Anti-Mood Music: The Rejection Of Environment

 

But you can't play prog at parties. It involves a shutting out of the outside world, and seems to involve a disconnection from your environment. The prog artist says: "Evoking recognisable environs/personalities does not interest me. I shall just make something up that does not synch with any particular life experience." Whereas with the other genres the artist collaborates with his surroundings, with prog the artist either rams various sets of surroundings together in a way that does not occur in life or just closes his eyes and reaches inside of himself in an attempt to make something that surroundings have no influence on. Rather than attempting to create songs which suit an emotion someone has or feels like having as is the case with conventional music, prog seems to try to go beyond typical emotional collocations. This sounds like it would create somethin inhuman/alien but the opposite is often true because people do not live lives in terms of bland, steady sections of emotion like we see in radio music. Our lives dart here and there in terms of experience, happy, sad, angry, scary, quiet, loud- as much as we sometimes want lives to be patterened and ordered as genre songs are, there is something false about it. In it's rejection of sounding like something that large unspecific groups of people can enjoy, prog ironically becomes more human.

 

Hope this made sense, may be addendums later if it doesn't.

 

Also consider  some of the vocal, anti-prog brigade claims against prog rock. Both Peel and Mike Farren (in his autobiography) bemoaned prog as being too complicated and not simple like rock'n'roll - and not having strong grooves that encouraged one to dance to the music.  (Ironic considering some of the undanceable music Peel played on his radio show up until his death). A pity that very few people stood up to these pundits in the media  in the 80's and 90's - when we should have told them to piss off and not to denegrate music they don't understand, especially if these guys only(?) wanted to dance to simplier, beat heavy and usually shorter tunes. Peel also said something of the sort : "listening prog and I found I needed A levels to understand, when all I had was GCSEs" - which implies prog was/is elitist music: I for one would not agree. You don't need any special education to enjoy music, whatever form - if it sounds good to your ears, go for it! Why should pundits have so much power to put down certain musics, when at best they can only argue against these in abstract terms.

 

Note: GCSE, general certificate of education examination teken at 15-16 years old in the UK.

A levels - advanced level certificates taken typically at 18 years - a certain number of these certificates in different subjects passed above certain grades, open the door to university level education (if you can afford the fees) , You needs GCSEs to be able to do A level courses. 3 or 4 A levels with good grades are approx equaivalent to the international baccalaureate for UK entrance requirements.

 

I think I never read anything like it here in the last 4 years.

I think this is the kind of thread that makes me visit the forum quite often.

I am not sure I agree to everything you said (though by heart it sounds reasonable) but this is what I expect to get from a true prog / music lover - A unique, fresh and interesting point of view.

I enjoyed reading it (and also some of the other posts).

Thankyou.

Yeah...there is no need for the music to be acceptable within a certain regular social setting, in which case it becomes a secondary accessory to that setting..it should engage you on an independent level and force you to make time for it.  I expect great music to transport me, not just entertain me or the company I keep.  I am not saying that prog is the only genre where this is achieved but at least some prog artists do strive to create a musical expression without consciously endeavouring to make it suitable for a particular social setting.  

Though I wasn't around in the times Dick Heath mentions, I have noticed from footage of old prog bands that both they and the audience would be engaged with utmost concentration in the performance whereas nowadays rock/metal bands - though maybe this still doesn't apply to prog, don't know - make it sort of like a party affair with the frontman giving up the chorus for the crowd to sing (shout) along to.  I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing but maybe the focus is more on giving/having a good time and less on creating a great musical experience?

Sorry!