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AFlowerKingCrimson View Drop Down

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Topic: The myth of the 1990's prog resurgence
Posted: December 06 2017 at 17:35

I first got int prog in the mid eighties and discovered the underground prog scene via newsletters and mail order catalogs(some of which are still around but now online stores). Back then there was no internet but there was a burgeoning prog underground happening. The prog resurgence happened very gradually and it started happening before the internet but for the most part it is a myth and I'll explain why.

I took a break from prog in the mid nineties when I was in college. I figured college kids wouldn't be into this stuff and I didn't want to seem like some kind of weirdo. I had one friend who knew about King Crimson and other bands like Pink Floyd and Yes but that's about it. So partly because of that I was more into the popular alternative bands at the time like Smashing Pumpkins(who actually did have some prog influences but that's another discussion) and others. I met this one guy who told me about this new thing(well not brand new because it had been around for a few years by then but it was still relatively new to me and I didn't know much about it other than it was information based and involved a computer)called the internet. He showed me something called news groups. I asked him if there was one for prog rock and it popped up. I don't remember much about it and didn't spend much time looking at it at the time. This was around 1996.

Fast forward a few years to late 1998/early 1999 and I found a book in the book store called "the progressive rock files" by Jerry Lucky. This led to me ultimately finding that newsgroup again and prog online in general. Before that I never really thought about looking up prog online and instead relied on my old prog mail order catalogs. In the prog news group and a few years later on another well known prog rock website I remember seeing a lot of folks talking about the prog resurgence that was due to the internet and took place starting around the mid 1990's. Looking back I don't feel it was much of a resurgence at all.

In my mind resurgence kind of implies a lot of people suddenly discovering something for the first time not something that they already knew about but found out is still around. To me that's what happened with prog in the 90's. It was mostly older fans rediscovering prog not younger fans discovering it for the first time. There has been a resurgence in prog but in my opinion that didn't happen until a larger number of younger fans discovered it for the first time and that didn't really start to happen until at least 2005 or so with Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta being possibly the biggest catalysts for that. There were other factors also such as the appearance of this website, the growth of prog festivals and social media but none of those were around(except for the prog festivals which were still very small at that point)in the 1990's.

So, in conclusion there was a major rediscovery of prog in the 1990's mainly due to newsgroups such as alt.music.progressive and the ability to search for prog websites, if you happened to already know what prog was, but even with the popularity of Dream Theater the real prog resurgence didn't happen, in my opinion, until the new millennium.

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 06 2017 at 17:38

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Posted: December 06 2017 at 17:49

Sounds reasonable, more of a revisitation than a resurgence. It is interesting that KC would continue to thrill and inspire younger people-- when they toured for TPtB with, I think it was Tool, many guys in their 20s were like "Who are these guys?!"

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Posted: December 06 2017 at 20:29

Atavachron wrote:

Sounds reasonable, more of a revisitation than a resurgence. It is interesting that KC would continue to thrill and inspire younger people-- when they toured for TPtB with, I think it was Tool, many guys in their 20s were like "Who are these guys?!"

I'm not saying there was no resurgence just that it didn't happen when people said it did and that they are confusing a resurgence with a rediscovery or revisitation as you put it. The real resurgence happened a bit later and some people(mostly prog snobs it seems)say it still hasn't happened yet. Lol.

I didn't see King Crimson with Tool so I can't really speak to that exactly but I would guess something similar happened when ELP toured with Dream Theater. My guess would be many people in their twenties are still trying to figure out what prog is and what it's all about. They need to go to this site and see for themselves and see that it's not all about post rock and prog metal or Rush, Tool, Pink Floyd, Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater. I mention them because they seem to be the most known prog bands for younger people or at least the first ones they hear about.

As such I think most of the younger prog fans are coming at prog from a different angle then those of us who are maybe a little bit older(or even quite a bit older). While I did meet some twenty something prog fans who told me they got into the genre through Jethro Tull I think that's rather rare for them. I think they are more likely to get into prog(or find out about it)through either prog metal or some other kind of connection(maybe by hearing bands like Tool, Muse, Umphrey's McGee, Coheed and Cambria or Radiohead described as prog). I think these days it's not too likely(although certainly not impossible)they would get into it through older bands like Yes, Genesis or ELP. However, Pink Floyd, Rush and to a great degree King Crimson(maybe through the Tool connection)do seem to have some kind of "street cred" with the younger audiences.

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 06 2017 at 20:35

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Posted: December 07 2017 at 19:00

The 1990s were a myth. The decade never existed. Any record of musical achievement in those missing ten years has been eradicated.

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Posted: December 08 2017 at 17:33

The Dark Elf wrote:

The 1990s were a myth. The decade never existed. Any record of musical achievement in those missing ten years has been eradicated.

What is your point?

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Posted: December 09 2017 at 17:08

The last 10 years have been Amazing!

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Posted: December 09 2017 at 18:00

omphaloskepsis wrote:

The last 10 years have been Amazing!

So you have only been a prog fan for the last ten years? Smile

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 06:35

I think it depends on what you define as "resurgence." It may be that older prog fans were rediscovering the genre in the 1990s, but the 1990s spawned what is sometimes called the "third wave" of prog rock. This includes bands like Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, Glass Hammer, Magellan, Cairo, Porcupine Tree, Anglagard, Anekdoten, and probably many others. I always thought the term "resurgence" applied to this increase in the number bands making this music. The 1990s were also the time when I started seeing more of this stuff in record stores and new record companies appearing that focused almost solely on this genre (like Magna Carta, Lasers Edge, Kinesis, Mellow Records, Musea, Inside Out Music, etc.).

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 10:44

Hi,

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

I first got int prog in the mid eighties and discovered the underground prog scene via newsletters and mail order catalogs(some of which are still around but now online stores). Back then there was no internet but there was a burgeoning prog underground happening. The prog resurgence happened very gradually and it started happening before the internet but for the most part it is a myth and I'll explain why.

My apologies, however, the "myth" is only a problem with the media and the folks that believe in top ten ... because the music had been there all along, but some fans, had to have material that sounded like YES and GENESIS, because they got tired of ELP's brashness, and that kind of stuff was no longer around ... and most fans ... so stuck in the top ten mentality, had no ear for music whatsoever, to concentrate on other new material that was out there.

The history of music, going back 500 years, is not one of repetition of top ten bullcrap, or fanboy appreciation and every other generation there is always something new ... but we are too damn stuck on top ten, to appreciate lesser known things and composers ... like Albinoni is a hecker and an idiot compared to Vivaldi, because the top ten fan will only know Vivaldi ... hopefully.

The advent of "progressive" and "prog" music was never really "underground" ... it just did not sell as much, but the proof that you are incorrect is that 50 years later, they are selling way more than they ever did, and their work is appreciated more than ever ... if that is not a sign that things happened, you are not looking.

And then, as is the usual in all arts, it changed into something else and all of a sudden "noise bands" (loud and louder) ... became the in thing, that made folks think they were progressive ... it certainly was a much better definition of the 4 minute song, however, it was now about the 15 minute song ... instead of 4 ... with exactly the same music passages as the smaller song.

Where is the creativity when the style and design is the same?

That is not to say that things like Iron Maiden and Dream Theater, and many other bands do not deserve any credit ... they certainly do so ... however, comparing them to the early material is unfair as this was a completely different time, and ... consider this ... Berklee School of Music is not exactly the London late 60's in terms of creativity and exploration ... and never will be ... because some idiots think that teaching means ... notes and chords and timing ... nothing else! The worst school of music EVER!

Sorry to disagree, but I have been there with all the music since about 1965 or 1966 in 3 countries (2 in the

US if one factors Midwest Madison and West Coast LA!) ... and anyone thinking that the music died and was resurrected, simply was not listening ... and never even heard the early days of FM radio and its incredible addition to the ears of all fans ... until it was finally bought by corporations to push their own product and stop all these different bands from selling anything ... you might not give a poop, but one day in '74, a big corporate guy gave a couple of bands over 100M dollars each, and within a month over 400 bands were dumped because they did not "sell". They did sell, or they would not have been pressed ... are you an idiot that do not know what BUSINESS is all about? It's a commercial lie to get you to favor their top ten! What sort of businessmen/women would do that and not sell a single copy? And they will tell you that they only sold ten copies, so they can say that the big cahoona sold a million copies so you think the big cahoona is great and the other band is crap anyway ...

Wake Up (XTC playing in the background!) ... this is the reality ... and you gotta get past the commercial talk and bs ... there is a huge history of material out there, and too many folks CONTINUE ... time and again ... to ignore other countries and other bands, that deserve the credit and the attention ... that we lost a long time ago, because we had no ears for music anyway ... we only liked the top hit!

After all this time, and history of music ... we STILL ignore ... that there are other artists out there ... and they will continue to compose and work, and create ... but we think they are dead because we won't give them a minute.

Sorry about the rant ... but this is almost personal for me ... I came from a house with 40K books of Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish Literature and there were easily 1000 authors in there that were not index'ed by any University in America ... and stuff that it likely never going to be read or found ... and the music scene with its top ten, is doing exactly the same thing ... an attitude that all of those authors are a bunch of hacks, ash-holes and idiots ... which unfortunately does not say much for the audience, does it?

Edited by moshkito - December 11 2017 at 10:45

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 10:55

progaardvark wrote:

I think it depends on what you define as "resurgence." It may be that older prog fans were rediscovering the genre in the 1990s, but the 1990s spawned what is sometimes called the "third wave" of prog rock. This includes bands like Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, Glass Hammer, Magellan, Cairo, Porcupine Tree, Anglagard, Anekdoten, and probably many others. I always thought the term "resurgence" applied to this increase in the number bands making this music. The 1990s were also the time when I started seeing more of this stuff in record stores and new record companies appearing that focused almost solely on this genre (like Magna Carta, Lasers Edge, Kinesis, Mellow Records, Musea, Inside Out Music, etc.).

It was still very fan based though and still targeting mostly only those who were already "into" the genre but maybe only got exposed to it again through the burgeoning internet. I see what you are saying though and I suppose you could say from a band's perspective there was a resurgence. I was referring more to a perspective from the fans and mainstream acceptance. Some of those companies you cite actually started before the internet though and in some cases even before the 90's(Laser's Edge started in the late eighties although initially only as a prog music catalog). So with that in mind you could say "resurgence" in interest but imo not so much popularity in the broader sense. But then if we say that couldn't we also say that there was a resurgence in the 80's with the neo prog scene? Marillion, IQ, Pendragon, Pallas, etc started to pop up in the eighties.

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 11:54

progaardvark wrote:

I think it depends on what you define as "resurgence." It may be that older prog fans were rediscovering the genre in the 1990s, but the 1990s spawned what is sometimes called the "third wave" of prog rock. This includes bands like Spock's Beard, The Flower Kings, Glass Hammer, Magellan, Cairo, Porcupine Tree, Anglagard, Anekdoten, and probably many others. I always thought the term "resurgence" applied to this increase in the number bands making this music. The 1990s were also the time when I started seeing more of this stuff in record stores and new record companies appearing that focused almost solely on this genre (like Magna Carta, Lasers Edge, Kinesis, Mellow Records, Musea, Inside Out Music, etc.).

Bingo. It was also a big decade for progressive metal. Back then I listened to the likes of Dream Theater, Eternity X, Fates Warning, Lemur Voice, and Symphony X, along with a crop of neo bands out of the UK, and homegrown prog like Magellan, Glass Hammer, Cairo, Deadwood Forest, Mastermind, Enchant and Spock's Beard. There were a ton of reissues, too.

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 11:58

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

No, it's not a myth.

In 1991, a group of friends formed The Art Rock Society with the virtuoso multi instrumentalist Pär Lindh as chairman who presented the first Festival with ANEKDOTEN, LANDBERK and ANGLAGARD.

That year a group of Swedish bands rediscovered 70's style Prog and this movement spread tro Europe.

But that's not all, the same year the classically trained musicians from Eastern Europe who were repressed by the USSR and the satellite countries of the Iron Curtain, started to release Symphonic Prog and in Poland Neo Prog.

So yes, the 90's decade marked the resurrection of Prog.

Edited by Ivan_Melgar_M - December 11 2017 at 12:08

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 15:16

Revival or resurgence are not good terms to use in my opinion though. Resurrection or rediscovery is more appropriate. You guys can cite all the bands and fan clubs you want but it wasn't until this century when you had things like this site, prog magazine, the major prog festivals and prog albums making the top one hundred in album charts. Plus like I said not many people discovered prog for the first time. It was mostly older fans discovering the genre never went away. To me this is not a true "resurgence" but more like a "rediscovery."

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 18:44

Hi,

alt.music.progressive
alt.prog
alt.new age
... some other groups in Intelec's listing ... and I added progressive themed group to a couple of other places, including the original group that became solidified into the Ygdrasil Journal of Poetic Arts. In that board, I talked foreign music and also foreign film, both of which I still review!

The idea/fact that Par Lindh helped create a group that flourished was a nice gesture (discussed in Eurock at the time), however, what it did show, was that there was a very wide/large interest in music that was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more interesting and educateddddddddddddd than most of the pop music ... thus, the title "The Art Rock Society" reflects a lot more than just 3 bands that have some inclination to the sound of King Crimson ... we won't discuss the other bands it had that didn't ... from the area and neighboring countries, and even the jazz scene that ECM had shown folks so well and so much for quite a few years ... so anyone thinking that creativity did not exist, until the day that someone had a cup of coffee and they wanted to copy KC and YES and ELP ... they are still asleep.

Europe, has been an artistic house for many years, most of it surviving what the church could not kill even after 1000 years ... so us thinking that nothing happened ... is like saying that there was nothing in the "underground" that helped the whole thing, one day, come alive ...

Look folks ... this is not magic. This is not a mystery. It was always there ... go read the literary lives of things (specially Bunuel's) of things in Spain, France and Italy in the 1920's and 1930's when many of these folks were not "known" ... and one day ... they are huge, although they probably did not sell a million like we think is some kind of gold standard for success.

Please go spend some time reading EUROCK ... and each year ... and learn that things were happening in many countries ... most of which we are still ignoring, because we are so keen on protecting the same sound, bands, and ideas ... that supposedly "drove" the new music ... the new music was a factor of many things, including political so much that we are not big enough to say anything about ... because we can only believe in the rock'n'roll fantasy ... and the rest is total crap ... you can not make "meaningful music" ... because some folks in PA and other places are afraid to find out they are incorrect ... THERE IS A WORLD OUT THERE ... and music was there the whole time ... again ... you ears were not tuned to that world.

Btw, one listen to ECM during that time, will show you that some incredible new things were coming up that defied description ... but somehow, they were a better fit on a "jazz" label, than on a stupid "rock" label.

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Posted: December 11 2017 at 19:04

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Revival or resurgence are not good terms to use in my opinion though. Resurrection or rediscovery is more appropriate. You guys can cite all the bands and fan clubs you want but it wasn't until this century when you had things like this site, prog magazine, the major prog festivals and prog albums making the top one hundred in album charts. Plus like I said not many people discovered prog for the first time. It was mostly older fans discovering the genre never went away. To me this is not a true "resurgence" but more like a "rediscovery."

The major Prog Festivals?

- ProgFest: 1993 If I'm not wrong, and precisely with Anglagard and IQ

- NearFest: 1998

- Baja Prog: 1997

- Progday: 1994

In the 90's, everybody thought Prog was dead, but the Swedish resurgence save it from oblivion.

Older people?

I believe all the Anglagard members were between 16 and 20 years

Most of the Swedish and East Europe Prog band members were between 20 and 30.

It's a new generation

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 06:27

^And to add to what Ivan said, before Prog magazine was Progression, dating back to 1992. I discovered that in a Borders bookstore (no longer in business, but was Barnes & Noble's biggest competitor until Amazon came around) and subscribed to that well into the 2000s. Before Prog Archives was GEPR, ProgressiveWorld.net, DPRP, Sea of Tranquility.

AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

In my mind resurgence kind of implies a lot of people suddenly discovering something for the first time not something that they already knew about but found out is still around. To me that's what happened with prog in the 90's. It was mostly older fans rediscovering prog not younger fans discovering it for the first time. There has been a resurgence in prog but in my opinion that didn't happen until a larger number of younger fans discovered it for the first time and that didn't really start to happen until at least 2005 or so with Porcupine Tree and the Mars Volta being possibly the biggest catalysts for that. There were other factors also such as the appearance of this website, the growth of prog festivals and social media but none of those were around(except for the prog festivals which were still very small at that point)in the 1990's.

Let's look at definitions of both terms, via Google define:

rediscovery: the action or process of discovering again something that was forgotten or ignored.

resurgence: an increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence.

I think this whole conversation stems from the confusion of what these two words mean. Both rediscovery and resurgence could be applied to the 1990s. There is a subtle difference between the two and it depends on what context they are used. What happened in the 2000s (and to this day) was the continuation of what began in the 1990s. The 2000s couldn't be considered a resurgence because of the amount of activity that happened in the 1990s. If the 1990s were like the late 1980s, then yeah, you could call the 2000s as such, but that's not the case.

For what happened in the 2000s, maybe "expansion" might be a better word, or something similar.

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 09:36

Hi,

Folks .. this is ridiculous ...

The so-called "resurgence" or "reinvention" or re-appearance" of progressive music was not an "accident" ... it was, more than likely always there and it was the Internet, that started making it to people's homes between 1988 and 1992 more or less ... that helped get the style better known and appreciated.

No one, here, is capable of putting it in the proper perspective.

The music never died ... but your perception of it, got a nice burst of emotion and energy with the new Internet, and all of a sudden someone else was discussing this and that band, and the new this and that ... and giving some older works a new dimension that was previously ignored by the "rock press" (I call it the rock toilet paper! Or worse ... the rock database!) ... because it was not a top ten kisser! And Chris Squire would likely kick their butts out anyway with those huge boots!

It's bizarre to me, that no one notices that what we use today ... the internet ... was not around in anyone's computers ... maybe only a handful of us had one in 1989 ... when I got my first one ... as opposed to today, when everyone of us has likely more than one of them ... heck, I got 4 of them!

The immediate effect and knowledge of all the material and stuff out there ... that was mostly hidden from the media ... is all of a sudden alive ... (do you have any idea how many countries tried to suppress the internet and some still do? AND why?) ... and this was the case with the new "resurgence" ... and the idea that it was dead before, is totally ridiculous, since it had never died ... it finally, got the attention it deserved ... and you all still talk like it was some kind of a miracle that some savior was reborn ... we must like our fairy tales a lot!

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 09:39

The Dark Elf wrote:

The 1990s were a myth. The decade never existed. Any record of musical achievement in those missing ten years has been eradicated.

Nahhhh ... you would not have missed the Internet coming up ... no way in heck!

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 10:56

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:

The major Prog Festivals?

- ProgFest: 1993 If I'm not wrong, and precisely with Anglagard and IQ

- NearFest: 1998

- Baja Prog: 1997

- Progday: 1994

In the 90's, everybody thought Prog was dead, but the Swedish resurgence save it from oblivion.

Older people?

I believe all the Anglagard members were between 16 and 20 years

Most of the Swedish and East Europe Prog band members were between 20 and 30.

It's a new generation

I agree with your statement about the 90's but the Swedish "resurgence" wasn't the only thing that saved it from oblivion as you put it.

Also, some of your dates are wrong. I don't know about Baja Prog but Progday's first festival was in 1995 and Nearfest's first one was in 1999(I was there!). They might have got the funding they needed or started planing in the year's you started though. That may very well have been the case(actually I know it was for NF). Yes, Progfest started in 1993. IQ played but apparently it was Anglagard who brought the house down. I didn't go since that was on the west coast and I'm an east coaster. ;)

At this point a lot of my disagreements on here are about semantics. I'm definitely not saying something wasn't going on in the 90's and the point of 1991 is important because that's still pre internet. A lot of people think it was the internet that saved prog and that's really not true either. If anything it was band's like Marillion(and possibly Dream Theater).

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Posted: December 12 2017 at 11:02

progaardvark wrote:

^And to add to what Ivan said, before Prog magazine was Progression, dating back to 1992. I discovered that in a Borders bookstore (no longer in business, but was Barnes & Noble's biggest competitor until Amazon came around) and subscribed to that well into the 2000s. Before Prog Archives was GEPR, ProgressiveWorld.net, DPRP, Sea of Tranquility.

Let's look at definitions of both terms, via Google define:

rediscovery: the action or process of discovering again something that was forgotten or ignored.

resurgence: an increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence.

For what happened in the 2000s, maybe "expansion" might be a better word, or something similar.

Yes, but the 90's were really just an expansion of the eighties. Because using your argument you could say things were starting in the 80's with the neo prog "revival." It doesn't take away from the fact that the larger public was mostly completely unaware of prog in the 80's and 90's. Sure, stuff happened in the 90's but stuff happened in the 80's too. The important thing is the audience. Like I said it was mostly people rediscovering the genre in the 90's. More people actually discovered prog in the 80's then the 90's because bands like Yes, Genesis were still pretty big then and enticed a lot of younger fans(such as myself at the time)to go backwards in their catalogs and discover the "good" stuff. You can call it a resurgence if you want in the 90's but the big question is a resurgence for who? My answer would be those who were already fans(for the most part)unlike the following decade were prog's audience probably tripled if not more so. So if the market is appealing to those who are already fans but just don't know the newer stuff how is that really a resurgence and not a rediscovery? Imo, it's a rediscovery much more than a true resurgence. If a bunch of people who collected stamps and coins as kids all of a sudden discovered a big warehouse that was full of old stamps and coins and that got them into it again does that mean there was a big resurgence in collecting stamps and coins?

Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 12 2017 at 11:08