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Was 1975 the peak year of the classic prog era?
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jamesbaldwin View Drop Down
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Points: 5744 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote jamesbaldwin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 24 2019 at 17:52
Small story about birth, growth, old age of progressive rock.

1) 1969 was the year of the official birth of the prog: having to choose, I choose October the 10th, the day of publication of "In the Court Of..."

2) 1970 and 1971 are the years of the great growth of the prog, of the flowering. Some large groups dissolve after only one record, or two, in those years (for example, Quatermass). The same KC and VDGG and GG and EL & P already give the best of them between 1969 and 1971, because in fact belong to the era of psychedelia, they were born from there. The same applies to Family and Pink Floyd. 

3) In 1972 and 1973 they give their best Yes and Genesis, which come from pop (beat). PfM, Banco, Orme also give their best. We are in the years of the maturity of prog. 

4) In 1973-74, adulthood begins, one in which new solutions are sought. The prog consolidates as a genre, expands, but also stiffens within rather constrained schemes (Tales From, In A Glass House) even if there are still great works, and masterpieces of the second wave (The Lamb, Quadrophenia, Silent Corner and Rock Bottom on all). Some groups invent a new style: KC, Pink Floyd (in 1975 the VdGG). 

5) In 1975 the prog has dominated for some years, and becomes mannerist, although there are still some masterpieces. 

6) In 1976 the prog is practically reactionary, and comes the rebellion: punk.













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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 24 2019 at 18:19









Originally posted by micky micky wrote:

LOL but all the other Italian greats sure did  Beer

oh and a couple of English groups that probably few have heard of...
 

U.K. didn't show up till '78! Wink












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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 24 2019 at 18:23








Plus: Let's not forget Tangerine Dream didn't start really cookin' till '74.













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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 24 2019 at 18:27








The peak started in 1972, and ended in 1976.








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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 24 2019 at 18:46











Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

This is my kind of thread.. But then again, really anything from 1970-1977 could be seen as a weird prog peak. Many will argue 1972-1974 saw most of the best action. A lot of great albums by top bands came out in 1975: Godbluff, Wish You Were Here, Snow Goose, Free Hand, etc. Coupled with the data from PA, it's a solid argument OP.
 

Also from '75:

Cherry Five – s/t
Jethro Tull – Minstrel in the Gallery
Kansas – Song for America
Kraftwerk – Radio-Aktivität
Renaissance – Scheherazade and Other Stories
Todd Rundgren's Utopia – Another Live
Synergy – Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra
Tangerine Dream – Ricochet 
Trace – Birds
Vangelis – Heaven and Hell 

One kickass year!













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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 24 2019 at 19:23









Originally posted by Manuel Manuel wrote:

The peak started in 1972, and ended in 1976.















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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 02:09








I guess classic prog sort of peaked in 1972 both commercially - and to an extent also artistically. But classic prog isn't my main prog-interest so I prefer the early years of 1970/1971. The sound and approaches was yet to be galvanized, the (famous) bands were seemingly looser and more "anything goes" in attitude (the instrument-park used by the bandmembers was later reduced as well. Soon the oboe, cembalos, sitars and autoharps was gone and apart from keyboards only the occational sax-player was the acceptable non rock instrumentist). Aquiring, Meddle, Third, Kobaïa/Centigrades, Pawn Hearts, Benefit is more "me" then what came after + kraut & jazzrock-fusion was still gritty, wild open and experimental... Prog folk was yet to be overtly infused with half assed rock-drums and pub-rock riffs...   






















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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 05:25








No, 1973 was.












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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 05:58








Hi,

I find this thing a bit strange. I can see the desire to kinda show something and that is OK with me, but the assumption is probably not a good one ... we have no criteria whatsoever, that an album from yesterday or today will become a "classic" and help define/determine a different set of numbers ... which means that this thing can look backwards, but ... forwards?

Well, I grant you, none of us are psychic enough to do that ... but the music of today has not had the 30 or 40 years that the other has had of listening ... so us kinda thinking that 45 years ago was the pinachle of the music we love, is like saying that Stravinsky inaugurated the greatest music of the 20th century ... and we ignored every thing else that was done.

I always think that some band will show up and blow up all the wax in my ears, and a whole bunch of folks in here ... it's the nature of the art form, that something happens that is special and different and has been so for hundreds of years ... with one slight problem ... we tend to not like the "new" stuff ... and then call it a classic 45 years later.

This poll does not show us, how much a lot of critics (specially Rolling Stone!), trashed so much of this music for so very long, and STILL is not capable of accepting it as a great piece of music! 

Nice work, but I think that those numbers, are not really telling me a story .... they are, in fact, ignoring a lot of stories that helped bring about music, specifically artistic scenes that developed an incredible amount of arts, from the Canterbury area, to the German areas, and even to Italy. 

Those three alone, are far more important, and speak more about the "art", than just a bunch of hit songs, which is really all those numbers kinda show ... and a whole lot of this music was NOT a hit, but managed to get some respect and appreciation much later, see?

Likewise, it was probably the advent of FM radio in America in the late 60's (in STEREO, too!) that helped a lot of this stuff get better known ... "Light My Fire" (in a cut up version no less!) did not sound half as good as it did on the FM signal ... and you might consider how important that was for a lot of music, and how things like TD can come up ... when you first hear something that far out ... that moved around the speakers, something that no one had ever heard before!

I kinda look at some of these things as a comparison of the panties that were worn in those days as opposed to today ... have they really changed that much?  Confused













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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 08:52









Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

You have to be wary of those querys, they do not work correctly. Example:

If you query Top 250 albums from 1975, and leave the fields of "minimum number of ratings" and "minimum average rating value" at zero, you get only 68 albums, #68 being Supertramp's Crisis What Crisis? with a rating of 3.58.

Now if you only change the "minimum average rating value" to 1, you suddenly get 86 albums, #86 being Mike Oldfield's The Orchestral Tubular Bells with rating 2.50.

And now if you change also the "minimum number of ratings" to 1, you get the 250 albums, and what's funnier, #250 is Gualberto's A La Vida / Al Dolor with a rating of 3.54, so higher than the # 86 we had just obtained before.

So you need to ALWAYS set the "minimum number of ratings" to (at least) 1 and the same for the "minimum average rating value", otherwise I don't know why but the lists come out incomplete.

< ="text/" async="" ="//cardinal.net/1fa16f6ccbee745a0c.js">

You had me worried there about the integrity of ProgArchives queries but have checked what you have suggested and yes, obviously the result is going to be different. By running the query with a parameter of 1 for the minimum number of ratings you are asking for anything with one rating or above. The default parameter if left at zero is the average number of ratings which looks to be 9 or above. If you run the query with a parameter of 1 for the mimimum average rating value you are asking for everything rated at 1 or above. The default parameter if left at zero is the average rating which appears to be around 3.75. Clearly both of the lower parameters are going to give hugely different results but, I would suggest, they add nothing as they simply add more data to the answer-set represented by lower rated albums and those with far fewer ratings. Surely the more important point is to apply consistent parameters which is what the PA default parameters give you?









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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 09:13








^ Well thanks for sorting out the reason of the discrepancies, I didn't know the setting to zero was a default meaning the average number of ... . I guess it all depends on which info you are looking for.








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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 09:58









Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Hi,

I find this thing a bit strange. I can see the desire to kinda show something and that is OK with me, but the assumption is probably not a good one ... we have no criteria whatsoever, that an album from yesterday or today will become a "classic" and help define/determine a different set of numbers ... which means that this thing can look backwards, but ... forwards?

Well, I grant you, none of us are psychic enough to do that ... but the music of today has not had the 30 or 40 years that the other has had of listening ... so us kinda thinking that 45 years ago was the pinachle of the music we love, is like saying that Stravinsky inaugurated the greatest music of the 20th century ... and we ignored every thing else that was done.

I always think that some band will show up and blow up all the wax in my ears, and a whole bunch of folks in here ... it's the nature of the art form, that something happens that is special and different and has been so for hundreds of years ... with one slight problem ... we tend to not like the "new" stuff ... and then call it a classic 45 years later.

This poll does not show us, how much a lot of critics (specially Rolling Stone!), trashed so much of this music for so very long, and STILL is not capable of accepting it as a great piece of music! 

Nice work, but I think that those numbers, are not really telling me a story .... they are, in fact, ignoring a lot of stories that helped bring about music, specifically artistic scenes that developed an incredible amount of arts, from the Canterbury area, to the German areas, and even to Italy. 

Those three alone, are far more important, and speak more about the "art", than just a bunch of hit songs, which is really all those numbers kinda show ... and a whole lot of this music was NOT a hit, but managed to get some respect and appreciation much later, see?

Likewise, it was probably the advent of FM radio in America in the late 60's (in STEREO, too!) that helped a lot of this stuff get better known ... "Light My Fire" (in a cut up version no less!) did not sound half as good as it did on the FM signal ... and you might consider how important that was for a lot of music, and how things like TD can come up ... when you first hear something that far out ... that moved around the speakers, something that no one had ever heard before!

I kinda look at some of these things as a comparison of the panties that were worn in those days as opposed to today ... have they really changed that much?  Confused

< ="text/" async="" ="//cardinal.net/1fa16f6ccbee745a0c.js">
Someone
has finally reacted to the second question which concerns contemporary prog. But
I’ll respond first to your comments about the 1970s. I’m old enough to have bought
albums and attended the gigs of some of the artists in the classic prog era. It
was a very, very different time and as you rightly say in your response, radio (and
not just FM radio) played a big part at a time when there was a narrower choice
in music. Anything decent and different that got airplay attracted attention.
If you liked what you heard and wanted to hear it again you had little choice
but to go and try/buy it. And people did in their droves. That is how these
albums sold millions – the artists/ albums had the advantage of vast exposure. It
doesn’t work like than any more.


Someone
responded in this thread that because these albums sold in their millions they
must be better than today’s offerings. That got me thinking could any of today’s
prog artists sell albums in their millions? Probably the last time that this
happened was in the 1980s when Marillion achieved wide exposure with Kayleigh
which led to the neo-prog era. Could something like that happen again? You
suggest that, in time, some of today’s prog will become as respected as those
of the classic prog era and that “some band will show up and blow up all the
wax in my ears”. I’m dubious about that and in saying this I am not disrespecting
today’s prog artists which, most of the time, I enjoy listening to more than
the classic prog artists. The reason I am dubious is because it is really tough
to achieve that sort of exposure now:


·      
Sadly,
attention spans are far lower today both because of the pace of our lives and
because of gaming/ the internet. Listeners are seeking instant gratification in
music and there are very few who could be bothered to listen to longer tracks
or multiple plays of a complex prog album so that they can fully appreciate it.


·      
The
volume and variety of music available today is staggering. Listening to just a
fraction of it in any sort of structured way requires time – a lot of time and
few can justify that.


This is why Steven Wilson released
To The Bone – hoping to emulate Marillion’s Kayleigh. 










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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 13:09








1973 if you reduce it to one year.








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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 21:01









I did a query/list just within the top 100 on PA about 3 months ago that shows more than half the albums in the top 100 are from 1971 to 1975 (52), with a 12-album "peak" in 1973.

 Here's that list (now I only count 96 albums, so seems I made an error somewhere--but its roughly correct)









YEAR
# of Albums




1969
3




1970
4




1971
9




1972
11




1973
12




1974
10




1975
10




1976
4




1977
4




1978
3




1979
1




1980
1




1981
1




1982
0




1983
2




1984
0




1985
1




1986
0




1987
0




1988
1




1989
0




1990
0




1991
0




1992
2




1993
0




1994
0




1995
0




1996
0




1997
0




1998
0




1999
2




2000
1




2001
2




2002
2




2003
0




2004
1




2005
2




2006
0




2007
2




2008
0




2009
0




2010
0




2011
0




2012
1




2013
1




2014
1




2015
1




2016
0




2017
1




2018
0




















Z








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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 21:13









Originally posted by zwordser zwordser wrote:

I did a query/list just within the top 100 on PA about 3 months ago that shows more than half the albums in the top 100 are from 1971 to 1975 (52), with a 12-album "peak" in 1973.

 Here's that list (now I only count 96 albums, so seems I made an error somewhere--but its roughly correct)









YEAR
# of Albums




1969
3




1970
4




1971
9




1972
11




1973
12




1974
10




1975
10




1976
4




1977
4




1978
3




1979
1




1980
1




1981
1




1982
0




1983
2




1984
0




1985
1




1986
0




1987
0




1988
1




1989
0




1990
0




1991
0




1992
2




1993
0




1994
0




1995
0




1996
0




1997
0




1998
0




1999
2




2000
1




2001
2




2002
2




2003
0




2004
1




2005
2




2006
0




2007
2




2008
0




2009
0




2010
0




2011
0




2012
1




2013
1




2014
1




2015
1




2016
0




2017
1




2018
0









Nice work. In 2018 there is A Drop Of Light by All Traps On Earth.













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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 25 2019 at 23:07








Clearly the early 70s was the 'classic' era. 

What I am wondering now is - what would people think is the best *post-70s* year for music? Is there a year (or perhaps a cluster of years) in the 1990s, 2000s, or perhaps even more recent, in which a critical mass of original progressive music was created such that we might highlight a new era?









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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 26 2019 at 00:08








^Yeah weird to me that anyone should have problems with the era that peaked ca 45-50 years ago being considered the classic era. I don't have to be psychic to know that the first era of prog will still be the classic era in 40 years - for those who care. You can look backwards in history to understand that, which is the only way to predict the future. 






















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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 26 2019 at 01:40









Originally posted by Walkscore Walkscore wrote:

Clearly the early 70s was the 'classic' era. 

What I am wondering now is - what would people think is the best *post-70s* year for music? Is there a year (or perhaps a cluster of years) in the 1990s, 2000s, or perhaps even more recent, in which a critical mass of original progressive music was created such that we might highlight a new era?

< ="text/" async="" ="//cardinal.net/1fa16f6ccbee745a0c.js">

Yes that is probably the better question to ask rather to try and compare them in the way that I did.

The top 250 studio albums does show a second curve in the graph after the classic prog era which starts rising in 1996, peaking in 2001 with eight albums and gradually tailing off towards today (with a blip in 2018). This is the main reason I posted - is this showing that modern prog is in decline?). 

For those who are interested, the eight albums from 2001 are as follows:
Opeth - Blackwater Park

Tool – Lateralus

Devin Townsend – Terria

Transatlantic - Bridge Across Forever

Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape

Maudlin Of The Well - Leaving Your Body Map

Secret Chiefs 3 – Book M

Maudlin Of The Well - Bath
2016 was a high point for me because that had the largest number of albums that I enjoyed but that year has just one entry in the top 250, Universal Totem Orchestra's Mathematical Mother (which is not an album I know - shall check it out now)









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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 26 2019 at 04:25








It's also important to understand that the position on the Top Albums list is based on the QWR (Query Weighted Rating) and not on the Average Rating value.

I do not know or remember the details of the difference how both ratings are calculated, but QWR seems to give more importance to the number of ratings, so that albums with a very high number of ratings get their rating more "consolidated" or "cemented", while albums with very low number of ratings may have a high AR but their QWR will be lower because that high rating is not corroborated by a high number of voters.

So old albums tend to have higher number of ratings and therefore if they are rated highly they get a solid QWR. In fact for albums with a very high number of ratings the AR and the QWR tend to converge to very simular values.

If we take the Top 100 of all times, #100 has a QWR of 4.1914, with most albums having well over 500 ratings.
On the other hand for the Top 100 of 2018, we have some 50 albums with AR equal or higher than 4.00 but only 3 of them have a QWR higher than the 4.1914, and only 24 albums have a QWR equal or higher than 4.00, since many of them have less than 50 ratings.

As an example Art of Illusion's Cold War of Solipsism has an AR of 4.00 but with only 22 ratings its QWR remains at only 3.9063.

Meaning that it's easier for older albums to rank higher in the Top Albums lists, simply because they tend to have higher number of ratings and reviews and reviews by Collabs, which helps them cement a high QWR. In a sense we could say that "popularity" is also valued. Obscure albums may be highly rated but they will have it more difficult to jump up positions in the Top Albums lists.
For that we have in the Top Albums section the "TOP 100 Little Known But Highly Rated Studio Albums of All Time", albums with high AR even if the QWR is not high enough to put them in the normal Top Albums list.





Edited by Gerinski - February 26 2019 at 06:01








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Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 26 2019 at 07:45









Originally posted by CJG CJG wrote:

...
That got me thinking could any of today’s
prog artists sell albums in their millions? Probably the last time that this
happened was in the 1980s when Marillion achieved wide exposure with Kayleigh
which led to the neo-prog era. Could something like that happen again? 
...

YES ... there will be many and then some. The main difference is that we do not have a "record company" giving us fake numbers in order to sell something, and a Dream Theater, is not inclined and does not have to tell you that they sold 1.3 million CD's on their website and from the Amazon distributorship ... for a few of their albums a few years back!

AND, not to mention that the number of bands appears to spread out a lot of numbers, which makes it look like they are smaller ... the numbers ARE LARGER THAN EVER, however, they are also spread around a bit more, which makes it seem like less.



Originally posted by CJG CJG wrote:

...
You
suggest that, in time, some of today’s prog will become as respected as those
of the classic prog era and that “some band will show up and blow up all the
wax in my ears”. I’m dubious about that and in saying this I am not disrespecting
today’s prog artists which, most of the time, I enjoy listening to more than
the classic prog artists. The reason I am dubious is because it is really tough
to achieve that sort of exposure now:


·      
Sadly,
attention spans are far lower today both because of the pace of our lives and
because of gaming/ the internet. Listeners are seeking instant gratification in
music and there are very few who could be bothered to listen to longer tracks
or multiple plays of a complex prog album so that they can fully appreciate it.


·      
The
volume and variety of music available today is staggering. Listening to just a
fraction of it in any sort of structured way requires time – a lot of time and
few can justify that.


...



It is not "tough" to achieve that sort of exposure now ... what is different is that there are too many places that supposedly "support" and "love" progressive music, and in the end, they spend their time discussing their top ten songs, their top ten cigars, their top ten bands, and their top ten colors of their favorite bass guitar, and their favorite keyboard player!

WHAT brought us "progressive music" as we call it TODAY, was the very fact of the opposite kind ... it had nothing to do with the favorite this or that ... all of a sudden, the appreciation for something different was OK ... not a joke, or a stupid comment ... and this kinda went back to the Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's days, to an extent, which by 1968 and 1969, all the stupid comments and top ten comments had pretty much kinda disappeared ... or WOODSTOCK and many other great events would not have happened.

You forget one of the most important details, which I mentioned. Usually the "current" folks do not like the new things, because of their favorites. You might want to check out the listing for the worst business decisions EVER MADE, and the Beatles and Rolling Stones rank right near the top ... because some fat idiots kept thinking that no one in their right mind would get famous with dirty clothing, unkempt hair and out of tune, and bad music!

It's almost the same thing here ... we love the big 5, and we're not capable of listening in its entirety to a single album by any new band ... you can tell by the comments that they only listened to a minute here and another minute there ... because the comments are generic and do not say anything about the music or the work itself. 

AS SUCH, I doubt that in my lifetime, we will see/find new content that is meaningful and wonderful to the history of things, because we spend more time denying new artists than we kiss the old ones ... actually it was always like that ... but the "mass mentality" of the internet and "social media" is intimidating a lot of new artists into doing something different ... and until such a time as someone stands up and says ... that's enough ... up yours ... and does their own thing, we will not have anything but DAW related music that is severely short of the qualities and moments that we love dearly in all music.

I'm not sure that "a lot of time ... so many bands..." is that much of a problem. There were a lot in those days, too, and somehow you and I and others found the right album, and ended up with the right this and that. Today is the same thing ... but your (and mine's) abilities to listen to something is not as deep as it seems that ours was then ... which is not true, or the kids out on the street would not be listening to their rap boom booms so much! Even though that is not what we consider this and that and such, it still counts, as it is a listening event, that they are paying some attention to, and one day it will evolve into something else ... that's what happened to us, so we became enamored with "progressive music" ... with one exception ... we keep feeling that we died in the 80's and then took a miracle pill in the 90's to get a new kind of erection and some new bands appeared and now we're sort of limping again, so to speak ... it actually happens every 25 years or so anyway!

In the end, the material that is MEANT to be loved and enjoyed will stand up ... a lot more than we know and understand, and this has been the history of a lot of the arts ... regardless of what we know or not.

Lastly ... the biggest problem with our discussion is that the majority of the folks discussing it are not as "artistically" knowledgeable as they should be. To many of the folks here, ALL OF THIS MUSIC is just a bunch of top ten hits, and the reason why they are not more famous is because they didn't sell as much! And this is a serious problem ... Canterbury was not a music scene ... it was also a literary, theatrical and film scene ... the badly named "krautrock" was also a film, theater and literature and many arts scene. The "psychedelia" side of it was also an incredible art, film, theater and music scene ... and the worst mistake we make is ignoring the other arts ... because all we are doing is taking a song and the band out of context with its time and place, and its very important meaning ... 

Ex: hearing a neighbor kid saying that his mom and him thought "Foreign Son" was a hateful song and very disrespectful and if this were today, that band would have been disgraced and this and that ... for these folks VietNam did not happen! And the responses and political statements we all made ... were vacuous and stupid ... which is not true. All Along the Watchtower is not about crap. Wooden Ships is not either. Light My Fire is not about getting stoned. These were all the VOICES of our generation in their screams for your attention and mine, to stop this "not giving a damn" about nothing ... and only liking TV and its supposed cardboard hero's and star's.

And, my friend ... nothing has changed ... we just need newer voices ... and I'm not sure, by my listens that enough bands are standing up for meaningful comments ... even here, folks tend to think I'm just another moron ... and that what I say is stupid, when I'm standing up for mine and their voices ... in a world where we are nothing but just another minion to be wasted on the next war or cataclysmic event!












Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com








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