Generation gaps in progressive music

Toddler wrote: The "Progressive Rock" era of the 70's influenced several generations of musicians , who BTW, were young at the time. For example musicians who traveled the world, were not successful ...even though they were recording in studios and made a living doing covers ...

The TOM DOWD dvd has a nice take on this and I recommend seeing it. Not quite this way, but close.

Basically, though, you have to realize that the media (per se) did not exist as it does today, at the beginning of the century. You must realize the incredible sense when people first saw moving pictures, and the famous shot that was aimed at the camera ... and many people walked out of the theater and screamed, and a couple of newspapers wrote articles about how insensitive the film makers were when they did that.

In Europe, however, film was considered more of an "art", and there was less of a reaction, but many folks in the upper classes were already watching film privately, and there are many jokes about it in Victorian Literature, including a famous one "... we can't show that to the lower classes ... what will they think?"

Things like the first "talkie" gave folks one of the very first ideas that there were arts elsewhere, even if they were different. Everyone had their local this and that, and everyone knew the famous such and such from the picture on the paper, but no one had heard of a whole lot more. And right after the "talkies" radio became much more important as it was used as an effective tool in WW2. This started back in the 30's, and even was creating some senstational reactions, specially when you consider Orson Welles and then realize that even the US Congress considered banning him from the radio!

Per Tom dowd, after WW2, mostly the film studios got their stars to sing, and they started putting out albums, which inadvertantly ended up almost single handedly killing a lot of black music that was getting very well known around the country. But the "stars" were selling! The others were not getting any play on radio, or any attention, therefore they can't be good .... SOUND FAMILIAR? ....

This was a very sad time for the "Black Community" who created many styles of Blues, Rock n' Roll, Jazz and to boot...their music was being ripped off by a vast majority of white people that controlled the industry. This was a complete and utter disaster and beyond that was a disgraceful act to all the Blues masters, Jazz masters, and innovative Rock n' Rollers. When Miles Davis and John McLaughlin joined forces..this reality of racism did not affect their art..unless in which case there may have been a theme on the subject itself. Tribute To Jack Johnson has that subtle approach to the man's life. The music is very mysterious sounding in various sections , coming across more ambient  and clearly certain artists had little fear of being Black or White and working together. This judgement on the color of a person's skin destroyed potential for music to grow during that period in time. It was completely useless and pointless to make a judgement revolving around such ridiculous "back in the woods" type thinking and have the money power to pursue it

The late 50's and early 60's brought out an amazing boom in music and it was at this time that many people woke up to the sales potential of many of these.

It's really hard to discuss "progressive" within these contexts, because it was all "new", and as such, even our favorite scene is an extension of what was there before. That music got stuck on the radio/topten thing and style is another story.

But music, just like theater, film, and painting in the 20th century ... NEVER ... stopped growing and showing something different. There is no GAP. Except in our view of things!