[atlantaprog] Re: Stumbled across this essay...

I haven't heard s quat by Banco or PFM.  Any recommendations for one album to 
start with for each?  My favorite proggers are Yes and Anekdoten, fwiw.

  PFM: Jet Lag, Per Un Amico, L' Isola Di Niente, Storia di un Minuto, 
Chocolate Kings
   
  BANCO: Darwin!, Come in Un'Ultima Cena
  
BK Broyla <bkbroyla@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
    I agree with this, other than some niggling details (e.g. the guys in Rush 
didn't just listen to Genesis and other classic proggers; their first album was 
a virtual Zeppelin clone).  He's right about Van Halen; his influence was 
massive, and I'm from the cohort that started playing the guitar largely 
because of him. Their debut was one of those events like the Beatles on Ed 
Sullivan, in a more limited sense.  It's interesting that the metal guys got 
into VH's thing so much since I never considered VH metal.  
   
  Making great progressive rock is very hard, with many factors working against 
it, and having a wave of such bands break through to lasting popular acceptance 
practically requires a 'perfect storm' of factors, as this guy alluded to.  
What's surprising to me is not why there isn't a heyday now, but that there 
ever was one.  
   
  I haven't heard s quat by Banco or PFM.  Any recommendations for one album to 
start with for each?  My favorite proggers are Yes and Anekdoten, fwiw.
   
  Brian  

Allen Welty-Green <agmedia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
  From the "For What it's Worth" department - this essay was referenced 
in a PE thread and seemed sure to provoke some lively opinion-sharing 
amongst the more outspoken of you!

http://www.geocities.com/danieldust_99/essay.html

Give Me That Old Time Prog Rock

Theories and opinions on why so much modern prog doesn't measure up ? 
by Scott Hamrick

The golden age of progressive rock ended 25 years ago. As much as some 
prog enthusiasts may not want to admit it, and despite all that has 
happened in progressive rock since then, the vast majority of the best 
progressive roc k was recorded in the first half of the ?70s. That was a 
long time ago. The short-lived and unlikely nexus of political, social, 
economic, technological and artistic forces that combined to create an 
atmosphere in which progressive rock could evolve and reach critical 
mass has long since evaporated, but progressive rock has never entirely 
disappeared. In recent years it has actually experienced a resurgence 
in popularity. Almost every classic progressive rock band from Emerson 
Lake & Palmer to Agitation Free has reformed and released new albums in 
the last decade. Numerous new prog bands also have been formed. Some, 
like Spock?s Beard or Transatlantic have even begun to approach 
widespread commercial success. We can now buy albums by some of these 
bands in national record store chains. Progressive rock festivals like 
NEARFest, Baja Prog and Prog Day have been popular (though not always 
financially successful) events, drawing bands and audience members from 
around the world. Progressive rock album review websites are all over 
the internet; and in the United States we have two major, long-running 
underground progressive rock magazines ? at least one of which is now 
available at some of the same aforementioned big record and book 
stores. But something?s missing. The golden age of prog has not really 
been resurrected. Yes, we have experienced all the trappings of a prog 
rock revival, except what matters most ? a lot of good progressive 
rock.

Is it just me, or has there actually been very little interesting 
progressive rock to come out of the last 10 years? Sure, there are some 
good prog bands releasing good albums, but these days there are far 
more bad prog bands releasing boring, low quality, derivative albums 
than good bands adding albums to the ranks of the classics of the 
genre. Surely the good/bad ratio in the ?70s was not as bad as it is 
today. Who in the last decade has even approached the artistic scope 
and vision of the classic early ?70s albums by bands like Yes, King 
Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Magma, Banco, PFM and a host of others? 
In your humble editor?s opinion, almost no one. Even the minor classic 
European bands who only released one or two albums in the ?70s are 
rarely rivaled these days. Think of your top five absolute favorite 
progressive rock albums. How many of them were recorded in the ?70s? 
Unless you?re a staunch neo-progger, I?ll bet at least four of them are 
golden oldies.

Why is this? It?s not that there aren?t plenty of bands out there 
trying their best to be the next big thing in prog rock. There has been 
a revival underway for ten years, but how many of the last decade?s 
crop of progressive bands will be counted among the greats in another 
10 or 20 years? Discipline? The Flower Kings? Spock?s Beard? No way. 
Are these among the b est progressive rock has to offer? Keyboards and 
long guitar solos a classic prog band do not make. So, what are modern 
prog bands doing wrong, and why?

There are several reasons most modern prog bands simply don?t measure 
up to the masters of yesteryear. Let?s start with the most obvious.

Much of what passes for progressive rock today suffers from one giant 
flaw. It?s filtered through 20 years of heavy metal. What this means is 
that prog rock that displays this tendency is (on purpose or not) 
strongly influenced by heavy metal. Many of these bands seem to believe 
they?re creating progressive rock in the traditional mold, but the fact 
is that they?re far too influenced by the double-bass-drum and 
guitar-hero histrionics of the post-Van Halen era to be true 
descendants of progressive rock.

When Van Halen?s first album was released in 1978, rock guitar and rock 
music in general were forever divided in two. There was the pre-Van 
Halen era, in which rock guitarists all tried to sound different, and 
the post-Van Halen era, in which far too many guitarists tried to sound 
like Eddie Van Halen. This is a theory of my own creation, but I think 
there is plenty of evidence for its legitimacy. If you?ve ever heard 
the solo guitar piece called ?Eruption? from Van Halen?s first LP, 
you?ll see what I mean. It?s one minute and 43 seconds of lightning 
speed string shredding and complex finger tapping techniques, the likes 
of which the rock-and-roll world had never seen previously. Not since 
Jimi Hendrix had burst onto the scene in 1967 had any rock guitarist 
made as deep an impact on his fellow musicians. Who played guitar like 
Van Halen before 1978? No one I know of. Who played like that 
afterward? Almost everyone, especially those playing hard rock or heavy 
metal.

Just listen to Rush?s Permanent Waves album. It was released on January 
1, 198 0 ? just long enough after the first Van Halen LP for its 
influence to have manifested itself in Alex Lifeson?s own playing. 
Listen to the guitar solos. You won?t hear any finger tapping, dive 
bombing or such high speed picking on A Farewell to Kings or any Rush 
album prior to it, but there it is loud and clear on ?Spirit of Radio,? 
?Natural Science? and ?Freewill.? We can thank Eddie Van Halen for 
that. His playing was so revolutionary that it caused an already 
established, artistically and commercially successful rock guitarist 
like Alex Lifeson to alter his playing style. Likewise he affected 
almost all other rock guitar throughout the ?80s. This is even more 
true in heavy metal. Van Halen-style guitar ? and to a lesser degree 
some of the other things that go along with heavy metal (strained, 
high-pitched vocals, relentless double-bass-drum assaults, etc.) ? were 
grafted into the existing heavy metal vine upon the arrival of Van 
Halen, and they have become so prevalent and inescapable since then 
that it almost seems as if these tendencies were always a part of heavy 
metal.

These post-Van Halen characteristics have even seeped into and tainted 
prog rock during the last 20 years, and by increasing amounts. The 
problem with this is that these techniques were over-used and abused in 
1980s hard rock. How can progressive rock, which bred such guitar 
innovators as Robert Fripp, Allan Holdsworth, Steve Howe, Daevid Allen; 
and which once prided itself on rejecting typical blues-rock formulas 
now continue to embrace such played-out wankery?

Now we even have prog metal as practiced by the likes of Dream Theater, 
Pain of Salvation, Mastermind and scores of groups on the Magna Carta 
label. Just flip through the pages of Progression magazine and you?ll 
see more ads for progressive metal bands (complete with fantasy album 
covers depicting cartoonish looking warriors wearing Viking helmets, 
carrying broadswords and riding winged horses, etc.) than you can vomit 
at the sight of.

Now, there?s nothing inherently wrong with progressive metal. There are 
even a couple of Dream Theater pieces that still blow my mind. If prog 
metal is what people want to listen to, that's fine. But how 
progressive is the majority of this stuff? Let?s be honest with 
ourselves. Much of what passes for ?progressive? metal is really just 
plain old metal. Metal had to go underground a few years ago when 
grunge took over. (Ever noticed the similarities between the prog/punk 
revolution of the late ?70s and the metal/grunge revolution of the 
early ?90s? That?s another essay altogether.) Once the evil metal heads 
and their million-note-a minute guitar solos had been vanquished by the 
righteous but talentless grungesters, metal found itself in much the 
same place as prog was in 1976. Shrinking audiences f orced metal bands 
to do one of two things ? go with the flow by cutting the length of 
their hair and their guitar solos (Metallica is a good example) or go 
underground. It seems likely that many of the new metal bands that came 
of age in the ?90s stayed relatively underground and found a modicum of 
success among progressive rock fans because those audiences were the 
only ones who were still willing to listen to displays of gratuitous 
instrumental virtuosity.

It is my view that heavy metal and progressive rock really have little 
in common. There are indeed some common traits. The aforementioned 
instrumental virtuosity has been held in high regard by both camps 
consistently. Freedom to compose lyrics covering a wider variety of 
topics than typical rock music is another similarity. Aside from these 
two things, however, the two styles are mostly different.

Rarely in typical heavy metal will one hear acoustic or feminine 
passages, classical/unusual instruments, keyboards played as anything 
more than subtle chordal backdrop, odd time signatures, jazz chords and 
rhythms and a host of other things that are so inherent to progressive 
rock. Metal is typically a simpler, more banal form of music. There are 
exceptions, of course, and some prog metal bands have truly managed to 
lift heavy metal to higher planes. But more often than not, the 
amalgamation of prog and metal leads to superficial ?prog? 
ornamentation ? like guitar solos played in classical scales and the 
occasional inclusion of odd time signatures ? being draped across what 
is basically an unmovable heavy metal framework. Metal is based on two 
or three basic traits. Take one or two of them away and you no longer 
have heavy metal. Prog rock, on the other hand, can come in a wide 
variety of combinations of characteristics and still be recognizable as 
prog. Compare Univers Zero with Ma rillion. They have little in common, 
but they are both considered progressive rock. You won?t find that kind 
of diversity among metal. Therefore, when prog and metal are thrown 
into a pot and stirred, metal usually must dominate if it is to be 
still categorized as metal. If the fast guitar solos, strained, high 
pitched vocals or galloping double-bass drum rhythms were removed and 
replaced with something else, it wouldn?t be metal anymore, progressive 
or otherwise. Thus, in order to be called metal, music must fall within 
these relatively narrow parameters, which, inherently, keep the music 
from being very progressive at all. True progressive rock and true 
heavy metal are almost mutually exclusive, and attempts to evenly mix 
the two are usually unsuccessful. Edward Macan?s book Rocking the 
Classics (1) further discusses the similarities and differences between 
prog rock and metal very well.

The next trait that many less-than-s tellar modern prog bands exhibit is 
the tendency toward producing ?watered down? prog. This is a very 
common weakness in many modern progressive rock bands and is very easy 
to spot.

In the early days of progressive rock, the pioneers were searching for 
ways to expand rock?s vocabulary and scope. Bands like The Moody Blues, 
King Crimson and Soft Machine combined rock?s elements of power and 
rhythmic propulsion with influences they found in more highly developed 
forms of music, namely classical and jazz. This led to an increase in 
complexity on almost every level; rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, lyrical 
and instrumental. Classical and neo-classical composers like Bach, 
Mozart, Copland, Bartok and Stravinsky; and jazz artists like John 
Coltrane and Miles Davis were the inspiration for these musicians as 
much as any previous rock bands. This is why early progressive rock 
bands often achieved such a high level of compositional and 
instrumental virtuosity. Some of prog?s early musicians were formally 
trained. Others were just highly inspired. The common thread, however, 
was the influence of non-rock idioms. By contrast, today?s progressive 
rock bands are mostly influenced only by yesterday?s progressive rock 
bands. Very few of today?s bands go back to original non-rock sources 
for their inspiration as the first generation bands did. The worst of 
today?s bands exist solely in the shadows of their predecessors. Many 
of today?s prog groups are only influenced by groups that are third- 
and fourth-generation prog bands themselves. Consider groups like IQ 
and Iluvatar, who are largely under the influence of early neo-prog 
bands like Marillion and Pendragon. These two bands are well known for 
being very derivative of classic-era Genesis, though with a stronger 
bent toward commercialism. Few of the newer bands like IQ and Iluvatar 
have ever gone back to t he original sources of classical and other 
non-rock forms that originally influenced Genesis to pen such 
progressive masterpieces as ?Supper?s Ready? and ?Firth of Fifth.? 
Instead they?ve spent their formative years listening to bands like 
Marillion and Rush, who themselves probably only listened to Genesis 
and other classic prog bands. Each generation is further removed from 
the influences that inspired Genesis and the other first-generation 
bands to greatness. It can easily be observed that each successive 
generation generally sounds closer to typical rock music than the last, 
so how truly progressive can the latest bands in this type of family 
tree be?

An extension of this concept lies in the fact that many newer bands are 
influenced by first-generation bands like Yes or Genesis, but only 
their more commercial, later material. By the early ?80s, Yes, Genesis 
and even many of the lesser-known prog bands had abandoned their 
earlier, more progressive style in favor of more radio friendly 
three-and-a-half minute pop songs. While some of this material is 
engaging in its own way, most of it is not true progressive rock. Yet 
fans and critics alike often mistakenly continued to call this music 
progressive rock. It is not uncommon for modern prog bands to cite 
albums from Yes and Genesis? top-40 era as major influences. But once 
again, if these are major influences on groups, who are likely to be 
even more commercial and less creative than their predecessors, how 
progressive can these latest bands be? Not very, in this writer?s 
opinion.

Another factor to consider when studying the reasons there are so few 
high quality progressive rock bands these days is more circumstantial. 
This is caused by the lack of musicians who are talented or interested 
enough to play new progressive rock. Since progressive rock has been 
underground for 25 years, t here are obviously very few musicians who 
are interested in playing progressive rock when there are so many other 
forms of rock music that are much more commercially viable. Since 1976, 
fans and musicians alike have turned away from progressive rock to 
listen to or play other forms of music. By the late 1980s, progressive 
rock had almost become a lost art. Most kids growing up in this era had 
never heard of prog, so why or how could they ever want to play it? By 
the same token, any existing musicians who might have had a desire to 
play progressive rock at that time would likely have given up due to a 
lack of interest by music fans as well as the music industry. So, by 
the late ?80s, the state of new, original progressive rock could be 
defined as being caught in a vicious cycle. Nobody was listening, so 
nobody was playing, so nobody was listening.

By the ?90s, progressive rock had managed to revive itself, due, in 
part, to the arrival of the internet. People who had been interested in 
prog all along were now exchanging their opinions on rare albums, 
sharing concert memories and even trading tapes of their favorite 
records with each other. Small record companies sprang up to reissue 
lost classics on CD and mail order companies sprang up to sell them. 
Inevitably, some of these people were inspired to form new progressive 
rock bands, but there was still a problem. While a progressive rock 
enthusiast community had arisen on the internet, proggers were still 
generally alone in their respective cities and towns. Finding a 
guitarist who liked Steve Hackett better than Steevie Ray Vaughn ? or 
anyone at all who played keyboards very well ? was still a challenge in 
even the biggest of cities. Even with all of the internet?s ability to 
connect like-minded people from different parts of the world, it was 
still pretty difficult for progressive-minded musicians to get together 
and play, much less record anything. Prog musicians were still 
relatively isolated when it actually came to getting together and 
playing or recording. Thus arose what one Exposé magazine reviewer 
dubbed the ?one-man-band syndrome.? This is what happens when one or 
two dedicated musicians attempt to record a prog album without the help 
of a full band because they simply can?t find any other musicians 
willing or talented enough to play with them. The result is often a 
disappointing, synthetic sounding album, brimming with one person?s 
musical ideas, but poorly executed and recorded using drum machines and 
digital ?workstation? types of synthesizers ? perfect for composing 
advertising jingles or dance tunes, but downright lame as a substitute 
for an entire band of virtuoso musicians who might typically have 
played such diverse instruments as guitar, bass, violin, saxophone, 
drums and organ. Such ?bands? also lack the diverse array of musical 
influences, backgrounds, personalities and ideas that four or five 
different individuals might bring to the table in a true band. How can 
one guy ever come close to creating music on par with a band like Yes, 
whose various musicians were deeply interested in the widely diverse 
fields of jazz, rock, classical, country and folk music?

There are probably many other factors contributing to the relative 
inadequacy of much of progressive rock for the last 10 years. I have 
touched on the ones that I have perceived the most often in my last few 
years of investigating and writing about new and old progressive rock. 
Another important factor to consider might be the change in record 
industry attitudes toward truly forward-thinking music. The 
experimental atmosphere of the early ?70s could not be more different 
from today?s, in which pre-packaged music and public images are 
designed for only the largest demographic niches of the music buying 
public.

I have also so far neglected to mention that there have been many 
advancements in progressive rock in the last few years. Many of the 
newer bands in the Rock in Opposition circle have made remarkable 
strides in advancing progressive rock?s scope beyond its ?70s borders. 
There have been many other bands from around the world that also have 
breathed new life into classic-styled prog rock within the last decade. 
Änglagård, Anekdoten, Hoÿry-Kone, Deus Ex Machina, Echolyn and a few 
others have contributed new entries to the marble halls of prog?s 
classic albums. This is a relatively small number of bands, however, 
considering how many new bands have formed in the last decade.

The last 10 years have been very good for the state of progressive rock 
and its enthusiasts. In terms of artistic and commercial success, 
however, it now seems clear that the prog revival of the 1990s has done 
relatively little to eclipse progressive rock of the 1970s. 
Furthermore, it seems the revival is past its peak and now is well into 
a state of decline. Many of the prog bands of old who regrouped in the 
1990s to cash in on prog?s regained popularity seem to have already 
petered out or have broken up yet again. Most of the really exciting 
work by ?90s prog bands seems to have been done early in the decade, 
and many of those bands have themselves ceased to exist or drastically 
decreased their output. It seems that the revival has elevated prog 
rock to a higher plane than it was in the late ?80s (possibly 
permanently) but it never again did ? and never will ? approach the 
heights of popularity and creativity it did when prog was new.  

    
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