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The.Crimson.King 
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Joined: March 29 2013
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 Posted: February 12 2018 at 12:17 |
 Tapfret wrote:
The first time I heard the word pretentious used to describe prog was from a guy with a 2-foot purple mohawk with meticulously spaced studs and decorative band name art work on his leather jacket. |
For me it was seeing the Gentle Giant compilation album: "Pretentious for the Sake of it" in a record store. I'd been into GG and prog in general for a couple years and I remember thinking: If Gentle Giant is considered pretentious, then I need to find more pretentious bands 
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
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Points: 20474
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 12:37 |
Prog rock is pretentious! That's why I like. 
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AFlowerKingCrimson
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Joined: October 02 2016
Location: Philly burbs
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Points: 16143
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 13:06 |
siLLy puPPy wrote:
Hrychu wrote:
How about this... "In the Court of the Crimson King" is the first prog record ever made". |
No. But it was the one that launched the scene and took the albums that were upping progressiveness into the fully formed subgenre. East Of Eden and High Tide both put out excellent prog albums before KC but KC actually got noticed therefore it's more of a milestone rather than an official first of the bunch |
Exactly. Because of "court's" success and the fact that lots of bands were influenced by it people tend to view it as the first. Also, some albums by the Nice, Soft Machine and the US band Touch were earlier than "court." The first album by Renaissance may have been earlier than KC's first also.
Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - February 12 2018 at 13:10
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AFlowerKingCrimson
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Joined: October 02 2016
Location: Philly burbs
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Points: 16143
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 13:35 |
Here's another one:
Only college educated men in their upper fifties and sixties listen to it.
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twosteves
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 01 2007
Location: NYC/Rhinebeck
Status: Offline
Points: 4070
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 17:27 |
micky wrote:
my favorite is that Close to the Edge.. the song... is symphonic prog.
Amazing how little people really know about music. It is... an 18 minute long pop song.
Look closely at it.... it follows.. TO THE LETTER the standard Intro - verse - chorus - middle 8 - instrumental break - verse - chorus = outro pop song format
In fact on a site full of round groups put in square genre containers.. Yes again is one.. and being that it is the biggest and greatest of all prog groups I guess that also qualifies as a wrongly held common prog belief. They were not symphonic prog.. only Tales .. one album was. At the heart they were Crossover prog. They were fans of pop.. and so was their music. Only that Yes realized that if you good enough, and talented enough.. and godDAMN were they you could fuse the virtuosity and complexity of prog with pop music. |
This is sort of ridiculous to me---early Yes was as far away from pop as you can get---and Relayer is certainly symphonic prog as is Awaken ---Mind Drive, That that is---maybe your idea of pop is different than mine lol--everyone has an opinion. Later in their career they let a lot of crossover peeps in the band which of course ruined the band.
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Nogbad_The_Bad
Forum & Site Admin Group
RIO/Avant/Zeuhl & Eclectic Team
Joined: March 16 2007
Location: Boston
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Points: 20177
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 17:45 |
micky wrote:
my favorite is that Close to the Edge.. the song... is symphonic prog.
Amazing how little people really know about music. It is... an 18 minute long pop song.
Look closely at it.... it follows.. TO THE LETTER the standard Intro - verse - chorus - middle 8 - instrumental break - verse - chorus = outro pop song format
In fact on a site full of round groups put in square genre containers.. Yes again is one.. and being that it is the biggest and greatest of all prog groups I guess that also qualifies as a wrongly held common prog belief. They were not symphonic prog.. only Tales .. one album was. At the heart they were Crossover prog. They were fans of pop.. and so was their music. Only that Yes realized that if you good enough, and talented enough.. and godDAMN were they you could fuse the virtuosity and complexity of prog with pop music. |
**spits beer on monitor**
Better see your dealer micky and ask him for weaker drugs, these ones are clearly messing with reasoning skills.
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Ian
Host of the Post-Avant Jazzcore Happy Hour on Progrock.com
https://podcasts.progrock.com/post-avant-jazzcore-happy-hour/
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micky
Special Collaborator
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Joined: October 02 2005
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 17:45 |
oh joy...
call it what you want... prove me wrong however. Isn't that the point of the thread... you all are reading it incorrectly. I showed why.... refute that man...
I would assume you know that Yes were huge fans of pop music, didn't give two f**ks about European classicl music, or even folk or even jazz until Relayer that is. It was the love of it was what brought Chris and Jon together and it never really went away and unlike some bands.. many bands that tried to transition out of prog and reinvent themselves. they didn't lose their fan base.. for even shifting into the 80's.. it wasn't far from what they have been doing in the 70's. At the heart of it was pop music man it was never far from any of their 70's stuff. |
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The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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Atavachron
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 17:55 |
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^ Hey a one-man crusade can be brutal. Never give in.
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"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy
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micky
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 17:58 |
Atavachron wrote:
^ Hey a one-man crusade can be brutal. Never give in.
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give in? Come on David
you know better than most over these years how capable I am of waging.. and winning one man crusades...
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The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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AFlowerKingCrimson
Forum Senior Member
Joined: October 02 2016
Location: Philly burbs
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Points: 16143
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 18:08 |
Well, if Yes were pop during their golden age heyday then Genesis were too.
I'll say something controversial too. ITCOTCK only really has one true prog song on it. THe title track follows verse chorus and so does Epitaph. The other two are short songs but one is extended with experimental noodling. That leaves just one track and even that one track(21st CSM)is sometimes called psych. However, at least that one is complex enough to be real prog(assuming real prog has to be complex and not just a long song).
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Frenetic Zetetic
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Joined: December 09 2017
Location: Now
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Points: 9233
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 18:14 |
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Close to The Edge is pretty much the pinnacle of symphonic prog for me. Even if the sections are arranged somewhat like a pop song, the music itself is far from pop.
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"I am so prog, I listen to concept albums on shuffle." -KMac2021
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micky
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 19:08 |
Frenetic Zetetic wrote:
Close to The Edge is pretty much the pinnacle of symphonic prog for me. Even if the sections are arranged somewhat like a pop song, the music itself is far from pop. |
and it is far away from the prog that anyone else did before.. or did since. For the very reason it is pop prog than symphonic prog. Seriously... compare this to anything off of Tales which was pure Symphonic Prog. The differences in structure, feel and sound are quite substantial.
I think I made the point quite well in my review
One of more defining.. yet at the same time moth eaten prog cliches is the side long epic. Of course other groups had tried them before. Some were just extended instrumental jams where stucture and composition were an afterthought. Most were of the cut and paste variety. Song vignettes of several minutes apiece strung together with instrumental bridges. What made Close to the Edge so powerful.. and at the same time so ..progressive was that it was a single 19 minute composition. The dangers inherent in that are obvious if you take any time at all to consider the music.. and the prospective audience. Take a piece like Supper's Ready that some would proclaim to greatest side-long ever. Say there is a piece that doesn't really catch the listeners ear.. it is no problem.. Willow Farm is right around the corner. By the time you've grabbed a ham sandwich.. the musical context has changed. The listener is happy and goes on his merry way. With Close to the Edge.. not so fast. If the merry men of Yes hadn't paid extreme attention to perfection on that song and crafting a near flawless piece of music you would have been left with 19 minutes of sheer boredom.
for therein lays the rub... find me something that sounds like the CttE.. you won't find it. It is because only Yes were able to pull that off...
Yes were not some uber symphonic group fusing classical structures with rock music. Gates of Delirium was a spot on copy of the structure of a space rock masterpiece of Pink Floyd's. A Saucerful of Secrets. What everyone seems to forget about Yes.. were they were first and foremost incredible song writers. Fans of pop music and HIGHLY influenced BY pop music. The stated goal of the group was to merge ..not classical with rock.. but high powered instrumental ability with the catchiness and hooks of pop music. Close to the Edge is nothing more earthshaking than possibly the world's first..hell maybe only 19 minute long pop song. Complete with the intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro format whose abandoment supposedly seperates prog from lesser forms of music hahaha. While everyone went on thinking that standard popular song formats would only support 2 or 3 minute long songs.. Yes showed that the standard pop format could support complex and sustained melodies. The trick of it again.. to pull it off it had to be all about quality. Otherwise.. you would have to aural equivilant of having 19 minutes of 'My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic' pumped into your brain. Even with the kick ass rickenbacker.. I suspect that would not be enough to hold on to many listeners.
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The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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ForestFriend
Forum Senior Member
Joined: February 23 2017
Location: Canada
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Points: 680
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 20:30 |
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I would agree that Yes was definitely a pop rock group at heart - but to say Yes had nothing to do with classical, or jazz until Relayer is just plain wrong. They had jazz influences right from the first album, check out the jam between Banks and Bruford in I See You. Howe and Wakeman absolutely brought in classical influences the moment they joined. I mean, Cans & Brahms? The mid-section from South Side Of The Sky? The harpsichord solo in Siberian Khatru? The church organ in Close To The Edge? There's footage from the Fragile era where Howe talks about taking influence from Vivaldi, and they've talked about Wakeman suggesting ideas based on classical structure (and agreeing to it).
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Magnum Vaeltaja
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 20:32 |
Even if you disagree with Micky that Close To The Edge is actually a pop song, you have to admit that he does touch on something that is a very common prog misconception, which is that Yes were heavily influenced by classical music.
This is something that I feel is extremely overstated; Wakeman was the only member of the band to put in any sort of classical slant into Yes' music, and he only really does this during a few select moments. In truth the band's biggest influences were definitely in more conventional popular music - Steve Howe cites country & western and American rock & roll musicians like Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, and Bill Haley as early influences, and Anderson and Squire were both into the likes of The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel - not Beethoven, Mozart or Handel.  |
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when i was a kid a doller was worth ten dollers - now a doller couldnt even buy you fifty cents
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micky
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 20:53 |
and yet on Tales the one without a f**king doubt symphonic prog album they did.. Wakeman f**king hated on stylistic level. I don't think he cared much the vaunted merging of classical and prog haha. The root of his discontent was he wanted the more poppy 'hook' laden pop prog of earlier Yes.... so there is that.
which brings up the Trump card so to speak... what makes pop what it is. It isn't the structure as much as the things that define it. Much like prog itself. With prog.. you can boil it down to one word.. complexity.. with pop you can boil it down to one word. The 'hooks' that make pop sounds so appealing and catchy to listeners. That is what Genesis had and ONE HELL of a talent for it on their very underrated first album.. then they lost that for most of the rest of the 70's.. only becoming the great band they became after they left the pretentious art and overintellectualism and using cleverness often as a substitute for musical talent in a genre and with contemporaries that played circles around them....and they rediscovered what they were truly good at.. writing good catchy hook laden pop songs.
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The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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I prophesy disaster
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Joined: December 31 2017
Location: Australia
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Points: 4591
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 21:31 |
BaldJean wrote:
I will explain what I mean: I recently read all the reviews of "Pawn Hearts", and many people talked about "the guitar of Robert Fripp at the end of A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers". that is, however, neither Robert Fripp nor a guitar at all but actually Hugh Banton on the organ who does a perfect imitation of a Fripp guitar solo, in sound as well as in style.
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Thanks for that . I thought that part was Robert Fripp. Actually, I thought all the electric guitar parts, which aren't many that I can hear, were Robert Fripp (I assume the more common acoustic guitar parts were Peter Hammill).
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No, I know how to behave in the restaurant now, I don't tear at the meat with my hands. If I've become a man of the world somehow, that's not necessarily to say I'm a worldly man.
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The.Crimson.King
Forum Senior Member
Joined: March 29 2013
Location: WA
Status: Offline
Points: 4591
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Posted: February 12 2018 at 22:00 |
Thanks to BaldJean for bringing this up. For those still doubting, compare Hugh's distorted organ solo at the end of Plague with the sound and style of his distorted organ solo in Darkness 11/11. Virtually identical
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Frenetic Zetetic
Forum Senior Member
Joined: December 09 2017
Location: Now
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Points: 9233
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Posted: February 13 2018 at 02:11 |
micky wrote:
Frenetic Zetetic wrote:
Close to The Edge is pretty much the pinnacle of symphonic prog for me. Even if the sections are arranged somewhat like a pop song, the music itself is far from pop. |
and it is far away from the prog that anyone else did before.. or did since. For the very reason it is pop prog than symphonic prog. Seriously... compare this to anything off of Tales which was pure Symphonic Prog. The differences in structure, feel and sound are quite substantial.
I think I made the point quite well in my review
One of more defining.. yet at the same time moth eaten prog cliches is the side long epic. Of course other groups had tried them before. Some were just extended instrumental jams where stucture and composition were an afterthought. Most were of the cut and paste variety. Song vignettes of several minutes apiece strung together with instrumental bridges. What made Close to the Edge so powerful.. and at the same time so ..progressive was that it was a single 19 minute composition. The dangers inherent in that are obvious if you take any time at all to consider the music.. and the prospective audience. Take a piece like Supper's Ready that some would proclaim to greatest side-long ever. Say there is a piece that doesn't really catch the listeners ear.. it is no problem.. Willow Farm is right around the corner. By the time you've grabbed a ham sandwich.. the musical context has changed. The listener is happy and goes on his merry way. With Close to the Edge.. not so fast. If the merry men of Yes hadn't paid extreme attention to perfection on that song and crafting a near flawless piece of music you would have been left with 19 minutes of sheer boredom.
for therein lays the rub... find me something that sounds like the CttE.. you won't find it. It is because only Yes were able to pull that off...
Yes were not some uber symphonic group fusing classical structures with rock music. Gates of Delirium was a spot on copy of the structure of a space rock masterpiece of Pink Floyd's. A Saucerful of Secrets. What everyone seems to forget about Yes.. were they were first and foremost incredible song writers. Fans of pop music and HIGHLY influenced BY pop music. The stated goal of the group was to merge ..not classical with rock.. but high powered instrumental ability with the catchiness and hooks of pop music. Close to the Edge is nothing more earthshaking than possibly the world's first..hell maybe only 19 minute long pop song. Complete with the intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle8/instrumental-break/verse/chorus/outro format whose abandoment supposedly seperates prog from lesser forms of music hahaha. While everyone went on thinking that standard popular song formats would only support 2 or 3 minute long songs.. Yes showed that the standard pop format could support complex and sustained melodies. The trick of it again.. to pull it off it had to be all about quality. Otherwise.. you would have to aural equivilant of having 19 minutes of 'My Heart Will Go On: Love Theme from Titanic' pumped into your brain. Even with the kick ass rickenbacker.. I suspect that would not be enough to hold on to many listeners. |
I don't disagree with anything you've said dude, I just don't see how this would make Yes "less" progressive for creating pop music on steroids (which isn't a bad plan, honestly). Progressive pop music still qualifies as progressive music to my ears. I assumed it was understood Yes was more interested in pop anyways? Maybe I got lucky and understood that sooner than most Yes fans...
They also didn't really care much for jazz music, despite Relayer having plenty of fusion elements. I've always thought Yes just did their thing, and it was magic.
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"I am so prog, I listen to concept albums on shuffle." -KMac2021
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Mortte
Forum Senior Member
Joined: November 11 2016
Location: Finland
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Points: 5538
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Posted: February 13 2018 at 03:36 |
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^I am also thinking there was a lots of pop already in the beginning in Yes. And I think thatīs the reason why Yes also become so popular, maybe also one reason why prog become popular that time. Of course I think Genesis also put very great way pop elements into itīs prog.
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
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Points: 20474
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Posted: February 13 2018 at 04:23 |
micky wrote:
... it wasn't far from what they have been doing in the 70's. At the heart of it was pop music man it was never far from any of their 70's stuff. |
Pop music micky, or rock music? Don't want to split hairs but there's a difference.
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common prog beliefs that are wrong