'Pink Floyd not prog'???

explodingjosh wrote: I don't care.

I don't give a f****  what some rag says either I mean does it really matter. I got tired of the what is/what isn't prog debate long ago.

Prog is not Pink Floyd.. debate

Seems like bashing at prog just for the fun of it. I wouldn't send my daughter to his music class. Let this guy stick to C&W, maybe then he knows what he's writing about...

 

Why this person is wrong:

Wacky time signatures
Pink Floyd rarely indulged in the show-off polymetric twaddle practised by Genesis or Yes. Genesis' Dance on a Volcano nearly made my A-level students sick when I played it to them as an example of prog rock. The ponderous 7/4 theme is genuinely queasy, with the melodic phrase feeling unfinished on the sixth beat. The seventh beat hangs in mid-air without function and induces an unpleasant vertigo sensation. It's completely unnecessary because, if they had continued the syncopation set up by the fifth note of the melody, the flow of this phrase would have naturally formed a seven-beat cycle. The only notable song where the Floyd lapse into an unusual metre is Money, one of their most commercially successful songs, which lopes along a 7/4 bass riff without batting an eyelid. They could do wacky time signatures if they fancied, without inspiring the likes of Marillion.

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It's not just staying in single obscure (read non 2/4 or 4/4 or swing) time signatures that signifies prog - it's the changes one to another.

Look at Shine on you crazy Diamond. In it we go from a syncopated 6/8 time into a 2/4 swing without missing a beat because the two signatures are actually related on the up beat. Only prog acts do this. We also see this in other miscellaneous songs like Welcome to the Machine (4/4 and 6/8) Jugband Blues (3/4 swing into 2/4 regular), See-saw, and some others - I'd have to go back to the catalog and look into again.

Then on top of that we have shorts - what I mean by this is losing a beat on the end of a phrase which actually makes the beat one off. They do this alot, and not just in Money (short a beat from 8/8 actually) they do it on a bunch of songs on The Wall and Division Bell and most notably Have a Cigar.

So he is wrong on multiple time signature accusation counts.

Jazz: Delicious hot, disgusting cold
Rick Wright was the most traditionally tutored musician in the Floyd and the other band members often spoke of the jazz influence he brought to the group. However, the most remarkable thing about Rick's training is how he let himself be moulded by the experimental tendencies of Syd Barrett and Roger Waters. It is testament to his sympathetic and sensitive ability that I rarely hear a jazz influence in Rick's work, even his own compositions. His best known, the headache-inducing/soothing Great Gig in the Sky, contains jazzy seventh chords, but is really just a series of beautiful chord progressions, and not jazz in any meaningful way. If you listen to the vile interpolation of jazz that erupts five minutes into King Crimson's 21st Century Schizoid Man you will understand how a great Black Sabbath-style slab of noise can be ruined by prog excess.

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If you don't hear a jazz influence in Rick Wright's playing I suggest you stop being a music critic. Listen to the solo in San Tropez and that's just ONE example.

This person needs to find a new job.

Lyrics
The extent of swords and sorcery lyrics in prog is overstated, but when it strays from Tolkien it rarely improves. As with the music, an over-zealous air of trying to be clever prevails: "Complaining tongues are stilled; a thousand mouths are filled with rusting metal" sing Van de Graaf Generator, as if anticipating criticism. Hmmm. Compare most of the nonsense in prog rock with the casual spite of Pink Floyd's Dogs, which is as ferocious as punk, as elegiac as Wish You Were Here and as hazily nostalgic as Fat Old Sun. Good stuff I promise you.

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If sword and scorcery lyrics were all Prog lyrics were, I would agree with him. But they're not, so bollocks to him. They encompass space, ancient civilizations, philosophy, genetics, religion, and just about everything else nerdy you can think of.

Floyd clearly write from a smart person perspective so they qualify.

Be careful what you borrow
Too often, prog rock is about nicking half-baked ideas from genuinely progressive music and executing them poorly. If you want unsettlingly beautiful shifting washes of texture then try Ligeti's Lontano, which predates the irritatingly new age Tangerine Dream. If you want to be rhythmically challenged, then forget the horrific noodling of Yes and check out Béla Bartók, who was inspired by the addictive rhythms of his native Hungary's folk music. Or in case I'm getting too Eurocentric, try the terrifyingly odd polyrhythms of Captain Beefheart and Steve Reich's mesmeric phase-shifting.

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This guy's pretentiousness puts some of the people on this forum to shame. There is nothing wrong with being influenced by others. Ligeti has tinges of Bartok! (ironic this columnist has written this) and Bartok, like this author has conceded was inspired by European folk music (as was Ligeti actually).

That is the gap this author fails to grasp. This is why we call it Prog. It is an "update" and a question mark to where music may actually be heading. But it still has all its roots profoundly planted somewhere in the past.

Hell, Pink Floyd took its name from two blues musicians!

So there. Pink Floyd: not prog rock and excellent to boot. Strangely detached, but intensely moving; bleak but heartfelt. No Mars Volta or Muse, not even Radiohead (too much angst in that voice) are carrying the legacy of this incredibly idiosyncratic band forward. Strange echoes occur in odd places. I can hear similar lyrical themes of reserved English desperation set to fascinatingPink Floyd arrangements on Field Music's excellent Tones of Town.

Where else can I get my fix now there's no hope of that reunion?

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Sadly, they were one of a kind. 

Who cares of what Mr Will Byers think about Floyd?
He just wants to say : "look at me, I have an opinion about a legend!"

Let's laugh loud

Henry Plainview wrote: The Whistler wrote: And they sure as sh*t didn't come up that last part of "Saucerful of Secrets" themselves... Then what is it from?

MikeEnRegalia wrote: I think we can all agree that Pink Floyd were very different from Yes or Genesis, at least in the early 70s. For me they never were part of the "style" called Prog, and neither were Frank Zappa or Magma, for example.

Well, I guess you're right in that albums like UMMAGUMMA are more experimental than anything Yes or Genesis were doing at that time. But about 'Echoes' I'm not so sure. I've always seen it as a typical epic in the same vein as 'Close to the Edge', only with less virtuosic playing (which doesn't mean it's less convincing). And 'Shine on you Crazy Diamond': isn't that an obvious attempt to produce a multi-part syphonic suite? (Only, the Floyd being the Floyd, it came out rather SLOW...)

On the other hand, it's true Prog Archives sees prog as much broader than I myself would have done in the 1970s. For me, as for the writer of that article, prog equalled symphonic prog. Can, Neu, early Zappa, Robert Wyatt and Hatfield and the North were a different type of music.

There's no doubt that a lot of Floyd stuff appeals to people who wouldn't really describe themselves as a prog-rock fan, but then again those people would probably run a mile if you played them "Ummagumma" and you could also say the same about later Genesis and Rabin-era Yes.

fuxi wrote: Some stupid hack on the Guardian website has deemed it necessary to attack our beloved prog all over again: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/08/pink.floyd.not.prog.rock He obviously doesn't have a clue what wonderful music falls under the prog umbrella! As usual, the best thing about this silly article are the reactions from those who come to prog's defense - including yours truly. Rock on. ADMIN EDIT: made reference into a real link.

Actually I agree with the article - at least in this basic determination, as far as his criticism of the prog bands concerned I don't agree at all. Once again we have a situation where "Prog" is not used as a catch-all phrase for everything that could be associated with the word "progressive". In the context of the article it stands for Classic Symphonic Prog Rock, which is seen by many as the nucleus of the Prog movement.

I think we can all agree that Pink Floyd were very different from Yes or Genesis, at least in the early 70s. For me they never were part of the "style" called Prog, and neither were Frank Zappa or Magma, for example.


Edited by MikeEnRegalia - October 09 2008 at 10:25

"Genesis' Dance on a Volcano nearly made my A-level students sick when I played it to them as an example of prog rock. The ponderous 7/4 theme is genuinely queasy"