Forum Home Forum Home > Progressive Music Lounges > Prog Music Lounge
  New Posts New Posts RSS Feed - common prog beliefs that are wrong
  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Events   Register Register  Login Login

Topic Closedcommon prog beliefs that are wrong

 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1 345
Author
Message
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 19:52
^ and how do you explain them playing backup for Eddie Harris, and no, Steve Howe did not 'find' jazz later, he obviously was always into it, as well as Tony Kaye. Also explain why they claimed that The Crusaders were a major influence on their writing.

Edited by Easy Money - February 14 2018 at 19:53
Back to Top
micky View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator

Joined: October 02 2005
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 46827
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 19:55
god John I LOVE that album.  But call it was it was.. it was a gig.. a paying gig. Toss in a few hookers and some blow and get paid to play.. hah.... offer me that and I'd play on a damn rap album.. doesn't mean I'd be a fan of it hahah

Squire was fantastic on that album btw.
The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
Back to Top
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 19:58
It may or may not show in their music, but the members of Yes were definitely into jazz and fusion, as well as lots of different music.

Edited by Easy Money - February 14 2018 at 19:58
Back to Top
micky View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator

Joined: October 02 2005
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 46827
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 20:01
perhaps... I am just of the very strong opinion that what musicians generally like.. does generally does show up in their music. At least once.. give us that.. over a decade ..  once?  Nope.   
The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
Back to Top
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 20:04
I just recalled another episode from Bruford's bio where he talks about how enthusiastic the entire band was about Herbie Hancock's "Crossings" album when it came out.

Edited by Easy Money - February 14 2018 at 20:05
Back to Top
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 20:12
Steve Howe's own words:

"And we definitely knew that we wanted to take in that [drummer] Bill Bruford jazz influence, our rock influences, and of course as the ’70s developed, we all broadened our musical ..."
Back to Top
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 20:15
Jon Anderson:

"We always had musicians in Yes that could play all of these different styles of music: folk music and jazz and classical ..."
Back to Top
micky View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator

Joined: October 02 2005
Location: .
Status: Offline
Points: 46827
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 20:17
f**king Captcha.. and lost a reply to the first post John.. which is just as well.  Can I can dig and accept the 2nd. Which I alluded to earlier..  Howe obviously did become a jazz fan.. he broadened his horizons as time went on. Probably about the time he was f**king around in the jungle with Asia on MTV hahahaha

I'm out..  good to see you still around John.
The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
Back to Top
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 20:22
I think the above quotes from Howe and Anderson say it all, they were most definitely into jazz from the beginning.

Edited by Easy Money - February 14 2018 at 20:23
Back to Top
ForestFriend View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: February 23 2017
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
Points: 680
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 22:07
Originally posted by micky micky wrote:

perhaps... I am just of the very strong opinion that what musicians generally like.. does generally does show up in their music. At least once.. give us that.. over a decade ..  once?  Nope.


There are plenty of moments in early Yes that resemble jazz. Of course, Yes was never a legit jazz band; they found ways to transform it to fit into their own music instead.

It was a bit more obvious around the first two albums - I See You has some very jazzy drum/guitar breaks, Something's Coming starts off with some walking bass, and Everydays has a very jazzy feel overall (although that's quite similar to the original version of that song).

And then we get to The Yes Album; Steve Howe has some very jazzy sounding lead licks in Yours Is No Disgrace and Perpetual Change - almost sounds like he's trying to emulate Wes Montgomery at some points. I think a lot of the piano playing in A Venture is quite jazz, especially towards the end.
Back to Top
Easy Money View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin

Joined: August 11 2007
Location: Memphis
Status: Offline
Points: 10276
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 14 2018 at 22:29
The only thing I would add to the above discussion with Mickey is that although Yes definitely, in their own words provided in the above posts, profess an interest and influence from jazz, they can't, as a group, swing. The one salient feature that jazz has that no other music has is swing time.

You look at all the hundreds of rock musicians who profess to be influenced by jazz, yet the number of rock musicians who can actually swing can almost be counted on one hand.
As far as Yes goes, you can hear some jazz in the solos of Howe and Kaye, but as a group, they couldn't 'swing' their way out of a wet paper bag.
Back to Top
Frenetic Zetetic View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: December 09 2017
Location: Now
Status: Offline
Points: 9228
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 15 2018 at 01:58
^I'm willing to bet the members of Yes - especially the CTtE + Tales + Relayer line-ups - could swing if they wanted Tongue

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:

Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:


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.


Have to agree with much of this (at least it's now a two man crusade Micky Wink) and it mirrors uncannily my own review of CTTE: 

Where Close to the Edge' becomes unique is that it does not exploit any of the structural tricks and compositional conceits used by its contemporaries. Where Emerson would assimilate classical sources and themes into his own creations and Genesis would segue shorter song and instrumental fragments into a pseudo suite, 'Yes' dispense with either approach entirely. Close to the Edge's title track is a pop song, yes, one mother of a long one to be sure, but still a pop song for all that. Don't let the 'P' word cause your heckles to rise here, as I mean 'popular music song' and not in any pejorative sense.

Furthermore:

There are no traces of classical symphonic writing to be found.(Which often explains their 'symphonic prog' label stubbornly refusing to adhere to the bottle) Jazz and blues vocabulary are absent. Riff based composition is nowhere to be seen.


The only bit I'm having a hard time swallowing is how the guitar intro isn't derived from free-form jazz in some sense. IIRC that was almost entirely improvised on one take between Steve and Chris. Everything else above is spot on IMHO.

f**k me.. Capcha got me.. didn't save this time.

anyhow.. I'll try again. Sloppy seconds for you on this one.

Free Jazz? Hardly.  Note that the intro is largely in D minor and lacks one of the defining characteristics of Free jazz. The lack of harmonic structures...

As noted above..  I love Yes as much as anyone but let's not make them what they were not....  they were not fans of jazz nor were they particularly educated musically. It was only with Relayer that most anyone has pointed to any particular jazz influence to their music and even though I think it is bullsh*t.. many do think that album was influence by the fusion of Mahavishnu.  Free jazz is not simply not something Yes would ever incorporate into their music. Nor did they

what I think is you are confusing Free Jazz with dissonance. Note Howe's use of tritones in the intro. Again something Yes rarely did use as they were pretty much a Consonant band from debut to last album haha. However using it in the intro as they really put a charge into the song. It was one of the few WTF moments Yes really ever had musically.  That and Soundchaser hahah

Conflating dissonance with free jazz is a fair statement, sir. However, I would further assert that that dissonance mimics certain aspects of free jazz to me, and that's why said archetype called to me. It FEELS like a runaway train going off the track, with the manic, peeling riffs and ascending bass line, etc.

I remember Chris Squire stating in an interview (Monsters of Rock?) that he didn't personally listen to jazz, and that "It wasn't cool to listen to what your dad listened to". Bruford was obviously a jazz freak. I feel like Steve Howe enjoyed jazz more than he let on, and was unconsciously influenced whether he admitted it or not as early as 1971.

Relayer is most certainly more fusion-oriented. How can you say Sound Chaser isn't jazzy? The entire intro with the bass runs behind the crashing piano chords, etc. They may not intentionally have gone in and said "let's make jazz rock", but they sure as hell were circling the landing zone on that one!

"I am so prog, I listen to concept albums on shuffle." -KMac2021
Back to Top
Cristi View Drop Down
Special Collaborator
Special Collaborator
Avatar
Crossover / Prog Metal Teams

Joined: July 27 2006
Location: wonderland
Status: Offline
Points: 40768
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 15 2018 at 02:05
I See You on their debut album? Not jazz enough? 
Back to Top
SteveG View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: April 11 2014
Location: Kyiv In Spirit
Status: Offline
Points: 20245
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 15 2018 at 04:08
Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

^I'm willing to bet the members of Yes - especially the CTtE + Tales + Relayer line-ups - could swing if they wanted Tongue

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:

Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

Originally posted by ExittheLemming ExittheLemming wrote:

Originally posted by micky micky wrote:


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.


Have to agree with much of this (at least it's now a two man crusade Micky Wink) and it mirrors uncannily my own review of CTTE: 

Where Close to the Edge' becomes unique is that it does not exploit any of the structural tricks and compositional conceits used by its contemporaries. Where Emerson would assimilate classical sources and themes into his own creations and Genesis would segue shorter song and instrumental fragments into a pseudo suite, 'Yes' dispense with either approach entirely. Close to the Edge's title track is a pop song, yes, one mother of a long one to be sure, but still a pop song for all that. Don't let the 'P' word cause your heckles to rise here, as I mean 'popular music song' and not in any pejorative sense.

Furthermore:

There are no traces of classical symphonic writing to be found.(Which often explains their 'symphonic prog' label stubbornly refusing to adhere to the bottle) Jazz and blues vocabulary are absent. Riff based composition is nowhere to be seen.


The only bit I'm having a hard time swallowing is how the guitar intro isn't derived from free-form jazz in some sense. IIRC that was almost entirely improvised on one take between Steve and Chris. Everything else above is spot on IMHO.

f**k me.. Capcha got me.. didn't save this time.

anyhow.. I'll try again. Sloppy seconds for you on this one.

Free Jazz? Hardly.  Note that the intro is largely in D minor and lacks one of the defining characteristics of Free jazz. The lack of harmonic structures...

As noted above..  I love Yes as much as anyone but let's not make them what they were not....  they were not fans of jazz nor were they particularly educated musically. It was only with Relayer that most anyone has pointed to any particular jazz influence to their music and even though I think it is bullsh*t.. many do think that album was influence by the fusion of Mahavishnu.  Free jazz is not simply not something Yes would ever incorporate into their music. Nor did they

what I think is you are confusing Free Jazz with dissonance. Note Howe's use of tritones in the intro. Again something Yes rarely did use as they were pretty much a Consonant band from debut to last album haha. However using it in the intro as they really put a charge into the song. It was one of the few WTF moments Yes really ever had musically.  That and Soundchaser hahah

Conflating dissonance with free jazz is a fair statement, sir. However, I would further assert that that dissonance mimics certain aspects of free jazz to me, and that's why said archetype called to me. It FEELS like a runaway train going off the track, with the manic, peeling riffs and ascending bass line, etc.

I remember Chris Squire stating in an interview (Monsters of Rock?) that he didn't personally listen to jazz, and that "It wasn't cool to listen to what your dad listened to". Bruford was obviously a jazz freak. I feel like Steve Howe enjoyed jazz more than he let on, and was unconsciously influenced whether he admitted it or not as early as 1971.

Relayer is most certainly more fusion-oriented. How can you say Sound Chaser isn't jazzy? The entire intro with the bass runs behind the crashing piano chords, etc. They may not intentionally have gone in and said "let's make jazz rock", but they sure as hell were circling the landing zone on that one!
Music that is "jazzy" is not the same as full blown jazz fusion. Besides, Yes were trying to make teeny bopper pop songs, as per micky and the lemming (remember? Wink), so any overt jazz references would have been right out. 

Edited by SteveG - February 15 2018 at 04:09
This message was brought to you by a proud supporter of the Deep State.
Back to Top
AFlowerKingCrimson View Drop Down
Forum Senior Member
Forum Senior Member
Avatar

Joined: October 02 2016
Location: Philly burbs
Status: Offline
Points: 16040
Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 15 2018 at 15:06
Here's another one that while ultimately up to personal interpretation I feel is wrong:

Styx and the Moody Blues being considered prog bands. 


Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - February 15 2018 at 15:07
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply Page  <1 345

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down



This page was generated in 0.141 seconds.
Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.