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Why so few American bands in 70's prog?
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Svetonio View Drop Down
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Originally posted by verslibre verslibre wrote:

What about Touch? Their album came out in 1968.
Although complex and undoubtedly Symphonic Prog as per PA' definition of that sub-genre, Touch's music is not 'pastoral' (though they are 'spiritual' and 'spacey'), what is one of two (along with complexity) the most important ingredients of English Symphonic rock. On other side, Oregon, with their amazing 'pastoral' instrumentals, provided similar atmosphere as the best stuff of English Symphonic rock have it.

Though, it's a big shame that the Touch is not in one of PA prog categories.
 
Their "guiltiness" is that they weren't released their album after  ItCotCK. 
I'd like to present now one quite illustrative comparison. Ex-Yugoslav band Opus , also one-album wonders but from the middle of seventies, they weren't playing 'pastoral' music at all, and with that pretty rock singer (RIP Dušan Prelević), they have nothing to do with that English Symphonic rock, but they are in PA' Symphonic Prog section; TOUCH are in proto-prog (i.e. non-prog) section. Why? I will try to explain.

Due to anglocentrism, the evidence(s) of any progressive rock out of UK and before ItCotCK "must" be eliminated as much as possible. Those anglocentric individuals (which may not necessarily be Englishmen) can't put, for example, the Mothers of Invention in "proto-prog" (i.e. non-prog) category, but it's just an exception of the rule, because those individuals blindly following to their (wrong) "ideology" that say that whole prog came from England, which is absolutely nonsense. Progressive rock, with all of its sub-genres and styles, was indigenous emerging in different places, in different ways, but in the same time frame; that was second half of 60s and early 70s.

And finally, what is the most important thing for that anglocentric "ideology"? That is to proclaim that everything released before ItCotCK, but not in UK, has to be called "proto", i.e. non-prog; it's actually THE evidence of anglocentric hysteria here at PA.
 
 
 
p.s. Of course, English Symphonic rock (and related) albums could be labeled prog at an official level at PA even if those albums are released before ItCotCK, and that is the weakest point of that grotesque "ideology".


Edited by Svetonio - June 27 2015 at 10:24
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Originally posted by Svetonio Svetonio wrote:

Originally posted by verslibre verslibre wrote:

What about Touch? Their album came out in 1968.
Touch's music is not 'pastoral', what is one of (along with complexity) the most important ingredients of English Symphonic rock. On other side, Oregon, with their amazing 'pastoral' instrumentals, provided similar atmosphere as the best stuff of English Symphonic rock have it.
Though, it's a big shame that the Touch is not in one of PA prog categories.
Why the shame? If they are here then they are here so if people want to review their album they can. The shame would be to not have them here at all. 
Originally posted by Svetonio Svetonio wrote:

Their "guiltiness" is that they weren't released their album after  ITCotCK. 
Everything released before ITCotCK has to be called "proto" (i.e. non-prog); it's actually THE evidence of anglocentric hysteria here at PA.
Your understanding of Proto Prog has been proven to be false, erroneous and grossly mistaken on several occasions, so nothing new here.

 

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Originally posted by Toaster Mantis Toaster Mantis wrote:

Slightly off-topic, has anyone else experienced that people who have their music listening background in classical and jazz (rather than rock) often like Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa but not British progressive rock except its most avantgarde practitioners? (Henry Cow etc)
I meet the classical music trained people who, for example, didn't loved Genesis at all because Genesis sounded as "kitsch" to them. On other side, they loved to listening to Zappa, Gong, Soft Machine, Henry Cow and so on. For them, it's like, for example, a kitsch landscape painting vs. De Kooning's painting.
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This question requires a sociologist more than a musicologist to answer it, but I'll try my best. As EM Forster once remarked about the relation with Great Britain and India, "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."

A simple way of saying chalk and cheese, but it relates to America and the UK in the seventies in many ways.
 
American rock music in the seventies was reflective, in some degree even if it was on a subliminal level,  of the social upheaval and mass disappointment with the American government's involvement in Viet Nam and the loss of innocence in the institution of the US presidency over the Watergate Scandal, to use two well known examples. Other social issues included civil rights and the ensuing racially motivated riots and assassinations.
 
Hardly conducive to fueling art rock, is it?
 
Other factors include the divide between late sixties psychedelic rock that was produced in the US and UK, which gave raise, quickly, to sophisticated British progressive rock, and slowly to American proto punk music, and ultimately punk in the late seventies.
 
To recap the differences between American psychedelic rock and that of the UK, one need only to contrast American "garage rock" bands like the 13th Floor Elevators with the "studio experimental" British bands like Revolver era Beatles. Again, East was East and West was West.
 
So America simply went Punk while the UK went Prog.
 
The rest is, as they say, history.
 
 


Edited by SteveG - June 27 2015 at 14:57
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Also, that the UK punk scene takes more from glam rock and the US one more from garage rock. (exception: New York Dolls) Not to mention how I've noticed British punk groups usually have much better defined and clearly articulated ideological standpoints, I think ExitTheLemming mentioned something similar in a previous discussion of punk.

It's almost as if... (gasp) that different countries have different cultures!
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^Yes, it was difficult for me answer this question without sounding condescending, and Lemming (Iain) is definitely the "go to" man in regard to the British punk scene.

Edited by SteveG - June 27 2015 at 15:27
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Bringing things back on topic: I also wonder if the classical connection has something to do with progressive rock appearing to me more popular and influential in Continental Europe than the Anglosphere. To start with, it's well documented that Van der Graaf Generator only really became that influential a group in Italy... but I also remember reading that Genesis were at first more popular in France than the UK, and that Henry Cow of all bands actually managed to achieve some mainstream crossover success in Sweden!
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^Oh absolutely, it's in the European DNA as far as I'm concerned and I'm sure other members expressed this already in previous posts. (I didn't read all of the posts. Embarrassed)
But again, it relates to the different cultures. 

Edited by SteveG - June 27 2015 at 14:01
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Not to mention that the division between high and low culture in general isn't as big in most Continental Western European cultures as in the UK, probably since the education systems of these countries aren't quite as stratified by social class as the British one.
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^Yes, social class distinctions are also a part of culture but I'm not sure as to how this played into Prog.
 
In the early seventies, the UK was rife with worker strikes from electrical workers, coal miners to underground (tube) operator strikes, so it puzzles me that this did not become the musical catalyst of British topical music, be it folk rock, punk or whatever.  


Edited by SteveG - June 27 2015 at 14:46
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Well, I don't think it was for a lack of interest nor talent....I knew some amazing prog guitarists in the early 1970s at university!  One fellow introduced me to King Crimson ITWOP when it came out, and another was a blazing, John McLaughlin type player.  

Perhaps it was London?  Peter Banks speaks out nicely about the London prog scene in this interview, which is very revealing!   


I don't think the US had any equivalent to London's developing prog scene....we are too spread out.  There were regional "incubators" for music (and still are) across the USA, but we never seemed to reach a critical mass of prog talent in one spot to generate a true progressive musical movement.  
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^I don't think that different musical interests is the same as lack of interest, and I agree with you in that no country has a monopoly on talent.
 
But sixties London must have been a gas! I wish I could have experienced it.


Edited by SteveG - June 27 2015 at 15:10
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Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

Originally posted by t d wombat t d wombat wrote:

No argument there RogerT. Lets face it, some of the most anarchic freeform sounding music in any genre is very much deliberate not by note. Steve Howes intro to Close to the Edge is a good example. First time I heard it my reaction was WTF ?? Just kept on getting better from there on in.

Hmm, from that point of view...I would consider that CTTE intro pretty conventional compared to GG.  Perhaps you are somewhere equating dissonance to free form?


Fair point. You may well be correct. Exact terminology may not be my strongpoint. (if indeed I have one).Smile
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Originally posted by verslibre verslibre wrote:


What about Touch? Their album came out in 1968.
I thought it came out in 1969, but any case very definitely Prog and from the US at an early formative time for Prog.

There was a group called Love that came out with what I would call a Proto-Prog album called Forever Changes in 1967. I don't know their over stuff before and after that.

What do people think of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band. I heard an album from them once. They seemed like they were very derivative of Freak Out! era Zappa.
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Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

^I don't think that different musical interests is the same as lack of interest, and I agree with you in that no country has a monopoly on talent.
 
But sixties London must have been a gas! I wish I could have experienced it.

You and I, both!!  I was listening to the Monkees when I could have been listening to the first Yes LP!  

My point was one of geography....America is a vast land, and our cities are not very well connected.  London was THE scene in the UK, whereas musicians in the USA were in "islands" such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and various other cities. 

 My own Chicago was always something of a backwater for music, despite an ill-deserved reputation as "birthplace of the blues" and large population.  

On my first trip to London in the early 1990s, I took the tube to Piccadilly Circus just because I had read so much about it in my youth....mod fashion especially.  The place was a RIOT!!  I love London, fantastic town!  

Anyway....I have no idea why the prog bands Yes, Genesis, ELP, KC etc. exploded out of the UK like they did.  

Was there better social support, so that the musicians didn't have to hustle for a living as much as we Yanks did?  
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Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Well, I don't think it was for a lack of interest nor talent....I knew some amazing prog guitarists in the early 1970s at university!  One fellow introduced me to King Crimson ITWOP when it came out, and another was a blazing, John McLaughlin type player.  

Perhaps it was London?  Peter Banks speaks out nicely about the London prog scene in this interview, which is very revealing!   


I don't think the US had any equivalent to London's developing prog scene....we are too spread out.  There were regional "incubators" for music (and still are) across the USA, but we never seemed to reach a critical mass of prog talent in one spot to generate a true progressive musical movement.  


^I think this is the real answer, best as we'll get. Was not enough of what existed in any one given locale in the US to function as an incubator. Not unlike today actually, but without the home recording options for individual enthusiasts.
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Interestingly, I always thought that America not only in the 60s, but in the 70s also gave the world a large cargo of amazing artists and albums that can be labeled *art-rock*, *experimental*,  *jazz-rock*, *fusion* *progressive*... From top of my head:

Oregon, Miles Davis (his 70s progressive fusion phase), Joni Mitchell ( the albums like Hejira, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mingus ), Stevie Wonder (Talking Book, Innervisions and Journey Trough "The Secret Life of Plants" soundtrack), Marvin Gaye (What's Going On), Tim Buckley (Starsailor, my fav album by him), Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, The Grateful Dead (Wake of the Flood, From The Mars Hotel, Blues For Allah, Terrapin Station),  Carlos Santana, Steely Dan, Yellowjackets, Spyro Gyra, Larry Coryell, Billy Cobham (his Spectrum as one of the best 70s progressive fusion albums), Bill Connors, Weather Report, Return To Forever, Chick Corea solo output (the albums like The Mad Hatter and My Spanish Heart ), John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Steve Tibbets, Jaco Pastorius, The Flock (Dinosaur Swamps, Inside Out), Relatively Clean Rivers, The Electronic Hole, Todd Rundgren (and his band Utopia), Ambrosia (s/t, Somewhere I Never Traveled), Pavlov's Dog, ID, Yezda Urfa, Happy the Man, Netherworld, Angel (s/t, Helluva Band), Journey (the first album is just great), Good Rats, The Tubes (the first album is just great), Dixie Dregs, Guns & Butter, Kansas, Cathedral, ID, Jasper Wrath, The Muffins, Synergy, Glass Harp (s/t, Synergy, It Makes Me Glad ), The Residents, Rush, Styx, Blue Oyster Cult...

 



Edited by Svetonio - June 28 2015 at 12:05
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Originally posted by HackettFan HackettFan wrote:

Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Well, I don't think it was for a lack of interest nor talent....I knew some amazing prog guitarists in the early 1970s at university!  One fellow introduced me to King Crimson ITWOP when it came out, and another was a blazing, John McLaughlin type player.  

Perhaps it was London?  Peter Banks speaks out nicely about the London prog scene in this interview, which is very revealing!   


I don't think the US had any equivalent to London's developing prog scene....we are too spread out.  There were regional "incubators" for music (and still are) across the USA, but we never seemed to reach a critical mass of prog talent in one spot to generate a true progressive musical movement.  


^I think this is the real answer, best as we'll get. Was not enough of what existed in any one given locale in the US to function as an incubator. Not unlike today actually, but without the home recording options for individual enthusiasts.
The theory is part of the equation, along with the cultural differences.
 
Detroit was just such an incubator, but after the riots of '67, the music gained a bit of mayhem, if not downright violence, hence bands like The MC5, Iggy & the Stooges, Ted Nugent & the Amboy Dukes, Frijid Pink, SRC and Alice Cooper. High energy and hard edged acid rock, proto-punk and hard rock.
 
No prog here, please, unless we beat it out of you.LOL
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Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

^I don't think that different musical interests is the same as lack of interest, and I agree with you in that no country has a monopoly on talent.
 
But sixties London must have been a gas! I wish I could have experienced it.

You and I, both!!  I was listening to the Monkees when I could have been listening to the first Yes LP!  

My point was one of geography....America is a vast land, and our cities are not very well connected.  London was THE scene in the UK, whereas musicians in the USA were in "islands" such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and various other cities. 

 My own Chicago was always something of a backwater for music, despite an ill-deserved reputation as "birthplace of the blues" and large population.  

On my first trip to London in the early 1990s, I took the tube to Piccadilly Circus just because I had read so much about it in my youth....mod fashion especially.  The place was a RIOT!!  I love London, fantastic town!  

Anyway....I have no idea why the prog bands Yes, Genesis, ELP, KC etc. exploded out of the UK like they did.  

Was there better social support, so that the musicians didn't have to hustle for a living as much as we Yanks did?  

I see your point more clearly now, Charles. It is indeed hard to imagine the UFO club as once residing in Hull.
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Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Originally posted by cstack3 cstack3 wrote:

Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

^I don't think that different musical interests is the same as lack of interest, and I agree with you in that no country has a monopoly on talent.
 
But sixties London must have been a gas! I wish I could have experienced it.

You and I, both!!  I was listening to the Monkees when I could have been listening to the first Yes LP!  

My point was one of geography....America is a vast land, and our cities are not very well connected.  London was THE scene in the UK, whereas musicians in the USA were in "islands" such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and various other cities. 

 My own Chicago was always something of a backwater for music, despite an ill-deserved reputation as "birthplace of the blues" and large population.  

On my first trip to London in the early 1990s, I took the tube to Piccadilly Circus just because I had read so much about it in my youth....mod fashion especially.  The place was a RIOT!!  I love London, fantastic town!  

Anyway....I have no idea why the prog bands Yes, Genesis, ELP, KC etc. exploded out of the UK like they did.  

Was there better social support, so that the musicians didn't have to hustle for a living as much as we Yanks did?  

I see your point more clearly now, Charles. It is indeed hard to imagine the UFO club as once residing in Hull.
Then why was Friars Club so popular? While not being in Hull, Alyesbury isn't recognised as a thriving hub of music, or anything else come to that.
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