How has prog progressed rock?

Hi,

I think this is true in the English speaking countries where the music thing has been overly COMMERCIAL FOR OVER 50 YEARS, but in other places, and for the most part the great example is "krautrock" where no record company would touch anything German until after 72/73/74 when numbers all of a sudden jumped, which, for all intents and purposes allowed many bands and groups to create their own thing and not have to be "controlled" by a commercial interest that was not interested in creative stuff, but only things that sold, or hits.

Right after the 60's FM radio took off in America, only to get completely bought out and sold out by 1976 or 1977, and from that point on most of those stations went on to play their "blue dots", their "green dots" and their "poop dots" ... and pretty much killed the freedom of the music all around, which did not help the new bands at all ... when you hear far out and neat experimental stuff, it tends to inspire you, but when you get 1910 Fruitgum Salad, The Monkees, The Partridge This or That, and one token song like "Light My Fire" in the middle of it, you know very well that the station doesn't care about the music ... it's just what (supposedly) sells ... which in some cases looked bigger because it was also on a church show on Sundays!

To me, the rock radio only progressed to LOUD ... and NOISE ... and the majority of the bands listed above, were not exactly "progressive" or as inventive as we would imagine they should be for inclusion to the PA, for example as a full fledged member of a Progressive Music community. I, honestly, did not touch any of those "loud" bands, and in fact even walked out of a DP concert ... because it was too loud and out of tune at the Long Beach Arena (then), right after seeing someone like Leon Russell, whose band was known for being tight, although also loud.

The whole "history" of rock radio, does not include "progressive" anything for the most part, although one can name one or two folks that were well known players of said product, but in general, radio, NEVER, helped any band make it in the progressive genre, maybe with the exception of two pieces by ELP, and by the time the 2nd one came, they couldn't give a poop about radio! YES, GENESIS and most of the other progressive bands came out of the "IMPORTS" in the West Coast, and were played by what would be considered 2nd rate stations not as big as the 1 and 2 in LA (KMET and KLOS), whose idea of "progressive" (they never used that term, ask Jim Ladd!), was playing a cut from Pink Floyd and after the spring release of DSOTM, playing the whole side 1 of the album. And, in some ways, that was when the "progressive" thing started getting hurt, because all of a sudden everything had to have a certain quality that most bands did not have, and could not sustain financially.

Radio, in my estimation, specially in the West Coast, had been in decline for some time. The days of the short versions of "Light My Fire" (you can still buy that single btw!), were replaced by the longer versions of the song, and 2 to 3 years later, it was back to a top ten dictated list that was not real, and it was pretty obvious since every week it had a band listed that was a record company darling, and not really selling ... as an example Led Zeppelin or The Who, did not need huge posters and banners all over Hollywood Blvd and the Sunset Strip because they could sell out in 20 minutes! The huge everything else, pretty much showed you who the record company wanted to sell big to make more money, specially when they owned the work, and not the band ... lots of bands got caught in that! Fame, and broke!

Progressive Music has its roots in Europe for the most part, and FOR MY TASTES, is a part of the PROGRESSIVE tastes and experiments in the arts that EUROPE is known for, be it film (progressive since the late 50's in France as an example!), theater, writing, painting and many other arts ... however, England with its commercial papers and periodicals trying hard to sell the LP's would not discuss "art" because they would not make money off it ... thus Melody Maker and The New Music Express, specifically concentrated on rock music and its "independent" streak, none of which was really artistic at all, but in most cases just rehash and in some ways a DAW design piece of music 25 years before the DAW. It was all sort of a Hollywood thing in London, making sure that the stars in their cover got more sales out of it, and those periodicals simply would not admit that they were just another tool for selling ... had nothing to do with the arts, and most folks reading anything in there could never really find some decent and intelligent discussions ... but it did show that London had the greatest array of music anywhere, foreign based included, which says something for the audience that the magazines themselves could not. I still remember reading some ash-hole say that TD sounded like washing machine music, and no idiot EVER said anything like ... is that guy even listening to 3 to 5 seconds of it?

That ought to tell you what the whole thing was about!

WFV wrote: ... She mentions a series MTV is doing on progressive rock and he scoffs at the mentions of the bands featured - "is that progressive rock"?  He loosely defines prog as rock that doesn't follow the rock formula - rock that doesn't sound like itself.

And this is, the only definition that makes sense ... which is completely ignored! The definition we have is asking for a "format" and it is being followed instead of people paying attention to the originators, that had less of a formula than they did format.

We still don't get that, and most folks listening to new things ... what do they usually look for? Lyrics telling them what's it all about, and some beat and format they can follow ... otherwise it's too weird and meanders way too much! This is the main reason why I want to do away with the top ten albums in PA and turn it into a Top 100 bands instead, so that any band is treated as a "composer", instead of having 5 or 6 albums from the same band in the listing. It brings the "design" of "progressive" down to a couple of bands, and people lose interest in the rest real quick, because they are not famous or listed!

Why do we keep refusing to do what the originators did? Noooooooo we have to have someone tell us first!

For the most part it all started out as a sort of revolution against "commercial" radio .... and for all intents and purposes, this is still the case, and no one wants to discuss it ... although, today's radio (both FM and AM) are hardly the trend setters they used to be 50 years ago.

However, and this is important, in places like NY, Tokyo, Paris, and London, one play can get a band around 50K sales and immediately other stations will follow and before you know it, they have 100K to 200K sales in one place alone. The fact that the rest of the country does not care, play or even know who the artist is, becomes a factor that changes the previous rules some ... so a band is big in NY (let's say Dream Theater), and it sells 1K CD's in San Francisco ... the distortion now is really important ... !!!!

As for progression, not sure how you can say it progressed one more than the other ... it was more visible on the "pop radio" because it was in the middle of hits, whereas the college radio and lesser services, would not even qualify as bonafide radio stations that played "pop" or "anythingelse" out there, although in places like England, the college circuit is still the big one for bands taking off. This is not the case in America, and hasn't been for some time.