Prog Song Structure

moshkito wrote: Progosopher wrote: ...  I am finding some difficulty with this discussion.  As commonly happens, we spend as much time, if not more, on side issues rather than on the original topic.  As usual, a clear set of definitions would help us out here.  What is meant by structure?  Is it a matter of composition or of something else?  Something more?  What do we mean by composition?  Questions such as these are issues of discussion themselves, so unless we get that clarity from the OP we will inevitably meander through the discussion.  And even then, we would question the definitions.  This is an open forum, though, anything goes.  Never a dull moment on the Forum!   The bigger problem is not the discussion, but some folks attitude, when they are more interested in insulting people, than they are in adding to the discussion with ideas.   It's a good discussion, were it not for the question meaning really well and only wanting to know about music from Eric Clapton to Dream Theater, or just 30 or 40 years. On a wider scale, the whole thing changes and hides a bit more as just another bit and piece in teh histroy of music! Nothing bigger or better than anything else.   My only concern is that it makes it look like people can only think of music, IF IT HAS STRUCTURE, and the late 60's and early 70's had a massive movement of "anti-film", "anti-art" and "anti-music" and many other terms for it. But we refuse to give those folks any credit, for their work. For all we know and they know, these artists were a bunch of bums and idiots, and the connection to music, pop, jazz, and any other is not exactly invisible!

There's no such thing as European culture. You all descend from Asians and Africans. 

If we all descend from soup then prog belongs to the culinary arts in which case I guess it's French.

The T wrote: If we all descend from soup then prog belongs to the culinary arts in which case I guess it's French.

Dean wrote: ...

Svetonio wrote: Rick Robson wrote: Does somebody know how would it sound the Viking folk music? Quite curious about it and its structure, I've only known Celtic folk... Add traditional Ukraine folk too. The Vikings are not just sailed across the ocean; they were moved to the Baltic rivers too. When they got hold of the Volga River, they were constantly sailed the river and settled on the river bank; so Volga, Dnieper, and Black Sea also. The Vikings have created a foothold in Kiev as solid and secure base for their expeditions to Byzantium. At the end, Byzantines were realized that it is better that the Vikings were baptized. In this way, Vikings' leader at that time get a new name - Jaroslav, who consenquenty won the right to say: "I am the younger brother of the Emperor of Byzantium!". However, Jaroslav was still to be a Viking

The Dark Elf wrote: Dean wrote: rogerthat wrote: Dean wrote: rogerthat wrote: Are there some unknown, obscure prog albums that beat the sales of Thriller by a multiple of 10 or something like that that UK should so concern itself with appropriating prog as part of the British empire? I wasn't aware that a) we were "appropriating" prog as part of the Brititititish Umpire and b) that Thriller was Prog. I was being sarcastic. So was I. As was my abbreviated history of sarcasm. I am sure someone can offer a post-colonial revisionist history of sarcasm as well. Perhaps John Cleese....or Pedro.

Na. It's the Jews. After all it was their sense of humor that got them through a few decades of oppression.

moshkito wrote: The Dark Elf wrote: "If you have specific evidence that what we refer to as "Progressive Rock" did not originate in Britain in the late 60s, then provide it. That's it. No socialist babble. No revisionist worldview prattle. No mind-numbing flights of film fantasy." ...   It's not worth the hassle, because none of you will give it a good listen. And besides, you're gonna say it's not rock, and then find another excuse because it doesn't have a mellotron or a bike!   If you, or Dean, were interested, you would not be sitting waiting for some heavenly music corporation to arrive at your door and tell you that it is this or that, because you both will never accept it or appreciate it as such. So what would be the point?   I'm not the librarian. I remember what I heard, and can give it some kind of definition (more or less) when I was younger, but at 13, 14 and 15, the names do not exactly stick too well (I'm 63 now!), and I am not going to research stuff that is hard to find.   It was the same thing with "Bitter Sugar" the Cuban film that also had some unreal progressive music in it, but there is no soundtrack, western hemisphere stuff to bring that music out or listen to the band and any other bands, but there is no interest here, when all you and Dean can do is put down anyone that mentions other countries! Like we don't even have folks here that live in those countries!   All of Latin America has a very rich tradition of music and it has been copied many times, and you might even look ar reggae and before that calypso, which Harry Belafonte made famous in our world but has been there for a very long time. It's part of the cultural tradition, it's not a "music scene". Argentina also has some serious rock bands that mix Tango and other things into it. The mix is odd for your ear and mine and it is like listening to Carmen, and immediately saying it is not progressive, because he is playing spanish guitar scales and fingerings that no sane rock music guitarist will ever try except someone like Chris Squire on his bass, who does similar things sometimes. To my ear, it even sounds very "spanish", but you have not spent time in Spain, Portugal or Brazil, for that statement to make sense.   I'm quite alright with that, actually! And this is the part that you both will not give myself, or anyone else, credit for. Not that I need an award, not loking for it, and don't need it, but just being understood, and continuously being told that you can not possibly grok what people say! You can always ask what we meant!

I think an example of Prog that did not originate in England in the 1960s has already been mentioned; MOI - Freak Out. Based on the characteristics that are normally attributed to Prog, that's Prog. It was not traditionally associated with that term, hence part of the problem, but I will continue to presume the broader definition of Prog that ProgArchives adopts. Freak Out, Absolutely Free... were not influenced by British Prog and Freak Out was prior to it. By the same token, British Prog was not influenced in any great fashion by Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart in the 1960s, I think it may be fair to say. Both were non-derivative from each other. So, the US West Coast band(s?) launched Prog slightly earlier, but did not grow it very well. Soft Machine alone probably spawned more individual Prog bands. For this Zappa discovered a lot of musicians, a lot of them did not do what we generally consider Prog in their own work (e.g. Jean Luc Ponty did some nice Jazz, but we don't usually consider it Prog).

Both sides in this are correct depending on our classification method, and the posts are talking past each other by assuming different classification methods. I think England has a rightful claim to the place where the Prog movement, as a "movement", began. But if you're looking less at influence on Prog in general and more at the necessary and sufficient characteristics of Prog, some few early bands like Zappa's MOI can rightly add to their accolades.

As an analogy from biology, consider how Dimetrodon had all the necessary and sufficient characteristics of a reptile, but is not related to any reptiles and no reptile today is descended from it, but all of the mammals are.

Happy Easter