end of golden era-a different point of view
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Topic: end of golden era-a different point of view
Posted By: clarke2001
Subject: end of golden era-a different point of view
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 13:03
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There are numerous debates about what killed progressive rock a the end of the 70's: punk, disco, too long songs for airplay? Prog became too pompous or pretentious? Listeners fed up with the genre? Bands lost their creativity? All of these reasons are true to some extent, and all of these reasons have been discused on different topics already. However, there's one more reason that should be considered: a progress of technology. What do you think? Progress in technology is creating regress in music? Isn't that ironic?  Mellotrons or samplers - what do you prefer? Why? I can go even further, and narrow the beginning of the end: the very moment when synthesizer became polyphonic. More that I think of it, more I got an impression that is the main reason. Is that making any sense or am I talking rubbish? What do you think? ------------- |
Replies:
Posted By: eugene
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 13:24
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Prog is alive and well!!!
It was a bit subdued during the 80's, however RIO/avant stuff fully flourished exactly that decade. Now we live an amazing time for Prog - old albums are being remastered and re-released, and new original and innovative bands are coming to the scene by the day. So any rumours about prog being dead are slightly exaggerated.
------------- carefulwiththataxe |
Posted By: Vibrationbaby
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 13:32
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Hard to say. You raise some good points for discussion which, as you point out, have been argued to death on this site over the past few years. I think it definitely had to do with technological advancements in general which made life more easier and simple People`s minds became lazier were and less inclined to use their brains for everything from solving math problems to listening to music. There were perhaps social implications as well which yours truly is not really qualified to discuss. However I must thank technology for preserving a lot of music from the 70`s which otherwise would not be still available as well as recordings which have been hauled out of the vaults. I`ll take a mellotron or Hammond over sampled music any day. Then again I am still living in the stone age of vinyl and still buy it at second hand shops and will only buy a CD if I can`t find it on Vinyl. ------------- |
Posted By: clarke2001
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 13:37
Sure. I am discovering both old and new bands everyday, and that's great. I was not referring to progressive genre in general, only the period known as "the golden era". ------------- |
eugene wrote:Posted By: mystic fred
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 13:41
the musical climate in the late seventies could be described as rather stormy - many changes, but many Prog/rock dinosaurs who survived the storm were never the same again!
-------------  Prog Archives Tour Van 
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Posted By: flaxton
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 14:05
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yes true. most bands started playing shorter tracks, eg hawkwind, genesis etc. mostly they had hits and become more popular than they were earlier in their career. ------------- flaxton |
Posted By: Chicapah
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 14:07
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The "golden era" came to an end because of two main influences.
Punk/New Wave and MTV with the latter being the real deathknell.
Because of MTV all attention was diverted to the presentation rather
than the substance and progressive rock couldn't find a niche in that
3-minute format. It didn't die but it definitely went into
hibernation for a long time. Happy to say it seems to be
reawakening....
------------- "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: Frasse
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 16:22
| Prog never died. It was just the media hipsters who stopped reporting about it / started bashing it. |
Posted By: Garion81
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 16:30
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To an extant polyphonic synths killed the Hammond sound. It is pretty amazing that by 1980 ELP, Yes, Kansas, Genesis and most other bands who's beefy sound was made with the Hammond had all stopped using them in favor of the polyphonic analog synths of the day. To me that ripped a big part of the sound out of the music. I don't really know if it killed it or not. I just think it was on many changes that eventually killed it off. ------------- 
"What are you going to do when that damn thing rusts?" |
Posted By: Badabec
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 17:36
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There are several reasons why progressive rock became unpopular in the late 70's. Many people were fed up with long epic tracks, the epics had been something new at the beginning of the seventies, now they had grown old in their eyes. Though I don't share the opinion of these people I can somehow understand them. In the middle of the 70's prog had reached such a complexity that the majority of the people were not able to understand it anymore. They had enough of all the complex stuff that had been made and wanted something new that was much more easier to listen. They found it in punk rock which was the complete opposite of prog: it was easy structured, had no lyrics you were only able to understand completely when you analyzed them, everybody could play punk, only very few people with great musical skills could play prog. I think that you can not answer the question, if the progbands lost their creativity or if they just wanted to adapt to the new appreciation of music. I also do not know if the poly-synthezisers abandoned the so called golden age of progressive rock, it would be great if you could be a bit more concrete in your remarks, clarke.  I think another point why the prog-giants got big problems was because the public media started to ignore or even bash them. The length of the tracks of the most prog bands was often way too long, the TV did not want to play epics, they wanted to play songs, that were at most three minutes long. If you have different opinions please dissent me!  |
Posted By: salmacis
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 17:51
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Well, I think it was a combination of audience apathy and overt pompousness, really.
Let's face it, there were some follies that really did the genre no favours whatsoever. Rick Wakeman, although I actually enjoy almost every 70s album he's done a lot, is a prime candidate with his 'King Arthur on ice' stage show, which is stupid whatever way you look at it. It took people's minds away from the music and they focussed on the grandiliquence. ELP's orchestral tour is another prime suspect- I had a VHS of this and I'm not surprised it's so maligned. I think they had the opinion that bigger meant better, when it doesn't. I don't think anybody here would claim 'Works' was better than their first 5 albums, because it's simply not. I'm not too surprised the public were put off by the sheer hubris of Emerson doing a 'Piano Concerto'. The first album I can see which really took a critical battering though was 'A Passion Play'. I think it's another example of a band thinking 'bigger is better' and they tried to outdo TAAB, by doing something even more over the top than that was. Such albums sowed the seeds of discontent. I think these massive stage shows gave the impression rock was becoming something of an exclusive club for the rich and upper class, too. At that point, with huge shows, the bands probably lost some grass roots appeal from the public who maybe couldn't relate to the bands anymore. The punk thing is often seen as a social revolution as much as a musical one (just as well because a lot of the music doesn't hold water), where the working classes claimed rock music back again and made their voices heard. I think the really lean years for prog were at the end of the 70s and the early 80s. A few bands were quite inactive in this period or had split altogether. In fact, punk itself had all but disappeared by the end of the 70s, and I think there was general uncertainty in music in general. |
Posted By: progadicto
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 18:10
I think your right... and not just MTV even radios bet for the 3-4 minutes format in order to our actual way of life... Right now we don't have the time to sit and listen 10 or 20 minutes of music I mean people choose this "fast-food-music-tv-news-life-culture" and most of them doesn't have time to sit and listen or see anything that recquires deep concentration... BTW I don't think that prog went into an hibernation... in the 80-90's period you can find brilliant bands in many subgenres (specially RIO) that kept the flame alive... Best regards... ------------- ... E N E L B U N K E R... |
Posted By: sleeper
Date Posted: November 22 2006 at 21:16
This, I feel, is the biggest cause of Progs decline at the end of the 70's. Prog had a tendancy to embrace new technology and try to get the most from it, so I dont think that synths had a major part in its fall from grace. ------------- Spending more than I should on Prog since 2005 
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Posted By: clarke2001
Date Posted: November 23 2006 at 05:15
Well, I agree with everything that you said, and Garion81 pointed out well that bands started using polysynths instead of their Hammond, and that distanced them from their beefy sound... What I want to say is: if the player have a piano, he will play piano and do his best to became skilled pianist, if a player have a keyboard with sounds of piano, strings, brass and everything he won't try so hard. When cheap programmable sequencers and drum machines hit the market in early 80s, nobody wanted to play complex music anymore. Anyway, these machines were unable to play 7/8, sequencers weren't polyphonic yet, able to memorise complex jazzy chords. MIDI killed the phenomena known as "the wall of synthesizers", you know, Hammond on the left, modular Moog on the right, mellotron in the middle etc. Why using so many pieces of furniture when you can simply use one keyboard, midi cable and a rackmount unit? The same goes for the guitar (amps and effects). No more experimenting by putting the amp into the chimney, cutting the speaker's membrane with the razor blade to produce a distortion, using tape to produce echo etc... I'm not implying that technology is necessary a bad thing, I just think it's making people lazy and less innovative. Here's an example. Everybody can make music at home nowadays - every kid with a computer. But each one of those kids want more free samples, more VST plug-ins, more softsynths, better vocoders, more brutal-sounding drum machines, bigger sequencer storage capacity...on the other hand, if we would be able to jump back in history and give one simple sheet-music software to Strauss, he would be overjoyed with such a useful tool!! ------------- |