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Direct Link To This Post Topic: This article is pretty great
    Posted: November 11 2017 at 07:45
I will let the article speak for itself but a nice article which describes the unseen and delicate tentacles of prog rocks influence in the most 'suprising' places. It is not devoid of tropes but it is pretty good telling of not feeling shame of progs hand in shaping of the general music sound.


"Go back to go forward: the resurgence of prog rock

After its 1970s heyday, prog rock receded in on itself, but now a new wave of bands are embracing long, difficult songs and fantastical lyrics – and finding fans for it, too

At the end of 2008, the journalist Jerry Ewing pitched an idea for a new magazine to a publishing company. His idea was a magazine dedicated entirely to progressive rock, long reviled in the critical mainstream as the apotheosis of the musical excess of the pre-punk 70s, a largely forgotten realm of concept albums, difficult time signatures and extraordinary instrumental virtuosity. Ewing says he wasn't surprised when his publishers agreed to the idea – "there was a tidal shift in favour of prog; the BBC had done that Prog Britannia documentary, which seemed a kind of acceptance" – but even he seems taken aback by the success of Classic Rock: Prog. It currently sells around 22,000 copies an issue, half the circulation of the NME: not bad, given that Ewing is surely the first editor in four decades to utter the sentence: "Our best-selling issue had Jethro Tull on the cover."

There seems little doubt Ewing is right about the tidal shift. Not every new band tarred with the prog brush seems overjoyed about the label – when I mention it to Mike Vennart, of Manchester's Oceansize, he responds with a groan about "musical masturbation" – but you can see prog rock's influence on mainstream rock in Coheed & Cambria's concept albums topping the US chart; in Muse and Pendulum, who collaborated with nu-prog stalwarts Porcupine Tree on their current album Immersion. This weekend, the High Voltage festival in east London will not only boast a headlining performance by Emerson Lake & Palmer – whose first British live show in 15 years seems to have been greeted with widespread delight, rather than the yell of horror it would once have provoked – but a dedicated prog stage, playing host to Marillion, Asia, Pendragon and Transatlantic. The latter, a latterday prog supergroup featuring members of Marillion, Spock's Beard and Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, are what you might call the full Roger Dean-designed triple gatefold sleeve; in contrast, Muse look like the Dead Kennedys. Transatlantic's current album, The Whirlwind, features just one song, which runs to 78 minutes. "The sound of Transatlantic is very purposefully stuck in the 70s," says Portnoy, proudly. "All of us in Transatlantic are huge fans of [the Yes double album] Tales from Topographic Oceans and all the excesses that prog was infamous for. That stuff appeals to us! We miss that! Tremendously long, challenging pieces of music! We have no problem embracing that!"

Elsewhere, the digital radio station Planet Rock – on which Rick Wakeman hosts a Saturday morning programme, and former Marillion frontman Fish once fronted a Sony Award -winning prog show – now boasts more listeners than BBC 6 Music. You can currently see a TV advert for a 33-track compilation album named after the Yes track Wondrous Stories – "Two CDs chock-full of prog! The cream of prog rock! The cream that never went sour!" bellows the voiceover, defiantly – and one for Nike sportswear improbably soundtracked with Hocus Pocus, Focus's cheeringly ridiculous 1973 collision of heavy riffing and yodelling. Meanwhile, Beyond the Lighted Stage, a documentary about the deathless Canadian prog trio Rush, deservedly won the audience award at this years' Tribeca film festival. If it can't make a non-believer like their music, it does a brilliant job of explaining why people do. Rather surprisingly, drummer Neal Peart emerges from the film as a kind of Morrissey for the Dungeons and Dragons set: aloof, mysterious, considered a poet by his fans and a rightwing crank by his detractors (he's famously a fan of the conservative's novelist of choice, Ayn Rand), he is given to writing songs about misfits getting a rough time from the cool kids in school.

One hesitates to say prog is back in fashion only because prog was never really in fashion in the first place. There was a brief period in the late 60s – between Jethro Tull upstaging everyone but the Who on the Rolling Stones' scrapped Rock and Roll Circus TV show and the release of King Crimson's debut album In the Court of the Crimson King – when it must have seemed like the coming thing, but its critical honeymoon period was probably drawn to a swift conclusion by Emerson Lake & Palmer's performance at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival, famously decried by John Peel as "a waste of electricity". Ever since, prog has existed apart from fashion, perhaps even apart from the rest of rock music. "It grew out of rock music and that's why it was written about in the rock press, but it's a shame it ever became regarded as part of rock'n'roll, because it's not, the ethos is completely different," novelist and prog fan Jonathan Coe memorably told the Prog Britannia programme. "If you judge it by the criteria of rock'n'roll, then it fails."

Accordingly, there's a sense that prog has always been with us. The perceived wisdom is that it was utterly swept away by punk, but that doesn't account for the string of British prog bands signed by major labels in the early 80s – not just Marillion, but IQ, Pendragon and Pallas – nor for the continued chart success of Yes, Rush and Genesis, although whether those bands' 80s oeuvres could truly be considered prog is a matter of some debate: "They were all doing poppy, keyboard, kind of shorter-song music," sniffs Portnoy, with the unmistakable air of a man who thinks that sort of thing isn't really on. Nor does it account for the way prog hung over vast tranches of 80s pop. You can hear its influence in the long, serpentine songs found on David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees, Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring, or in Ultravox's penchant for writing side-long tracks split into sections. Classic Rock: Prog runs a monthly feature called It's Prog Jim, But Not As We Know it, which picks out "albums that are very obviously prog by bands you would never have associated with the word". Its most recent candidate was Frankie Goes to Hollywood's debut, Welcome to the Pleasuredome, which, Jerry Ewing points out, not unreasonably, was a double concept album in a gatefold sleeve, featuring an 18-minute-long title track inspired by Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan, produced by an ex-member of Yes and featuring Steve Howe on guitar. Another feature in the magazine encourages unlikely musicians to reveal their love of prog: you apparently can't move for 80s pop stars desperate to fess up to a secret passion for the likes of Gnidrolog. "We've had Nik Kershaw, who was a massive Gentle Giant fan," says Ewing. "Morten Harket from a-ha, he was in there raving about Uriah Heep. Siobhan Fahey from Bananarama – huge Pink Floyd fan." "

Alexis Petridis


@alexispetridis

Thursday 22 July 2010 18.00 EDT



read more of the article below (if you so choose)



https://www.google.ca/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/music/2010/jul/22/prog-rock-genesis-rush-mostly-autumn
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 08:10
Well, this is the sort of thing which happens when teenagers with no money but lots of passion about things end up becoming adults with money to spend and still the same passion, hopefully. I think Les Claypool talks about something like that in Rush's doc, actually. 

I couldn't help but chuckle at the Tull/Crimson vs ELP comparison. I actually think it's telling of people's perceptions about prog.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 08:11
Thanks, mate, great find

(Long live Mike Portnoy ! Big smile)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 08:27
What I like most about this is the quick listing of
Quote David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees, Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring

as examples of prog influence. I've hardly ever seen so much quality lined up in half a line of text. Everybody who doesn't have these three albums yet and who loves great catchy songwriting with more than one twist, go out and buy them right now!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 08:43
^ Quinino Supports This Message !
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 09:19
thanks
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 10:08
Great article. I wish we could find others which are more contemporary.





Edited by Manuel - November 11 2017 at 10:08
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 16:22
Nice find - I bought Classic Rock magazine from Issue 4 and loved the prog element as well as the classic rock news. Planet Rock complimented it well (just a shame they never got it together and the magazine tagged up with the metal-heavy Team Rock organisation instead). I didn't think a standalone Prog Magazine would last the course - but Jerry and the team have done a great job in blending the old and the new.

In fact I think the magazine has been key to prog's Renaissance over the last few years in the UK at least - and the annual Prog Awards are testament to that. The linking of post-rock etc. to the broad church of prog has continued to bring in a younger audience too. Thankfully the realignment with Future Publishing means the future remains bright for Jerry's magazine and continues to give me my best reading every month (after these PA forums of course )

However, the sparse numbers in audiences for those prog bands who venture out of London at times, means that any complacency that prog is likely to push into the mainstream needs to be targeted quickly. In the end, as long as bands and musicians can make some sort of living out of playing it, I'm happy to be a niche market for the corporations. It's just a shame that so many superb bands were born several decades after they'd have been financially secure based on their talents. C'est La Vie - as a certain Mr Lake once sang!
“Living in their pools, they soon forget about the sea.”
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 17:14
The article first appeared 7 years ago and mainstream media wise I think things had hit a 'high' then regarding referencing 'prog' and I think things have quietened down again since(thank goodness). Despite being generally positive about progressive rock (past present and future) the article does still roll out all the old clichés..



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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 17:46
Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

What I like most about this is the quick listing of
Quote David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees, Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring

as examples of prog influence. I've hardly ever seen so much quality lined up in half a line of text. Everybody who doesn't have these three albums yet and who loves great catchy songwriting with more than one twist, go out and buy them right now!

I saw the same thing right away!!  

I was very lucky to see David Sylvian perform with Bob Fripp at the Chicago Park West Theater....Adrian Belew was in the audience, it was great to yuck it up with him! 

Supposedly, Sylvian was under consideration as a King Crimson vocalist during the revamp for Discipline....I'm a big fan! 
I am not a Robot, I'm a FREE MAN!!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 11 2017 at 20:23
Fripp wanted Sylvian to be the singer of what ended up becoming the Double Trio, but he turned it down. I imagine the pressure would have been too big for him. It's King Crimson after all.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 12 2017 at 00:00
Hi,

Time and time again, I write that what we consider "progressive" or "prog", has never gone away ... NEVER. There always was, going back to the first days, a group or two that snuck in a thing or two that we did not listen to, because we were too darn stuck on our favorite albums ... and one of the VERY HARD things about top ten, and favorites, is ... you end up with the idea that what you are hearing is the only good music out there, and consequently, you miss out on listening to new things, because ... they don't click with your head!

I was lucky ... I had from 1974 on, a show that blew all this talk to smithreens, and pretty much all of you, will never be able to hear it, or appreciate its insanity, for having done something that was so far out there and progressive, that the music itself, sometimes, became just a run of the mill part of it. The show had no "hits" per se. The show had no "design" per se. The show had no "favorites" per se. The show had no style per se. The show had no click track. The show had more variety and weirdness in it, than you could ever find on an album.

And your ears, can't handle it.

And then we come up with some writing about some stuff that became appreciated for its beauty.

You know what? History is full of these in the arts, and "progressive" is not the only one, and it wasn't until 30 to 40 years later that "surrealism" became a bit more "accessible" to one's eyes and appreciated for its weirdness, and became a sort of cult ... to the point that one guy in the LA area was saving a handful of Dali paintings until he died, just so he could collect several million dollars for each of them! That's when you know, it's not about the art anymore, but you also know that it takes about 30/40 and even 50 years, before folks get "acclimated" to new things ... that are not shown on the TV, or films, or even played on radio!

But our generation ... came through. We believed in music, and stood by it and created works, that are so fondly remembered today ... and so beautifully worked. One catch of Rachel Flowers playing an accoustic piano version of "Tarkus" in its entirety, and if you do not fall over ... totally knocked out by the piece, and its incredible design ... you are not a music fan. PERIOD. And this was the "golden era" of a lot of great things ... that we continually compare to top ten and favorites all the time.

Thanks for this article. I am one that has been against the top ten thing, because it hurts the appreciation of a lot of other music. I've often said, that this site should have top 100 bands, not albums ... to help display the quality and diversity of the music, but sometimes, saying that is just like ... a racial comment ... how dare we see so much, instead of so little, right? And the so little that has become commercialized, and most of it that is not even representative of the state of the art anymore. It's now a sort of Beethoven Symphony for our generation, or something like it ... it's the same feeling as those older folks, our parents and their attitude towards classical music more often than not!

It's nice to see those articles ... it would be even nicer to see this board support that feeling even more, and help institute it even further. Unfortunately, it's just a database, and the folks working it, do so on the side, and thus ... our music can not improve beyond just being a "side project" ... hopefully one day, it will get the credit and understanding it deserves.

And become a major influence and work of art in its own right, as it rightly deserves. despite some folks insisting its just more popular music!


Edited by moshkito - November 12 2017 at 00:01
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 12 2017 at 01:55
Great article, thanks for sharing.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2017 at 07:26
Great article, but I think I liked it better when prog was a dirty word. Wink
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2017 at 15:20
Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

What I like most about this is the quick listing of
Quote David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees, Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring

as examples of prog influence. I've hardly ever seen so much quality lined up in half a line of text. Everybody who doesn't have these three albums yet and who loves great catchy songwriting with more than one twist, go out and buy them right now!

You edited out Ultravox's mention in that same line that held the other three artists praised, presumably because no album of theirs was brought up. One should have been - 1981's Rage in Eden.
"It just has none of the qualities of your work that I find interesting. Abandon [?] it." - Eno
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2017 at 17:27
Originally posted by Rednight Rednight wrote:

Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

What I like most about this is the quick listing of
Quote David Sylvian's Brilliant Trees, Thomas Dolby's The Flat Earth and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring

as examples of prog influence. I've hardly ever seen so much quality lined up in half a line of text. Everybody who doesn't have these three albums yet and who loves great catchy songwriting with more than one twist, go out and buy them right now!

You edited out Ultravox's mention in that same line that held the other three artists praised, presumably because no album of theirs was brought up. One should have been - 1981's Rage in Eden.

hmm I think both Vienna and Quartet are slightly better, but all very good

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 15 2017 at 00:37
A bit out of date unfortunately. Planet Rock had the 'One Man And his Prog' hourly show going for about 3 years but it was 'binned' early this year for reasons unknown. Rick Wakeman has not been involved in the station for a long time while Fish's weekly show was never a long time thing.

Also when I went to see that Rush documentary at the Cinema there were probably about 3 other people in the cinema! Let's not kid ourselves that there has been some resurgence of prog in any way shape or form. We are still 'outsiders' and that's the way we like it I suspect!

BTW John Peel describe ELP as a 'Waste of time , talent and electricity'. I think it's been shortened to add impact over the years and would have sounded better if he had just said ' ELP were a waste of electricity'.
he actually admitted later that they were not the worst thing around , that dubious honour was reserved for Yes.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 15 2017 at 05:04
What did John Peel know about music eh? What a numpty he was!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 16 2017 at 08:44
Originally posted by M27Barney M27Barney wrote:

What did John Peel know about music eh? What a numpty he was!

I'm not sure this is quite fair ... in those days, radio ruled things, and folks like him, actually played and gave us a view of a lot of new bands, although I'm not sure that they were "progressive", like out top 5 or 10, in the end, the number and names of the bands he introduced to many of us (I think most of us already knew them, anyway), and newer audiences, is quite good.

Today, his type of work is not an issue, because of the internet. So, one's appreciation of what he did some 40 to 45 years ago, is a lot more valuable, than anything done today in a media that does not even bother to look at the trends and works, other than top ten!
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 16 2017 at 13:23
" … in those days" everyone it seems was flocking like moths to the flame to the spotlight Peel provided. He was   a formidable power broker who helped pave the way for not just one band's success.
"It just has none of the qualities of your work that I find interesting. Abandon [?] it." - Eno
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