twelfth Night neo comes down to what you consider influences on the bands aside from Genesis, if that's thought to be proper. I was never really one to call Eloy proto-neo myself, I just knew others did.
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verslibre
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 10:12 |
Lear'sFool wrote:
verslibre wrote:
Lear'sFool wrote:
And as for first full neo-prog album, Twelfth Night's Live At The Target. |
I don't agree with this because a) it is entirely instrumental, and there's a space rock factor present; and b) Twelfth Night, besides Solstice, were one of the 80s UK bands that didn't sound like Wind/Trick-era Genesis. This is particularly apparent with Geoff Mann's writing and singing style. I believe the consensus on the first proper neo album is that it's either Marillion's Script or IQ's Tales From The Lush Attic. |
Good point. Consensus I've seen likes to include Twelfth Night in talks of early neo, and then that's a big reason why Eloy gets mentioned as an influence. I guess calling Twelfth Night neo comes down to what you consider influences on the bands aside from Genesis, if that's thought to be proper. I was never really one to call Eloy proto-neo myself, I just knew others did. |
It's common for Marillion, IQ, Pallas, Twelfth Night, Solstice, Pendragon and even Jadis (who took a bit longer getting their first album out, but they opened for Pendragon in the mid-'80s!) as the forerunners of Neo-Prog. I don't really mind, it's a label, just like Third Wave is the unofficial label of the bands that began showing up in the '90s. Eloy indeed shifted their sound quite a bit with albums like Performance and Metromania, which to me sound like a melding of Planet P Project, Tangerine Dream, and (of course) Floyd. I love Eloy, so it's all good to me.
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verslibre
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Joined: July 01 2004
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Posted: November 25 2014 at 10:13 |
SteveG wrote:
^Get a big bottle of aspirin, it only gets more complex from here on. |
Or get into the heavy stuff like coffee and caffeine. 
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Did Genesis release the first neo-prog album?
