Has prog lost its way?

Skalla-Grim wrote: 70s prog has brought important innovations to the musical structures of rock music. After the 70s, it was popular to return to standard metres, standard harmonic structures and so on. But that was NOT innovation but restoration, a huge (and sad) step back. So if you want to be "truly progressive" today, in my opinion you can't ignore the innovations that prog brought in the 70s. Sometimes I hear "true progress in rock nowadays is not made in prog rock". And I think when you ask where true progress is made, many music lovers will name bands who can add some strange noises to their rock music but can play only in 4/4.

Seconded.  70s prog was truly innovative and progressive (even if most of their innovations had already been done earlier in classical and avant-garde music), and opened up new horizons for rock music.  Most later subgenres of rock threw out the achievements of prog and returned to a more purist stance on rock.  It is true that prog after the mid-70s was mostly less progressive than that of the classic era, but they built on what the classics had achieved.  You couldn't have had Rush or Marillion without Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd; you couldn't have had Dream Theater without Rush; etc.

I find it funny how the popular music press and TV shows sometimes hail bands as "exciting" or "innovative" who sound just the same as any other "alternative" rock band, and adhere to 3-minute songs, 4/4 metre and trivial lyrics.  Many of those "innovators" are praised for doing things that some prog band had already done in the 70s, and sometimes, as Skalla-Grim said, the "innovation" consists merely in adding some strange noises to run-of-the-mill rock music.

Hi,

SouthSideoftheSky wrote: Prog lost its way around 1983 but regained it pretty quickly during the late 80's and 90's and is today almost as strong as it was in its heyday of the 70's!

You are right about 1983 but most PROG is garbage today. Pretty hard to find a good original band that would fit nicely into the 70s

Wicket wrote:   ..... John Cage wrote a piece of music called 4'33 where the piano player sits on stage in absolute silence, and then walks off after 4 minutes and 33 seconds.

GKR wrote: What annoys me is the "Comparison game". We are always comparing somthing with another thing. Maybe thats the sickness of our time. We are always look behind.

Edited by Horizons - July 12 2015 at 18:43

Prog didn't lose its way, it lost its audience.

Having lived through the entire 70s prog era, I'd like to point out how competitive all of the bands and musicians were with each other!  

Edited by cstack3 - July 12 2015 at 19:43

Disparate Times wrote: The best part of 70's prog bands was that they were all very different from each other and everyone else. Unfortunately it seems that all that ingenuity all these years later have only helped to create guidelines for what progressive music is allowed to be. With bands like Glass Hammer sounding more like a tribute band than an original band. To me that isn't progressive at all. Perhaps they are more interested in selling records than pushing the boundaries of music. I understand that after all that has come to pass it is more difficult now-a-days to create something "brand new" and still be interesting, but the lack of effort to even try, to me, is a very disappointing thing in all of music especially prog.  I do enjoy what Jack O The Clock is doing, I just hope that all the attention from the prog community doesn't corrupt them too.

I'll explain it all. I've posted this before and no one's signed onto the idea yet, but that's alright. The key word is ingenuity. Prog emerged just as a lot of new music making devices came out. All of the sudden even non-virtuosos who nevertheless genuinely creative (e.g. Pink Floyd) had a means to be creative. And people who were virtuosos had just that extra dimension added. Effects pedals and synthesizers allowed people with ingenuity to do genuinely new things. It was not simply about the devices themselves, players' imaginations were stimulated to play in new ways to exploit something about a volume pedal, or whatever. There was a certain amount of effort to seeing what various combinations of effects could do. There was a certain amount of effort in playing around with all the patch cables involved with a modular synthesizer. Some of the older technology, like mellotrons, that grew in popularity at that time also required effort to maintain (because they broke down and such) or procure new novel samples and so on. Then synthesizers got user friendly, no longer modular and armed with factory presets. This is when Prog took a downturn. Factory presets made things easier out of the box, but sapped away a lot of motivation for musicians once had in taking pride in their own unique timbres. I believe this extends to a broader climate as well. If a band is interested in experimenting in one fashion, with sounds, it will not just stop with that. Today we have an embarrassment of technology at our disposal, but the propagation of factory presets continues. Companies like Electro Harmonix, Roland, Pigtronix, Digitech and so on have been way more innovative than Prog musicians, I'm afraid.

as people have been saying for years... prog is barely hanging on.. it is dying. 

In its place though is a very vibrant and creative progressive rock scene... prog fan either ignores it for it doesn't SOUND like prog rock.. or they just don't care. The bands themselves.. they could care less. They don't condsider  themselves prog.. and are out there right now playing to music fans.. not prog fans.  Face it.. the only people that really care about .. prog rock.. are a couple of hundred Prog Rock forumites.. the rest of the musical world.. is just digging great music. No matter what people call it.

let me again.. dig out this .. from a prog musician posted after prog fan stopped supporting the scene and led to the cancellation of Nearfest

I'm just going to chime in on the original post, dunno what's been discussed over all these pages.
I whole-heartedly applaud every prog festival organizer who has ever walked the earth for their amazing contribution to the entire prog revival. Without people like Rob and Chad and Greg and Steve and George and the rest, a lot of us in prog bands would simply be nowhere. Progfest and NEARfest in particular have been essential to the growth of Scandinavian prog in the 90's and noughties.

It just seems that the time has come now for prog to find a new way. The festivals have become, as was mentioned, nostalgia get-togethers. They have been artificial life-lines for stagnant acts, rather than fertile grounds for new, exciting acts. And those organizers who have tried to feature some new blood have been punished by a rather backwards-looking audience. As with NEARfest this year. I don't think blaming either the audience, the organizers or the bands has any virtue. What I think, is that the prog umbrella for too long has tried to shelter two very different things under its shade: On the one hand, the nostalgia scene, which features both the old acts that are still around, like Yes and whatever Italian band you care to mention, and "old-new" bands like Flower Kings and Transatlantic - bands that, though newish, cater mostly to very conservative audiences. On the other hand, the new progressive scene, which could include anything from The Mars Volta to Gösta Berlings Saga, and which really isn't a scene at all, especially considering that many of the bands themselves have no awareness of being part of a "prog scene". These two strands really are extremely different. There's plenty of people with a love for both (including, to a certain extent, myself). But to throw the typical fans of both scenes (the former, ageing, follicle-challenged geezers - bless'em all!, the latter young, dynamic listeners brought up to endless eclecticism and irreverence to genres - bless them too!), might just be too much of a stretch. Maybe it's time for a divorce. Let the geezers have their nostalgia-fests, and let the "new prog" bands get out on the regular rock circuit and compete with any other rock genres out there rather than put them in the geriatric ward of "prog" where the smell of old age will make them unpalatable to both the rock media and the major labels. No disrespect to either!!! :-)

And as an a propos: Prog labels that sign new, fresh and exciting bands should be careful how they market and present the bands. Selling them in the traditional way ("washes of mellotrons, recall Eloy in their heyday, rave reception at Bolivia Art Rock Fest (BARF)") will, quite simply, sell them short. It's a new world out there.

Prog 1968-natural invention of music with busy, catchy melody coming from jazz, rock influences

Edited by dr prog - July 12 2015 at 23:23