Prog and Cars

Not sure if anyone else ever theorized this before, but it seems to me that the ascendance of rock and roll and cars kind of went hand in hand. In fact, what many consider to be the very first rock and roll song ("Rocket 88") was about a car. The rebelliousness of teenagers with their first cars (or motorcycles) was soundtracked by this new musical form. Not only were so many songs *about* cars ("Baby you can drive my car," "Round round get around, I get around"), but rock's *function* - the propulsive rhythms and energy - seemed to mirror the automobile, and was designed to be listened and experienced while in the car. (That's why Queen's "I'm in Love with My Car" might be my favorite song ever ;-)

Edited by jude111 - November 07 2015 at 15:49

I'm always really interested in such theories! Though this seems a little too far to me...
I think there aren't many prog songs about cars. Maybe because cars was a often used topic in pop songs, prog bands didn't want to write about it. Also it seems like a subject which isn't that interesting if you want to give a certain message with a song.

You can see so many people in Holland riding on the bike, listening to music with earphones and there are quite some rock fams too, sadly rarely a prog fan...

I always think of prog as kind of urban music, not really compatible with rural areas and long car rides. Although I do listen to prog while in the car.

The Dark Elf wrote: DDPascalDD wrote: You can see so many people in Holland riding on the bike, listening to music with earphones and there are quite some rock fams too, sadly rarely a prog fan... How can you tell what they're listening to if they have earphones/earbuds?

Well you can't know directly of coarse but you can know when people listen to rock in general, and that's quite some at least of my age.

emigre80 wrote: I always think of prog as kind of urban music, not really compatible with rural areas and long car rides. Although I do listen to prog while in the car.

Edited by jude111 - November 07 2015 at 17:12

This works when driving in the vastness of Wyoming under the Big Sky

Edited by timothy leary - November 07 2015 at 18:38

jude111 wrote: emigre80 wrote: I always think of prog as kind of urban music, not really compatible with rural areas and long car rides. Although I do listen to prog while in the car. I never thought of prog as urban music. I think of hip-hop and jazz fusion and funk music as urban, certain kinds of dance music like techno and house. Like, Genesis is all medieval knights, Victorian drawing rooms and hunting foxes at the country manor; Jethro Tull is about minstrels on heavy horses singing songs in the woods; Camel's music conjures caravans and the moon over a desert oasis; Yes: "in and around the lake mountains come out of the sky"; Pink Floyd does the ocean (Echoes) and the creepy countryside pretty well (Cirrus Minor, Grantchester Meadows, and axe-wielding serial killers named Eugene); Rush does songs about trees in forests vying for sunlight, with Tom Sawyer off skipping stones across the river...   This is really interesting to me. Which prog bands or albums would we say are urban? I know many of these bands were in fact from the city. I think Hawkwind were in the city; yet their music seems to be about exploring outer space more than urban spaces... I'll have to think about this  ** One album I think of as urban is Marillion's Brave, and certain tracks, like Invisible Man.

Nobody mentioned Roundabout yet?

jude111 wrote: DDPascalDD wrote: I'm always really interested in such theories! Though this seems a little too far to me... I think there aren't many prog songs about cars. Maybe because cars was a often used topic in pop songs, prog bands didn't want to write about it. Also it seems like a subject which isn't that interesting if you want to give a certain message with a song. That's cool that you're in the Netherlands, a place which was horrified by car accidents and pedestrian deaths, especially of children, fought back against cars, and built amazing bike-friendly pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. Do people listen to rock when riding bikes?

Living in the Netherlands for the past 11 years, I don't get the impression that society fought back cars because of the "accident and pedestrian deaths" issues. Bikes ruled well before cars appeared and the historical city centre structures were simply not built to accomodate cars, period. Numerous canals throughout every city also made very difficult for many car transit. Plus riding around in bikes in very cheap, which goes fittingly with the Dutch's proverbial stingy-ness, but on the other side of the medal, it gives a generally healthier population. Of course density of population (highest in Europe, only second in the world after Taiwan) made it impossible for many city citizens to own a car as well. Flat lands are also a major factor in the use of bikes. Don't get me wrong, I love the bike space offered in Dutch cities.

But contrary to many other Western European countries, Netherlands is still putting billions in extending its highway networks or trying to solve permanent trafic jams (Utrecht, Leiden, Rotterdam, etc...). Traffic jams are soooo institutionalized that highways have portiques every 500m (yes, twice a km) for giving indications about safe speed because of traffic density and saturation. In general in other countries, once you get to the end of traffic jam, you see the remnants of the accident that created the jam in the first place and here you rarely/never see an accident (and this is good, of course) , because it was sheer saturation peaks that caused.


And yes, plenty of people are listyening to music on bikes, which horrifies me, because it's rather dangerous to cut yourself from vital aural/sonic informations while being so vulnerable on the road.  Even worse, now you've got teens texting while riding , not even looking at the road anymore