Possible Problem With Modern Prog

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 carioca56 wrote:

Most progressive bands of the 70's could support themselves with music alone. With rare exceptions, musicians in current bands have to earn a living by other means. It's hard to produce masterpieces having to divide between working and making music.

Hi,

Agreed.

However, the "center of the cyclone" has to be better focused, and I think that a lot of these "young" bands, lack the cohesion, and internal depth required to create something different and get by and away from the "working/commercial" sound of things, and specially so in the present state, where anything that "sounds like" is automatically added to the ranks!

You gotta remember that all the members of YES, JT, ELP, KC and many others were just over their teens, and very young 20's when they did what they did, and I think that it was the ability to FOCUS on what they hoped to achieve that made a difference ... not necessarily by itself, although a time and place helps ... for example ... progressive being a natural follow up from the Fillmore well known long cuts (will most of them EVER show up on CD? Fudge NO!) ... whereas in England it was probably a revolt against a lot of pop music, and its cousin, the blackguard called BBC ... that prevented a lot of new material from entering the fray for many years, and the attacks on many of those "pirate" radio stations is a well known and documented affair ... and no one, EVER, has trashed the BBC and their hidden involvement, and how those folks were paid to do the ugly stuff they did!

Modern prog only has an issue in that too many of the folks, very clear here, are into the SOUND of the music, instead of the music itself ... so you ended up with even more carbon copies of more carbon copies, and there is always someone posting how great that guitarist is, or how great that drummer is, and if you break it down, it is so monotonic and badly designed and defined, to the point where the musicianship should be questioned and the group not added to the annals of "progressive wastebasket".

Honestly, I would not, EVER, want to be a part of any Admin group voting for this or that ... because the sensibilities of many of those folks is to pigeonhole the material, rather than vote for its originality and idea/concept of adding them to PA simply to keep the list bigger and better than any other "progressive" (I like pop-gressive a lot), website out there!

But it creates a serious issue for listeners. And the worst, is no thread about the band and its work, which ought to tell you that fans are either stupid, or they won't bother hearing something else. Got put words in on that new JT thread, of Genesis thread, or ... heaven forbid that we don't find a reason to trash Jon one more time!

Again, too many of those threads are not about the "music" ... and thus, guess what you got in "modern prog" ... the same folks and sensibilities.

But try to raise that level and a couple of folks in this board will immediately jump on you, and the cowardice behind the rest of the members to say that right thing is worse!

Go ahead ... let the fans run the show ... the art will die a few days later!