Was Anglagard the reason why Prog rock rebirth?

WalterDigsTunes wrote:  .....  The 90s were the beginning of the end, a dark age when banal slackers recycled old ideas and sold them as new. Oasis and Nirvana and Anglagard? Give me a break. None of these idiots ever came up with an idea that wasn't already done (in a superior fashion) before 1989. They had no sense of fun or originality; dour derisive and derivative, their crimes against culture should be prosecuted by all nations.

Dick Heath wrote: I continue to disagree with you and stick to what we first generation progressive rock/music fans ironically meant by neo.prog when this music first appeared. Were you there?!

richardh wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: richardh wrote: The ninties saw a  general shift in attitude about music. Proper bands that could play their own instruments came back into vogue basically because people got fed up with the prefrabicated over produced bullsh*t that littered the eighties music scene. Nirvana and Oasis became massive in the 90's showing this shift as well as anything. The most important band to me in the British rock scene was Mansun who produced one of the best albums of the decade with Attack Of The Grey Lantern including more than a few nods to progressive rock. Radiohead also emerged and were actually tagged 'prog rock' in some quarters. It was a safe time for prog bands too emerge from the closet properly and with a proper sense of pride about what they were doing. There was also too some extent a positive re-evaluation of progressive rock. It was just a very healthy decade for music (despite what Walter may think otherwise) That atrocious narrative deserves to be shot in the back of the head with a Colt 45. Its absolute rubbish. The 1980s were the last decade that offered modernist innovation, for it was a time where faith in the promise of technological achievement allowed new sounds to develop thanks to the digital revolution. The 90s were the beginning of the end, a dark age when banal slackers recycled old ideas and sold them as new. Oasis and Nirvana and Anglagard? Give me a break. None of these idiots ever came up with an idea that wasn't already done (in a superior fashion) before 1989. They had no sense of fun or originality; dour derisive and derivative, their crimes against culture should be prosecuted by all nations. At least I should be grateful you actually bothered to explain your view. But that is all it is. I'm not throwiing out my albums made post 1989 thats for sure. All music looks backward to some extent for inspiration.Nothing happens in a vacuum. Prog in the seventies arguably started to get stale after 1972 when bands were already starting to recycle ideas.That's one reason why punk and new wave happened because many people saw the fallacy of bands like Yes ,Genesis and ELP passing off their music as 'progressive' when it obviously wasn't. (I still like it though) As for 80's music there was some great artists like Kate Bush and they didn't suddenly drop dead on the 1st January 1990.There was never some arbitary cut off.     btw to rubbish my comments and the come up with nonsense is quite hilarious:   The 1980s were the last decade that offered modernist innovation, for it was a time where faith in the promise of technological achievement allowed new sounds to develop thanks to the digital revolution

Post-1989 music offers absolutely no innovation. The advent of digital brought music to its limits during the 80s; whether or not you enjoy synth-heavy bands is your problem, but they were the last real revolutionaries of the art form once known as music.


Edited by WalterDigsTunes - November 04 2010 at 02:30

Of course its a matter of perspective and taste. The idea that you can objectively decide a cut off date for innovation is nonsense. There were many that thought innovation ended at the end of the sixties and that music just became a souless enterprise after that dominated by 'Muso's' with little wit or creative ability.John Peel's put downs of Yes and ELP were very well known to prog fans.From his perspective Punk rode to the rescue and brought a more 'innocent' and less cynical approach back to music. Naturally I see it very different.

The beauty of the nineties is that bands like Radiohead,Mansun and Oasis were able to draw upon a wider variety of influences. Noel Gallacher has expressed his love of Pink Floyd's The Wall. Radiohead were even called 'prog rockers' after OK Computer.Kid A then showed something different but like anyone they had to start somewhere. The Beatles started off covering American rock n roll songs before realising they could write their own songs. Music is a collective thing. Its dynamic and fascinating. Not some linear progression that starts at point A and ends at point B.

Prog rock today has more forms and shapes than before. so many genres, but we all conclude that symphonic rock are the real roots of prog rock. In the 80's symphonic prog was dead. and that's a truth. only neo prog. and yes. they help keep the light on for prog. but the true shape was vanishing. and then in the begining's of the 90's, mainly from sweden, bands like Anglagard, Par Lindh, Anekdoten, etc, were not afraid to continue the real reason why prog is know. and that's REAL PURE SYMPHONIC PROG ROCK.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: Post-1989 music offers absolutely no innovation. The advent of digital brought music to its limits during the 80s; whether or not you enjoy synth-heavy bands is your problem, but they were the last real revolutionaries of the art form once known as music. Sorry, but I don't buy this. I always believed that most bands of the 80's were extremely derivative, and the use of digital instruments might be an innovation or a revolution in technology, but I care more for the music than for the technology. Now, the bands of the 90's (mainly Swedish were not making derivatibve music, they were creating new and original Symphonic Prog.....It's clear that Symphonic Prog may sound closer to the 70's, but that's a logical consequence of he fact that  most of the bands in the 70's played Symphonic Prog and the genre has a structure that's familiar fopr all of us.. You take bands as Marillion (which I love - art least Fish's era-) and you can say.."Hey Assassin sounds almost as "Battle for the Epping Forest", but in the case of Anglagard you can find that the sound is familiar, but not identify any moment with a song from a 70's band. This is because any Symphonic band will have some STYLISTIC similarity with Yes, Genesis or Camel, not because they are remaking Genesis, Yes or Camel's music. Symphonic genre was not created to last a decade and then vanish, Symphonic Prog reached the first peak in the 70's, but only in the 90's new bands dared to make new Symphonic. Iván

They merely venture into the form, but where's the substance? Its rehashing the formula, sound, aesthetics and values of yesteryear. The 80s neoprog bands tinkered with the tones of their era, the last era of innovative sound design. The 90s bands, in contrast, copy the attitude and sound of the 70s. Progress? More like absolute regression.

moshkito wrote: Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Symphonic genre was not created to last a decade and then vanish, Symphonic Prog reached the first peak in the 70's, but only in the 90's new bands dared to make new Symphonic. Iván   Ivan ... you're going around the incorrect loop ... symphonic anything, of which we want to add the music we love, has been around for hundreds of years ... and it didn't disappear simply because Genesis went Pop and ELP went Kaboom and Disco went laladin!

ExittheLemming wrote: It seems absurd to cite the advent of digital technology in the 80's as the last credible innovation in music. We're talking about SAMPLING here hello? i.e. the means to copy any audio source and splice same into your own music. Digital sampling should have represented a fantastic creative tool for musicians but it ended up as a lazy substitute for a lack of original ideas and that pretty much sums up the output of the 'magpie decade' in my book. Even something as dodgy as plagiarism has a hierarchy: to copy something verbatim and pass of as your own creation you can use a digital sampler - the other type of sampler is the one that exists between your ears and you actually have to understand music to replicate what you hear using one of those.

Now that everything can be copied, what's original? Except for the works of innovators who happen to operate in the initial moments of digital sampling, the idea quickly becomes a cliche. Sampling is the logical endpoint for innovation, and this occurs in the late 80s. The 80s is the last moment in which originality is allowed to even exist.


Edited by WalterDigsTunes - November 04 2010 at 22:37

ExittheLemming wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: ExittheLemming wrote: It seems absurd to cite the advent of digital technology in the 80's as the last credible innovation in music. We're talking about SAMPLING here hello? i.e. the means to copy any audio source and splice same into your own music. Digital sampling should have represented a fantastic creative tool for musicians but it ended up as a lazy substitute for a lack of original ideas and that pretty much sums up the output of the 'magpie decade' in my book. Even something as dodgy as plagiarism has a hierarchy: to copy something verbatim and pass of as your own creation you can use a digital sampler - the other type of sampler is the one that exists between your ears and you actually have to understand music to replicate what you hear using one of those. Now that everything can be copied, what's original? Except for the works of innovators who happen to operate in the initial moments of digital sampling, the idea quickly becomes a cliche. Sampling is the logical endpoint for innovation, and this occurs in the late 80s. The 80s is the last moment in which originality is allowed to even exist. Plagiarists have been able to copy since before there was even electricity, it's just that digital technology made it considerably easier. Your post reads like something the late Kathy Acker would have written i.e. one of those post-modernist dismissals where plagiarism is considered an acceptable artistic device with it's apologists citing 'irony' as their muse. Following your logic here, the advent of the camera in the 19th Century would have forestalled Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Expressionism and Surrealism? That's bollocks ain't it?

I can't stand post-modern ideas.  I stand by the modernist notions of progress and originality. However, originality in the post-89 context is non-existent and absolutely impossible. Its all a rehash of previous greatness. Sampling, in the 80s, is novel and innovative. However, in the post-89 era its novelty wears out.and becomes a standard element in music. Stealing and recontextualizing becomes old hat, another banality in an age without ideas.

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: WalterDigsTunes wrote: However, originality in the post-89 context is non-existent and absolutely impossible. Its all a rehash of previous greatness.  Why impossible? If it was possible for Bach to make original Baroque music 200 years after Monteverdi, then is possible for any good artist to make original Symphonic music after 10, 20, or 50  years. Genres used to last centuries, why do we insist in the idea that Symphonic Prog only lasted 10 years? Iván

A style, an approach and an aesthetic are all the product of their time. The 70s produced excellent symphonic music, and superb bands latched onto the possibilities during this period of time. Latecomers in the post-89 era operate in an era without ideas, without originality. These johnny-come-latelies artificially replicate the ethos of another age. Their false productions are inherently derivative and inferior to the original pieces. Divorced from its proper context, the musical approach they seek to replicate is a weak aberration sustained by the bankrupt ethics of the post-89 age. Every time you support a post-89 "artist" you are endorsing theft and the disenfranchisement of a pre-89 hero.

Genres don't last centuries. The 20th century is littered with fleeting movements and styles that encompass short time spans of a decade or less. Symphonic prog had its moment. Let's enjoy the fruits of that era rather than consume the poisonous errors of post-89 thieves.