The
picture above – as prog rock aficionados will recognise – includes images from
some of the most iconic ‘prog rock’ album covers… not that all the bands
represented would necessarily thank you for the ‘prog’ label! Read on…
‘Progressive
rock is anything that doesn’t sound like regular rock. Regular rock is
everything that sounds like itself’ (Frank Zappa)
‘Whither
progressive music? I would much prefer to let that old fashioned terminology
fall back into the swamp of its indulgent insignificance’ (Peter Banks original
guitarist of Yes)
‘[Prog
is] a prison. If you walk on stage and you’re playing music, fine. But if you’re
walking on stage and you’re playing progressive rock: death.’; (Robert Fripp King
Crimson)
‘Trying
to copy or ossify a particular musical style or vocabulary from … any …
particular era is by definition not ‘progressive’ at all, but profoundly regressive…’
(Simon Barrow ‘Solid Mental Grace’)
Of all my posts on music, this
(which may be – for the moment at least – my penultimate on this theme) will likely
connect with the fewest people. It will almost certainly appeal – or even make
sense to – only a very niche group.
But, in all honesty, I am blogging
more for me than for anyone else!
Most folks who have any awareness
of ‘prog rock’ at all (whether as fans or detractors) are well aware that it
has a reputation for being self-indulgent, too clever for its own good,
overblown, elitist, and well past its sell by date. And its fans are seen as predominantly
men, usually of a certain age, stuck in a nostalgic longing for the 1970s.
The thing is, I think this is a
fair criticism of some (possibly, many) aspects of what is generally
termed progressive rock. And I think it is a fair criticism of some of us (and
to some extent I include myself) who are or were fans of the genre. There is a
tendency towards nostalgia, to be stuck in the past, and looking for our favourite
bands to replicate the high points of the 1970s rather than be truly
progressive.
Ah, the irony… the
‘regressiveness’ of progressive rock!
If you want to read more about
this I would thoroughly recommend Simon Barrow’s book on listening to the music
of Yes, the excellent ‘Solid Mental Grace’, and particularly the chapter ‘Yes
after Progressive Rock’, in which he explores some of these matters.
Now, as I freely admit, I am not
at all free from that tendency to prog rock nostalgia, and in wanting to locate,
and even ‘fix’ some aspects of my musical experience back in the era when prog was
in its pomp. But, much of that has to do with the stage of life I was going
through back then, and the fresh musical discoveries I myself was making (to which
I refer in other posts).
But, in mitigation, I would say
that I have become (I hope) somewhat less snobbish about music in recent years
and have come to appreciate the ‘pop’ music I had so readily dismissed when I
discovered ‘rock’ and – more significantly – recently I have even heard Country
music that I enjoyed, and I had long disparaged that genre! Moreover, I have delved
much more into jazz and folk and classical too, although much of that is thanks
to progressive rock, ironically!
I am a huge fan of Yes, and I do think
that their 1970s output was genuinely progressive, no album more so than ‘Close
to the Edge’. Their music then pushed the boundaries and explored new
territory. Has their material since then (great as much of it is) done so to
the same extent? I don’t really think so. Some it may be ‘prog’ (as in it
belongs in that presumed genre) but it is not really ‘progressive’.
On the other hand, I think that
there is more evidence of continual progress in the likes of King
Crimson (and in much of Robert Fripp’s additional work) as also in Porcupine
Tree; both bands that have sought to eschew the ‘prog rock’ categorisation.
But, in the end of the day, I
think that the most genuinely progressive band of all time (and they largely
preceded the emergence of that genre, and yet were part of its genesis) was the
Beatles. In seven short years of recording, look at how they progressed as they
absorbed and explored various musical genres.
But, enough of lazy categorisation!
Here’s to musical progress whatever we call it, and here’s to good music generally.
Now, where’s my favourite Country
and Western album…?
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