The intergenerational appeal of progressive music

Toaster Mantis wrote: ... progressive rock/metal endures in historical influence and what fades. ...

This also changes over time. With the advent of FM radio in America, the long cut starte superimposing the Radio AM band and its hit stuff. And with "Woodstock" it helped bring out a generation that was not afraid of the longer cut.  THAT, more than anything else, helped the music get exposed, or it might have been way harder than we think.

Byt the mid 70's when the Corporate buyouts started, the first things to go, were the FM stations that had made it big and were eating up the radio profits big time. Ten years later, it was TV's!

Musically, I think that a lot of these were much more influenced by the market conditions than they were by the music itself. There were many bands that had hits but did not sell well, just like the reverse ... and the Grateful Dead was a perfect example ... they were not on radio anywhere and they sold more, even in bootlegs which they allowed, than almost 50 or more % of all the bands out there. But as much influence as radio could/would have, or any social definition we can find, that band was not to be a commercial juggernaut like Led Zep, The Who and the Rolling Stones, which most record companies were hoping like crazy to get their hands on ... and tried hard to do so with massive advertising for anything that might at any second pop loose!

I think the "musical" this and that detail, is less of a factor, although in America one could say it was more blues and jazz oriented, but then, saying that Soft Machine/Pink floyd/Canterbury was not jazz influenced and "composition" influenced, is nuts and crazy, although they enjoyed their freedoms when they were available.

Toaster Mantis wrote: ... 1960s/1970s progressive rock has "aged the best" basically comes down to its inspiration to later music subcultures....

Yes, no and maybe. Like everything else in this world, yesterday's news have a tendency to get lost and not even thought about it, and in some cases, people even go to the extreme of completely destroying the history as a way to make a point about it's very own nature.

Music, and specifically the history of all arts, is ... sometimes ... the worst about this. Absolutely the worst. You can go as far back as the first millenium that was almost exclusively destroyed in the Europe by the Church. And now, you are finding that other folks around the world are doing the same thing, be it on the Hymalaias or Africa or somewhere else.

History, would have all of these "sub-cultures" and sometimes there are/were many of them, and all of them either aided the confusion, or helped kill it, but we know that up to 1400 or 1500, Europe was systematically cleaned out of its history ... to preserve one religion! One can only hope that the lack of a "written" format, is not the reason why almost all of the arts disappeared and eventually gave rise to one of the biggest animal hunt( hate to say humanhunt - but it is what it was!) in the history of this world, by punishing people that did not fit, or felt and thought differently. Heck, this still happens today, despite the internet trying hard to create a "single" entity all over the world!

"Sub-cultures", in many ways, are also the minorities and the ones that are ignored the most. They are also, the first victims of extermination or least amount of attention. TODAY, this is not as easy, because the internet has a way of making big look small and small look big ... but it still will have a hard time getting attention, as is the case here on PA when folks, STILL, only know a top ten concept and society! AND, they base most of their thinking and attention to that concept and society, since it is all they know ... I'm not quite critical of that, except for one detail ... do you really think that "progressive' would have come alive with people thinking like that?  ... the answer is blatant and loud. NO. And sometimes, I think that we're afraid to look and study some of these things ... the "truth" in them is sad ... no secret that the Spaniards raked all of Central America, the Portuguese adn Dutch raked the Brazilians ... and so on ... not to mention what some white settlers did to American Indians ... in all of these examples, their cultures were almost single handedly destroyed and little is left of their world. it was, some can say, in a sort of Jung'ian symbol, a case of the might makes right ... and the rest is gone.

Arts are not different.

Toaster Mantis wrote: ...  It started when I thought that King Crimson's heavy mid-1970s triptych of Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Starless and Bible Black and Red has aged way better than not just their other classic albums, but also most other canonical LPs from that scene...

Started way before that.

Please go read Robert Wyatt's book. It goes back 10 more years, and they are much more important to the eventual work that was done. Those years "were" the inspiration that helped KC and many others stand out. It DID NOT, start with those albums!

Toaster Mantis wrote: ... I've also noticed a similar thing with the Krautrock movement, which seems to on average have way more intergenerational appeal with people my age than the "Anglo-prog" of its time. Maybe this could be a result of the Teutons thinking a bit further outside the box in terms of music experimentation ...

You don't need to go any further reading or discussing this, than Edgar Froese's words in the special. In one sentence, it's all there.

But there was a VERY well documented idea that the music schools in Germany, INTENTIONALLY, went after anything that did not have a "Western Musical concept" in it, and if it was meditative, fine, if it was weird fine ... but it's results did magnificently because it was not just defined in "music", but also in FILM and THEATER and LITERATURE, and this is the main reason why a lot of people on this board do not understand the music and its development was not "accidental" ... I agree with Dean here ... it was a bit "thought out", but the results were fantastic and many of us love them dearly.

By comparison, few of the bands I have heard that try to "copy" krautrock, suceed, because they are missing the one little detail that is required to make it work ... and that is ... you go for the sound and the feel, not just the notes ... and this is what separates Ax Gernrich from others in Guru Guru or Amon Duul 2 in the early days, and the "trips" in AshRaTempel and Klaus Schulze ... it was about the moment, not the "music", and we are forgetting that vital detail, even if it does not sound right! Sometimes, the "wrong" part, or thing, becomes the right moment, even if it is not "musical".

We, STILL, do not know how to credit and appreciate the amount of work (and rehearsal - if such existed -- which CAN did have!) that it took to achieve what those folks did ... which was "communication" ... instead of just a bunch of SOLO stuff in the jazz style.

Toaster Mantis wrote: ... I Would be interesting to hear some observations from people who have been around a bit longer for the rise of some of those movements. (I'm something of a novice within electronic music and noise rock, as much as I've come to love both in the last 3 years)

Electronic, has a more "classical" source, and even the theremin and some of the others had a few experimental folks in the arena of classical music, although it's use in rock, for my tastes, kinda start and end with Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, both of which are modern classical music. Klaus Schulze also fits here, with a different type of orchestra, if we can say that about what he does.

In some ways, this "classical music" fits the krautrock thing, but its roots are very different from the rock and jazz development of the other styles. There was electronic music in the 1950's and the theremin was already in use, even in MOVIES, mostly sci-fi stuff. This later was extended to be "repetitious", which you could see in Terry Riley and then CAN, and eventually NEU and KRAFTWERK as the best examples. But this "repetitious" style, was not just that, even though some folks thought it was. I never thought, for example, that Klaus Schulze is "repetitious" ... because the constant changes is an experience all on its own.