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Topic ClosedDid Punk Rock really kill Prog Music?

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SteveG View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 15:22
^Prog: Does it prefer Warm Or Cold climates?

Edited by SteveG - September 02 2014 at 15:22
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 15:44
Originally posted by HackettFan HackettFan wrote:

For myself, I never heard of Neo-Prog as a term until I joined PA. Like some others have said, I don't think the strength of Punk was that great where I lived. It may have been different elsewhere. Rush did fine in the 70s. Zappa did fine in the 70s. Others did too, and, although I do think there was a overall fall from a golden age, I don't like the idea that it played itself out. To me, what changed was that the 68-74 batch of Prog bands were spawned by an underground that was no longer functioning to replenish the vitality of the genre. More arena bookings helped Yes, ELP, Genesis and others. They weren't helping Prog overall as a genre.
I think this is one of the best answers that I've heard in years, believe it or not, a fall or decline from a "golden age". That-a-boy, HF.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 16:51
Prog was a sitting duck by 1976 - it was the bourgeois class controlling the FM airways (or the means of production....production of cash from the teenage wasteland class)....it was by then pampered (Floyd could have released ANYTHING post-Dark Side.....think Metal Machine Music), bloated (Topographically bloated....the side long epic had become the norm), and about as far away from the three chord bounce of the roots of rock 'n roll as you can get (when Bloodrock and Styx start copping Bach, then something's gotta give).

There have been some good points brought out in this thread, but something that also occurs to me is that 1976 is the year the VCR, cable TV and Atari video games really began taking hold of the teenage zomboids (that's exactly what we were!!).  No longer was sitting alone in a room with a doob and Relayer the norm.....watching movies, taping them with VCR, playing video games......all this became the new thing to do (not for me, luckily - no tv in the house, just a hi-fi). 

And punk rock spelled the future.....for a back to basics movement, it really was tied up with these tech advances - I never owned a cassette tape until the Talking Heads early albums - it just seemed to point to "the new", especially when that punk stuff started sounding "proggy" (there was an Ultravox thread out there - the electric drums, synths and electronic sounds.....punk adopted the electronic edge of prog, then the dreamy/druggy space rock, finally Talk Talk!  Where was I....?

Anyway, punk was just a natural reaction to the domination of prog by the mid-70s.....just as Marie Antoinette had to be beheaded, so did ELP.  It was just a natural progression - a dialectic born of aversion to excess and a return to simplicity -nothing new, same old slave becomes master becomes slave becomes master....punk got pushed aside by its spawn - New Wave; New Wave got pushed aside by Grunge; Grunge gave way to Hip-Hop......and it's all corporate (change means a whole new wardrobe, music collection, electronic gadgets, accessories....eeeeek!).

Man, sorry guys....friends don't let friends drink and type.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 17:00
All genres go through their natural progression from simple and basic to complex and interesting, as they grow with their audience.

The early 60's saw rock music as we know it come through, and it was simplistic and rather uninteresting, because it was aimed at teenagers and made by teenagers, but as those teenagers matured they made more interesting music, as evident by The Beatles' change to complexity in their later years, then bands like Crimson and Floyd took it up and went even further. But by the late 70's, there were a bunch of new teenagers who wouldn't listen to that, because it wasn't made for them anymore, it was "dad music", so punk came along.

But remember, punk went through a very similar transition - starting off simplistic and raw, as those teenagers grew up they matured, and along came post-punk and gothic rock and darkwave. Same with hip hop - it was originally pretty juvenile, now we have stuff like Kanye West, Madlib and Death Grips, being progressive and interesting.

I feel that this "new wave" of prog is simply the same thing happening to the alt-rock of the early 2000's. The bands that played stuff like grunge are getting bored with it and making more complex music, and it sort of kind of resembles prog rock in a way.

I guess the question really depends on how you define "prog music". If you define it as the symphonic prog style of Yes and Genesis, then punk sure could have killed that, since none of the bands playing it today are any good, but it certainly didn't kill "progressive music" as an idea, and it even became somewhat progressive in its later days.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 17:59
Maybe not single handedly but it definitely was a factor in prog being virtually removed from the mainstream music world in the late seventies.  The funny thing is punk itself didn't last very long in the mainstream. I think just the musical climate in general was changing. Prog went very very underground. I'm not really sure where it stands now. It's not mainstream but it's not currently what I would call deep underground either. 

Edited by Prog_Traveller - September 02 2014 at 18:00
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 18:30
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

^Prog: Does it prefer Warm Or Cold climates?

LOL Clap

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 19:03
Originally posted by Hans il mercante Hans il mercante wrote:

Pretentiousness and self-indulgence did it.



Bullsh*t!
One of the great lies spread by mediocre journalists. They weren't pretentious, they were talented and creative and that pissed off those who weren't. They weren't self indulgent, they were artists expressing themselves in a manner that was appropriate at the time.  All the lies about these two terms can be explained away by simply stating that the antics of our heroes, whether murdering Hammond organs or wearing makeup and batwings around their necks or firing lasers into the air to freak out the audience, were all meant to entertain.

Get over it !
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 19:05
Prog Music, The Barbarians and the Fall of the Roman Empire.

I like to relate present day things to past events or institutions. It gives me a reference for modern events. I always seem to be relating Progressive Rock to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 C.E. Not that Prog has or will fall but the feeling or impression seems the same to me.

The golden Era of Rome was well past when the old Empire was split into the latin speaking Western Empire still ruled by an Emperor in Rome and the Greek speaking Eastern Empire ruled by it's own Emperor in Costantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey). The Western Roman Empire was at first involved with multiple wars with barbarian Goths to the north and east, Huns to the North West and Vandals that had captured all of the Empire's Northern African colonies.

After a period of slow decline added by civil wars, the Barbarians had come to win victories against the Western Romans and had risen to positions of power within the Western Empire. Right up to the Emperor's court, including high ranking military commanders.

Can you recognise the "Barbarians" that have reached within Progressive Music's court?

Edited by SteveG - September 03 2014 at 19:36
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 19:35
I find Gallifrey and Freyacat's responses the most reasonable and close to my own. The music-buying public is very fickle and prone to trends, fads, and manipulation. Most people buy and listen to music simply because they enjoy it, and at base, it is the rhythms and melodies that attract them. Punk was one response to the excesses of Prog; its fans and creators also did not like people telling them what they should listen to. It seems that nowadays most people don't care about that, but I could be wrong (let me know if I am). I have seen a couple of movements in rock to simplify and get back to the basics. Punk and New Wave were the first, Grunge the second (responding to hair-metal bands).
So, we can't entirely blame The Sex Pistols and Ramones, nor can we place it all on Donna Summers and the BeeGees. We can also place blame on Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran.      There are very few cases when any big movement, whether in popular culture or otherwise, can be attributed to any one person or other movement. It is almost always a combination of elements.
The world of sound is certainly capable of infinite variety and, were our sense developed, of infinite extensions. -- George Santayana, "The Sense of Beauty"
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 19:39
^I'm very much for this broad range approach but find it surprising that so few people put any blame on the record industry itself as if it was an innocent party to all of this.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 20:19
Prog generally speaking isn't radio friendly. It doesn't fit into the format for radio because the songs are too long and it goes over the head of your average music listener. For this reason it will never have much more than a cult following. This doesn't mean it should be super obscure either(I think this site proves that)but it's never going to be super huge. It was buried by other genres because of it's lack of radio friendly appeal. I do think there is a lot of prejudice about the genre though. Spock's Beard had an album in the late nineties called "Day for night" that could have had a commercial impact because it was radio friendly(same thing with PT's two albums around the same time period) but because they were and are thought of a prog band it was overlooked.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 20:55
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

Prog Music, The Barbarians and the Fall of the Roman Empire.

I like relate present day things to past events or institutions. It gives me a reference for modern events. I always seem to be relating Progressive Rock to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 C.E. Not that Prog has or will fall but the feeling or impression seems the same to me.

The golden Era of Rome was well past when the old Empire was split into the latin speaking Western Empire still ruled by an Emperor in Rome and the Greek speaking Eastern Empire ruled by it's own Emperor in Costantinople (modern day Istanbul, Turkey). The Western Roman Empire was at first involved with multiple wars with barbarian Goths to the north and east, Huns to the North West and Vandals that had captured all of the Empire's Northern African colonies.

After a period of slow decline added by civil wars, the Barbarians had come to win victories against the Western Romans and had risen to positions of power within the Western Empire. Right up to the Emperor's court, including high ranking military commanders.

Can you recognise the "Barbarians" that have reached within Progressive Music's court?
Ermm Or how about rock becoming prog rock being signified the rise of Julius Caesar and the abolition of the Roman Republic? Or how about rock music, including prog, being the barbarians that ravaged the empire of classical music that, obviously, we should all be extolling? 

The barbarian comparison is a little hyperbolic methinks. Punk musicians and fans weren't uneducated or unthinking (nor did they raid villages), they just made and listened to (respectively) comparatively simpler music. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 21:09
Originally posted by JD JD wrote:


Originally posted by Hans il mercante Hans il mercante wrote:

Pretentiousness and self-indulgence did it.
Bullsh*t!One of the great lies spread by mediocre journalists. They
weren't pretentious, they were talented and creative and that pissed off
those who weren't. They weren't self indulgent, they were artists
expressing themselves in a manner that was appropriate at the time.  All
the lies about these two terms can be explained away by simply stating
that the antics of our heroes, whether murdering Hammond organs or
wearing makeup and batwings around their necks or firing lasers into the
air to freak out the audience, were all meant to entertain.Get over it !


I'm with you on this JD. I remember reading about all the grief Ian Anderson went through from music critics/journalist alike during The Passion Play album release. It's amazing how 'off' some individuals can be.

Prog will always be the most amazing and creative form of musical expression and to be honest I think nothing has really killed it. Prog album sales are up too. Just ask InsideOut records.
A label celebrating 20 years this year. :)
Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 21:25
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

the fact that King Crimson reformed with a New Wave aesthetic to go along with the band's new idea of prog, along with other factors that would imply an end to Progressive Rock or at least a serious depletion of it's ideals.


Why would KC changing styles imply a depletion of Prog Rock ideals? If anything they were sticking to their ideals of constant reinvention in the 80's, much more so that their later albums. They were in fact still progressing.


Edited by Nogbad_The_Bad - September 02 2014 at 21:26
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 21:40
Prog died from autoerotic asphyxiation.
"History of Rock Written by the Losers."
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 21:41
1910: music started
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 02 2014 at 22:53
I believe prog, and rock in general, was killed by the band BostonStyxREOJourneyBadCompanyForeigner.

They started playing that bullsh*t on every rock station and everything went to hell.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 03 2014 at 01:03
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

But did Punk Rock really kill off Progressive Rock ... ?
If it really did, we wouldn't be listening to it, right? Otherwise, define "kill".
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

... did Progressive Rock hit its pinnacle in the mid seventies and was starting to decline anyway?
This makes more sense to me than anything else.
Originally posted by tarkus1980 tarkus1980 wrote:

Prog died from autoerotic asphyxiation.


Edited by Dayvenkirq - September 03 2014 at 01:04
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 03 2014 at 02:12
Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

^Prog: Does it prefer Warm Or Cold climates?

I'd say cold--  it keeps the progress fresh.

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."   -- John F. Kennedy
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 03 2014 at 02:43
That's too easy: prog hit its peak in the mid to late '70s, but, no, punk shlock didn't kill off prog (How silly!); it only diverted the attention of youngsters elsewhere who otherwise might have given prog a go. As surely witnessed by this blog site, others took their place.
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