Why so few American bands in 70's prog?

If you focus on the symphonic prog rock the US was not anywhere near the UK most likely because there just weren’t a lot of bands of that quality.
The window for the genres popularity was short due to the emergence in disco and punk by the late 70’s in the US
Also and mentioned the more high quality musicians were into jazz and blues based music and that’s where bands and artists were stronger. Had the genre been able to maintain popularity longer perhaps more young bands would have popped up and some me better bands emerged

There was a ton of prog going on in the clubs here back in the 70's. I can attest to this personally as  I saw some of the best. Falgaris, Karizma, Harpy, Starcastle, Mithrandir...plenty of bands. The calibre of musicianship was incredible here in the states. The issue of why the world never heard of them is solely because of the record companies and their interest in feeding what they believed was an insatiable appetite for anything and everything coming solely from across the pond. When the US bands did get record company notice, the focus here was always for radio airplay. Cut the song down, cut it down even more, cut it down again! So, that forced many bands to either bail or find another way. Just look at Journey and Ambrosia. They were never pop, soft ballad artists in their early days. But, by the late 70's here in the US, musicians all moved into punk or dance music or adopted playing hard rock with an occasional nod to prog by one of the giant English bands. Dream Theater was a classic example of this, but eventually broke through. And as good as they are, it was solely luck of the draw. Because there are still mind-blowing musicians out there that never got that break. That's life!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_progressive_rock_groups

Hi,

The Dark Elf wrote: The answer is quite simple: America has a jazz tradition, whereas as Britain and Europe has a classical tradition -- so the common definition of "prog" with its nod to classicism would not be one American musicians would necessarily gravitate to. One could ask the same thing about the lack of jazz greats on your side of the pond. Many Brits and Europeans, like John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer and Joe Zahwinul (Weather Report), had to come to the States to really become accomplished in the jazz tradition.

Edited by moshkito - June 03 2018 at 22:46

We Yanks gave the world disco.  

The Dark Elf wrote: The answer is quite simple: America has a jazz tradition, whereas as Britain and Europe has a classical tradition -- so the common definition of "prog" with its nod to classicism would not be one American musicians would necessarily gravitate to. One could ask the same thing about the lack of jazz greats on your side of the pond. Many Brits and Europeans, like John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer and Joe Zahwinul (Weather Report), had to come to the States to really become accomplished in the jazz tradition.

I think this is a bit of an oversimplification - e.g. in Britain there had been a thriving jazz scene for some decades prior to McLaughlin et al emerging, and if you listen to Extrapolation, the album he recorded just before going to the US, it's clear he was already a sophisticated, world-class jazz player. Your wider point holds I think - he needed to go to the much larger US scene where the real cutting edge was to work with the most important artists and to make it big, which was never going to hapen in a relative jazz backwater like the UK. But it was less a matter of needing to become versed in a tradition than it was of bringing what he could already do to a place where it would garner him attention and opportunities.

Edited by Mascodagama - June 04 2018 at 01:40

SteveG wrote: Something that's never said is that the Brits recycle music such as blues and R&R while the Yanks invented it. The same could be true of prog if you look at early British prog as recycling classical music and it's themes. Not a popular opinion, I'm sure, but there it is.