"Prog music/wider non-mainstream music" in history
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Topic: "Prog music/wider non-mainstream music" in history
Posted By: stonebeard
Subject: "Prog music/wider non-mainstream music" in history
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 00:59
File under Philosophy... I have been thinking about this lately, and am now just putting it out there. I suppose I could say "how will prog be remembered," but this is not as specific as I'd like to be. When I read history books for classes (textbooks), I see political and economic changes with significant impact on the course of history highlighted for importance. But there is also the cultural factor. Explaining the culture of the times in times past, to me, seems much easier than if one wanted to describe the culture of the 20th and 21st centuries. Of course this is a generalization, but we cannot understate the explosion of creativity in 20th century music, specifically rock music (and also electronic/new age/etc. but specifically rock for now). I'm sure that when the history books are written after enough time has passed and we don't go as in depth as we can now with 20th century developments in society, there will be certain things covered when talking about rock music. Rock 'n' roll, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Woodstock, superficiality (pop stars), DIY (internet, myspace) bands. But where will the music that is groundbreaking and experimental and truly worthy of being remembered, not because the masses latched onto it and it became a cultural monolith? My fear is that 20th and 21st (so far) century music history will be written by RollingStone magazine (in essence, if not exactly reality). The mainstream acts and events will get their coverage of course, but what of progressive rock, electronica, new age, and other "niche" genres not covered by mainstream outlets? Will these be included in high school textbooks about World History in the 22nd century, where masses of people can read about them? Or will they be relegated to an upper-level History of Modern Music university course only majors in history or music would ever see? If no one remembers it, it might as well not have happened... Or perhaps it is that the music is around us, and thus cannot ever be escaped. Vinyl albums and CDs have not rotted away yet, and they might not for a long time, so as long as the physical product is out there and there is a means of playing them, is it ever dead? ------------- http://soundcloud.com/drewagler" rel="nofollow - My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want! |
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Posted By: Speesh
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 01:41
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I tend not to think about it really, I guess I look the future in the same way I look at non-mainstream music now. I used to find it upsetting that they're not getting the recognition they deserve, but that's just people. The mainstream is just as blind to this great music now as it will be centuries from now. Now all I can really do is take solace in the fact that I and many others can enjoy this great music to a degree the mainstream can't. I'd also have to say that many bands that make this groundbreaking and experimental music aren't doing it for timeless fame/fortune, but to express themselves to those open-minded enough to listen and appreciate. I could be wrong, but I'd like to think many people share my sentiment that music is made for the present. In my opinion when great music is forgotten it isn't really a loss, because it already served its artistic purpose. Though like many other philosophical topics, opinions are subjective. It differs based on people's nature. Either way I'm just gonna put it all out of my mind and enjoy, as well as try to help others to enjoy music as much as I do. Now that I'm in university that's much easier to do, plenty of fresh intellectual minds to mold here! I'm just rambling here though, hopefully someone will get something out of my disorganized thoughts... |
Posted By: toolis
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 05:01
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as long as there is audience of any kind of music, the heritage will continue, much as i got my father's vinyls and my future kid will get my cds and my grand child will get his mp3s... i know, maybe, some music may not be remembered or filed in "the history of music", albeit i find it hard not to, but people who really care will pass on the torch... besides, i don't suppose that there was eg a whole 50's music scene that everyone's ignoring its existence cause almost 6 decades have passed since then... ------------- -music is like pornography... sometimes amateurs turn us on, even more... -sometimes you are the pigeon and sometimes you are the statue... |
Posted By: salmacis
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 06:06
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The likes of Rolling Stone can't wipe out the sales figures, really. That 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame' farce doesn't get treated with much seriousness in articles I've read and forums I frequent; look at the furore over Madonna's recent induction. Even worse than that for me is how marginal figures to any history of rock and roll such as Bobby Darin, Percy Sledge and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers have been inducted when they have had few hits or in Bobby Darin's case, is scarcely linked to rock at all.
The problem with that institution is that inclusions such as these reflect the bias of people like Jann Wenner and Dave Marsh, who recall the 'good old days' of rock (ie- the 50s and 60s!) and find it hard to accept deviations from that format. That's why Genesis, Yes, Rush, Roxy Music, Deep Purple, ELP, King Crimson or Jethro Tull are not in there, despite having far greater influence and commercial success than those marginal inclusions I flagged up (and those are just the tip of the iceberg!). It's not even consistent; even those proto-punk type acts like The Stooges, New York Dolls and the MC5 aren't in there either.
History will ultimately decide; when those dinosaurs like Robert Christgau, Wenner and Marsh are long gone, I imagine rock music, as with art, literature and other musics such as jazz and classical, will gain a reassessment over the years. Prog is probably already better thought of now than it was in the 80s and 90s, I would say- only the 'old guard' of music journalists and in the UK, the likes of the NME and those music critics for The Guardian newspaper (who themselves are largely hangovers of the 80s, writing for defunct papers like Melody Maker and Sounds) seem to think there's any worth in perpetuating the old biases.
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Posted By: salmacis
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 06:13
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And just look at this article from a guy who is actually on the R&RHOF ballot that agrees with a lot my points, which I just found:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/14/DDBITBMBD.DTL - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/14/DDBITBMBD.DTL
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Posted By: laplace
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 10:06
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I think it's harder for any one media organ to define a section of music now that the opinions of musicians, fans and critics are archived on the internet - "blogosphere" is a terrible word but the effect gives the anonymous poster almost as much sway as the Rolling Stone columnists who only like faux-garage rock. Not to be self-serving but as long as sites like progarchives, GEPR et all exist no-one can monopolize the coverage of prog. Torrent sites and P2P mechanisms play a huge role too, whether we hate them or embrace them, since they de-obfuscate music and make it available in the most vulgar way possible. Positive discussion of the music may never get on TV but *for anyone who's looking* a far more balanced summary of progressive rock is immediately available. Of course, being conscious of this, we should step up conversation in this forum since we're a time capsule in the making. More analysis and less lists! ;P ------------- FREEDOM OF SPEECH GO TO HELL |
Posted By: Chicapah
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 11:22
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My thinking is that it will depend totally on the depth of the medium reporting on the musical history of this era. In other words, if it is part of a shallow textbook that devotes a sum of three paragraphs to the realm of jazz then prog would be lucky to get mentioned in a sentence or two. But if it happens to be a comprehensive college-level course then I would expect any respectable curriculum to include musical styles other than "mainstream" and include the Zappas and Genesis' (etcetera) of late 20th and early 21st century culture. Will prog be forgotten? No more than Mozart was (and few understood his art in his time). ------------- "Literature is well enough, as a time-passer, and for the improvement and general elevation and purification of mankind, but it has no practical value" - Mark Twain |
Posted By: nightlamp
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 15:09
To be fair, I don't see 20th/21st C. culture as being any more or less "creative" than previous ones; every musical era has had conservative and avant-garde elements. If history provides any consolation, musicologists have been pretty successful about separating the wheat from the chaff when critically examining past musical eras. Opera was insanely popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, but of the hundreds (thousands?) of composers cashing in on the trend, how many still have works performed or studied? What percentage of those composers still even have works in print or are mentioned in textbooks? Similarly, most modern bands--progressive and otherwise-- will be swept away into the dustbins of history, but I would think that at least a handful of progressive bands will be remembered as being innovative contributors to this era's popular music. While I certainly don't foresee progressive rock being included in high school world history texts, I can see it being addressed in upper-division or graduate seminars along with other strains of experimental rock & jazz. (Much to the chagrin of some of its more ardent fans, Prog will not be vindicated by history as being the "greatest rock music genre EVAR.") I also envision future generations of smug hipsters keeping the progressive flame alive with name-droppings of "obscure" 20th century bands... Providing our civilization lasts that long, I think that in some ways, 22nd-century musicologists will be more interested in meta-musical aspects of late 20th- and early 21st-century popular music: the hyper-fragmentation of genres (which in turn reflects both the post-1960s fragmentation of youth subculture and the rise of the Information Age), music as commodity, changing paradigms of music production and distribution (internet/DIY, viral marketing, etc.), etc. |
stonebeard wrote:Posted By: fuxi
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 15:58
Some people have pointed out "history will decide" whether prog is going to survive or not, but even interpretative history never stands still! That's why Nightlamp's mentioning of opera is instructive. The past two decades have seen an enormous revival of baroque opera, a genre which had been almost forgotten about. Many great works which had lain dormant for centuries (by Handel, Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and others) have now been succesfully recorded and staged. Something similar has happened with the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. Before the 1980s relatively few conductors performed and recorded all of these (Solti, Kubelik and Bernstein are the only ones I can think of) and the critics didn't take them seriously. Mahler's music was either seen as overblown or as a joke. Until there was a gigantic Mahler-boom! Mahler's eclectic, bitterly ironic music seemed to fit the end of the century's "post-modern" mood. All of which goes to say: in musical history, as with everything, fashions change. The likes of Dave Marsh and Rolling Stone are not going to be setting the trends forever. Music historians will keep analysing the great rock music boom of the 1960s and beyond, and some of them will undoubtedly explore the byways, including prog. A first step can already be seen in Simon Reynolds' fascinating study of (mainly British) postpunk (1978 - 1984), RIP IT UP AND START AGAIN. While focussing on bands such as Wire, Joy Division, PiL and the Fall, Reynolds openly states (a) that many of these bands were influenced by prog; (b) that, contrary to punk mythology, the first half of the 1970s was NOT a fallow period in rock history but a time of amazing creativity. |
Posted By: LinusW
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 20:18
I have nothing to add. The only reason while I'm writing anything at all is because having nothing to add feels...strangely unpleasant! 
------------- http://www.last.fm/user/LinusW88" rel="nofollow - Blargh |
Posted By: Atavachron
Date Posted: March 25 2008 at 20:40
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Prog will probably not be remembered, at least not in the way we would think, but it will be documented and always appreciated by those who know |
Posted By: popeyethecat
Date Posted: March 26 2008 at 17:42
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Pop music will probably be remembered like folk music, looked upon patronisingly by many. What will probably be remembered is the Classical music that a few people will listen to, while most listen to the pop that is current at the time. Things like prog may be remembered like some classical music of old is, like the music written specifically for guitar in the late 1800s, which differed from the most famous music of that time simply because it was written for an instrument that wasn't in the orchestra or particularly popular (as opposed to the lute music of the 1500s). Perhaps. I don't think the 20th Century had a creative outburst that really stands out in the grand scheme of things, just the development of technology. Not the subsequent music particularly. ------------- 
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Posted By: el böthy
Date Posted: March 26 2008 at 22:31
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If what you ask if children in the 23th century will ever read about a certain "Fred Firth", then I must say I doubt so.
------------- "You want me to play what, Robert?" 
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Posted By: BaldJean
Date Posted: March 27 2008 at 05:43
history is always written by the winners; the losers become a footnote. so our purpose should be to do everything to make sure prog and other kinds of meaningful music become winners -------------  A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta |
Posted By: fuxi
Date Posted: March 27 2008 at 11:36
Good enough for me!
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Posted By: Easy Money
Date Posted: March 27 2008 at 12:17
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This has nothing to do with talent or my personal taste, but I think outside of the rock originators (Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Elvis etc) probably the most documented rock musicians will be The Beatles, Dylan, and Hendrix, who are (were) all fairly progressive artists, although maybe not what would be defined as "progressive rock" per se. Whether or not they deserve that acclaim is a matter of personal opinion.
I think the PA artist who has the best chance of being an enduring foot note is probably Zappa, and Fripp probably has the best shot at being the long-time example of what might be called pure progressive rock. ------------- Help the victims of the russian invasion: http://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=28523&PID=130446&title=various-ways-you-can-help-ukraine#130446 |
Posted By: darkshade
Date Posted: March 27 2008 at 15:08
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for progressive music at least, people between the ages of 17-26 are definitely more accepting of progressive music now than any other time since the 70's. if you tried to get kids that age into that music back in the early 90's they'd laugh and call it stupid. so if anything, the FUTURE looks real good for progressive music these days. that's why i feel this upcoming decade is going to be very interesting for music. ------------- http://www.last.fm/user/MysticBoogy" rel="nofollow - My Last.fm 
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Posted By: endlessepic
Date Posted: April 16 2008 at 21:06
Agreed. I'm in that age range and know quite a few buddies from my hometown who like varying amounts of prog rock. |
Posted By: keiser willhelm
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 00:45
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There is little fear of progressive music becoming lost in the ocean of pop music, magazines, Grammy's, "Hall of Fames" because of the tremendous power the internet gives the fan. Blogs, fan sites (PA), google, LastFM., Myspace, the future looks very good not just for progressive music, but music in general. The ability of bands to forgo a label almost entirely and release their music digitally opens up completely new doors of possibility.
------------- http://www.last.fm/user/KeiserWillhelm" rel="nofollow - What im listening to |
Posted By: ghost_of_morphy
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 03:28
I think your fears will be fully realized. 100 years from now prog as we know it willl be largely forgotten, although it will still have it's loyal fans and will be remembered by those who care enough. The real question (which is unanswerable) is whether the prog we love today will be significant in shaping the music of tomorrow.
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Posted By: debrewguy
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 18:58
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If I may quote Bob Lefsetz, music journalist, on the reality of "making it". "Musicians hate hearing the word "good". They like to believe their sound is unique, the more different it is, the higher value one must ascribe to it. But most of these musicians purveying these incomprehensible sounds want a larger audience and are frustrated. Bottom line, the audience determines what will sell. Its criteria for good might be different from yours. But there are criteria nonetheless. The mass audience tends to like tunefulness. Sometimes a beat, sometimes a melody. New and different score points, but you have to be able to get it on the first or second listen. If it takes fifteen tries, the mass audience isn't interested. Does this mean everything of quality will gain a mass audience? Does this mean marketing never plays a part? No. But the emphasis is now on the underlying product, and it hasn't been for eons. You've got to start with quality." He goes on to state that the old guard in the music industry does not like this. They no longer can use their control of the distribution channels (Radio, TV, Print Media etc) to sell their products. And furthermore, the new guard (his words) doesn't like any more than the old guard. Why ? Because they think they should enjoy the massive success ($$$$$) that used to be seen not too long ago. And they're going crazy trying to figure out how. Which is why they don't like to be told it's about quality. Because most music is NOT that good or great. And if this includes your favourite group, or your own band not being able to attract attention, who wants top admit, the "fans" ( or lack of them) are probably right. Of course, whining about all the "ifs" and "buts" and supposed "obstacles" are really the reason why no one, or few care to listen to your creation, well ... that's fun ... not that it changes anything. But it feels good, eh. I await the usual 'this act's music is too complex/intelligent/esoteric/speical , i.e. whatever" saying that the general public has no idea what it SHOULD like. ------------- "Here I am talking to some of the smartest people in the world and I didn't even notice,” Lieutenant Columbo, episode The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case. |
Posted By: debrewguy
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 19:01
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Nota Bene - check out this interview http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/an+interview+with+former+cbs+head+walter+yetnikoff+full+session ------------- "Here I am talking to some of the smartest people in the world and I didn't even notice,” Lieutenant Columbo, episode The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case. |
Posted By: TGM: Orb
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 22:18
Ask whether the children now will ever read about a certain Fred Frith, and it seems pretty unlikely for most of them  |
Posted By: Pnoom!
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 22:30
| Good music has never ceased coming out, and the vast majority of it across time has been in now way related to prog. That said, prog can be heard in so many modern acts, even those who are not prog. It will never truly die, whether or not Genesis and Yes are forgotten. |
Posted By: debrewguy
Date Posted: April 17 2008 at 22:54
Many things come out. Some things are best flushed away ... ------------- "Here I am talking to some of the smartest people in the world and I didn't even notice,” Lieutenant Columbo, episode The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case. |