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God I love Prog!

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Just driven home after a late school concert. Stuck on my Proggy playlist. Nothing too esoteric, just mainstream stuff: ELP, Yes, Genesis (old & new – love Home & Second Home by the Sea), Carillon, King Crimson, Oldfield etc.

There! Said it now!

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Comments

  4. That’s the first time I’ve seen Mike Oldfield mentioned alongside the usual prog suspects, but I suppose that’s right, as what other category/genre could encompass an album like Tubular Bells?

    Marillion will always be my favourite fliers of the prog flag, but Gabriel’s Genesis were also great. Once he left, they became less interesting, though there are still great songs throughout their later albums.

    Just to throw another name into the mix: the mighty Hawkwind. I know they’re probably more space rock than prog, but their lyrics often cover prog-type subjects, and they’re not afraid of a concept album.

  8. I used to love Prog. That was around fifty odd years ago. I’ve tried to rekindle my affection for it’s daft ways from time signature to time signature now and again but nope. It just doesn’t excite me anymore with one or two exceptions namely Hatfield and the North and for some reason I can’t quite figure out Gentle Giant. I very rarely play either of them though so I guess you can call me an apostate. I do have a copy of Schnittke’s requiem mass arriving today does that count?

  9. Never got it. I was a post punk guy so prog was absolutely not on the table. Some friends had some stuff that I heard. I couldn’t really take Yes seriously because of the ridiculous lyrics and Anderson’s squeaky voice. However I always quite liked (some) Pink Floyd and grew to like Genesis a bit (mainly the middle stuff, early Phil), but I really like Peter Gabriel solo which is interesting. I think he got much better after he left and was in full control.

    I just find it all a bit over the top in general with musicians showing off while playing songs about forests and pixies. I want stuff you can throw yourself around to, rather than sitting in the dark listening intently

        • Most progressive fans feel no shame in being called a “smart arse”. We’re nerds and geeks, rarely in school sports teams or quick to start dating, but we get there, our long- suffering wives and gf’s realising the geek will inherit the earth. Best not play “Groon”, though.

          • I can pinpoint almost exactly when I started to divest myself of The Prog. I noticed that girls didn’t like it and I was then and remain now rather fond of the female of the species. My female art school friends seemed to prefer pasty faced singer songwriter types, a passion I must admit to feigning an interest in for obvious reasons I won’t go into here. I even began to quite like some folk artistes which took me by surprise I can tell you as I wasn’t expecting that one little bit. However it wasn’t until I met the wonderful girl who would later become my wife that I finally found the perfect woman for me. A girl who liked Siouxsie and the Banshees and Iggy Pop. A young woman who though punching boys was top fun. A female who could more than hold her own in the wildest mosh pit. My cariad and yes you guessed it she hated Prog with every fibre of her gorgeous being.

  12. I’m not upto date on new prog bands, probably not upto date on (m)any new bands but recently came across Greek group Naxatras and have been giving them a listen.

  13. Gotta catch the film ‘Twiggy’.

    There she is in the 60s with a pretty cool guy at her arm (boyfriend/manager etc.), then we are introduced a few years years later to a Twiggy who is now acting and more assertive… boyfriend/manager is controlling/inching more and more into her space.
    Power? Of course.

    But why did Twiggy back off so soon? After all, he was her mentor in the early days.

    Have you seen him in 1971? Ugly-personified!!!
    That’s prog that is. Why on earth did everyone, men especially, get SO ugly so quickly?

  15. Just watching a film about Hipgnosis and I am thinking Shine On… that intro is so brilliant. The rest of the song is not in the same league. God I love that! It’s rog prog you could say. I’m not really so keen on the prog that moves toward classical music. I prefer a more jazz bent. Like Soft Machine, or riffing rock, foreign stuff, Can, Hot Rats. There’s a lot of range in prog. What’s really is great is that it’s not afraid to be pretentious and adventurous. When punk bemoans the fantasy and crazy ambition that has nothing to do with their lives I think but what about all the great art and literature that is about worlds removed from the life of a working class lad in 1977 and I think how limiting and uninteresting. I certainly like a song the side of an LP now and again.

    • Yes, and I don’t think it was just progressive music that opened up music and the idea of art and literature having something to say about more about life than simply your background to me and a lot of friends. Something we certainly didn’t get at school. It was a range of albums which all seemed to be doing something different: Jethro Tull, Genesis, Steely Dan, the Band, Little Feat, Randy Newman, and stuff from a few years before like Blonde on Blonde or Abbey Road, among others. And when I went to university and met people from other parts of the country, I found that there was almost a canon of records that we all liked. It seemed to come from word of mouth and a few radio shows, like Sounds of the Seventies with Bob Harris, Pete Drummond and Alan Black, even Alan Freeman. Not John Peel’s shows which most of us found very drab.

      Punk was seen as a step backwards, and more aligned with panto pop like Showaddywaddy and Shakin Stevens.

  16. Maybe it’s an age thing … as my years have advanced, and my listening broadened, I’m quite taken with moments of Prog.
    Nothing majorly deep, but all the names are there … Yes, ELP, Genesis, Marillion, King Crimson, Camel, Caravan (and more).
    I blame too much listening to (and re-discovering) Marillion, and (more recently) Steven Wilson.
    “Prog” is a simple label for long drawn out, musically complex tracks – possibly involving mythology.
    But … there are moments of Roxy Music I would term “proggy”, and much of Kate Bush’s output (especially Ninth Wave).
    Prog may be considered a world away from my usual punky/new wave leanings … but Curtain Call by The Damned is surely the pre-eminent mash-up of the 2 worlds

    • “Prog” is a simple – but crap – label. Progressive is better, but prog is just the shortened “insult” version, used by sneering journalists who love a contraction (see also “Brexit”).
      Notable that, in an interview, Mr Fripp said that he declines all invitations to attend, where the word “prog” appears…

      • That’s one for the prog thread bingo. That it should really be called progressive. But prog stuck and we use it so people know what we’re on about. That’s the way language evolves. Cubism and Fauvism were insults but we still use those terms today.

      • How much actual progress has been made in modern so-called Prog? It all sounds much like it did in the late ’60s and early ’70s to me. Just with improvements in the associated technology.
        A complete misnomer.
        A lot of it sounds very pleasant to the ear, but “progressive”? Hardly.

        • I think the genre has managed to keep reinventing itself pretty well, mostly by adding new sounds, musical techniques, and ideas from other genres. There’s certainly a safe part of prog that stays the same, but not all of it.

        • Well Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree incorporate elements of disco, kraut rock, ABBA, metal, pop, noise, West Coast harmonies… You wouldn’t have found them on a Yes album in 1975.

          Genesis had a string of massive pop hits.

          Yes merged with The Buggles and had a hit produced by Trevor Horn (it was horrible but they did it).

          I can’t actually think of any other genre with this breadth actually.

          • I broadly agree with the breadth, but –

            Point of order: the big Yes hit actually happened after the Buggles merger was over, Horn having vacated the vocal booth for the control room. Tony Kaye was back on keys and Anderson was also back.

            And weren’t Yes famous for their vocal harmonies, back in the day?

            • I defer to your greater knowledge. It was still horrible though. You’re right on the Yes harmonies, “And you and I” could be CSN actually. Which sort of supports the wider point that it’s not all blokes in capes playing keyboard solos.

              • Agreed on both points – horrible single, mostly enjoyed by people who didn’t like Yes (overstating a bit maybe).

                And the harmonies were always mentioned, usually three part – eg, Your Move.

  18. Apart from King Crimson who I discovered backwards from Discipline, I have no time for Prog. I should add that I like very little early Crimson.

    By way of throwing a grenade into this thread, I think (other than polka) it is the whitest music in the world. I mean that both as a pejorative statement and a statement of fact (i.e. my opinion).

    • Maybe the wrong word to use. Maybe it’s the sense that it’s anti-dance, groove-intolerant – the opposite of so much music that I love. I can remember prog-loving peers and my brother (thankfully only for a short time) making me sit through their latest prog favourite and knowing that this is not going to be over soon. Even where it might stray towards something interesting, it never stayed there as the next movement started. And then there were the preposterous lyrics…

      I recognise that I’m being a Grinch in a thread that’s here to celebrate the music that clearly so many of you love. Sorry about that. I’ll try to keep my comments on the positive end of the spectrum in the future.

      • I agree with you. Prog is almost exclusively white and mainly English. It’s tricky to dance to. You are extremely unlikely to hear a DJ play some Prog at a party. I think of it as batshit crazy folk music, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

        😄

        • Regarding “prog” being almost exclusively white, mainly English, tricky to dance to, etc – I find myself thinking “so what?” Are you making a musical point, or a political point…or what? It’s just music, innit – does it need to be a colour as well?

            • Okay – so why is prog’s “whiteness” used as a pejorative (not necessarily by you)? Surely it must be just a corollary of its derivation…why is it often mentioned by people who don’t like prog, as a point against?

              • Is it pejorative? My experience of black music is that it serves one of two purposes: to dance to or to express some kind of personal feeling. Prog has very few dance tunes or love songs. It tends to value virtuosity and opaque lyrics over emotions.

                Having said that, The Musical Box is breathtaking and Roundabout rocks like a bitch.

                • Is it pejorative? Well, yes, it seems to be (although I’m not sure why it should be) – see Bamber’s comment a bit above. And, TBF, you yourself didn’t say it like it was a good thing. 🙂

                  Edit:
                  (Just ignore me, Tiggs: if someone presents me with a scab this week, I’ll pick it…🙁)

          • Again this dates back to my youth when friends who were into reggae and two-tone would share the same space as my friends who loved prog and abuse would be hurled. That’s when the polka thing cropped up as a defence that there was another form of music further from “black”, music. I should have chosen my words in my original post more wisely or said nothing. I certainly didn’t intend to offend or turn this broad church of a forum into anything resembling the polarised debates on other sites.

            • Can’t speak for anyone else, but don’t worry – absolutely no offence taken by me! It would take more than that to turn this site into something polarised and unpleasant.

              Funnily enough, I don’t nitpick on any other subject – must be because I’m so, er, passionate about the music. 🙂

            • Certainly in my youth, say 1979, we’d listen to Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Pink Floyd, Wire, XTC, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Genesys, Free, Donna Summer, Steely Dan, Little Feat… This tribal thing is completely alien to me

            • Things were a bit tribal in my area. Probably the most obvious bunch on my road were the denim clad SMFs (sweet motor fixers or something like that 😉) who were into Quo, Motorhead, Saxon and many others. As mentioned above, there were Two-Tone/Reggae fans, New Romantics, Mods, a few Goths and the rising Indie Kids (Joy Division, Bunnymen etc). There was very little cross pollination. I didn’t really identify with any particular team and had friends in many camps. Even the black clad Stranglers fans were more numerous than the Prog fans I knew or even heard of. I can’t recall ever hearing anything remotely prog on Irish radio apart from the more commercial Horslips numbers.

              This tribalism wasn’t unique to my neck of the woods surely.

        • Re “batshit crazy folk music”: certainly there is a lot of prog I’m many (young) folk bands. Maybe acoustic and likely to feature fiddles and squeezeboxes, but complex time sigs and abrupt changes in them, suggest what their Dads had on, in their formative years.

    • My favourite prog band on most days is The Mars Volta. A mix of different racial profiles in there, if that matters… they melt everything in their path, and they even groove, when they want to.

    • Do you mean it lacks “natural rhythm”, is “inauthentic”, and is is without an emphasis on sex? This stereotyping is “problematic” for those who give a toss about such concerns.

  19. Early Caravan (nothing beyond In The Land of Grey and Pink) and Soft Machine (first three and the live recordings that later surfaced). Early Genesis at the time (up to and including The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway), but I find the earliest stuff hasn’t aged particularly well. Some Pink Floyd selections but most definitely not The Wall or later. Not Yes, though I suppose Close To the Edge has some moments. Hatfield & The North/National Health – yes please. Gong up to and including You. King Crimson with very few exceptions. Henry Cow.

  20. Back in the day Prog wasn’t a thing. Music which was “progressive” included all sorts of acts who were largely album orientated and not really interested in singles. Yes always springs to mind but Family were prog, Tull, Incredible String Band etc etc. And definitely Mike Oldfield, See also “underground”. I’m not sure where it mutated into prog in word form or meaning.

    • This ⬆️.

      I think “prog” as a term was mostly derisory, used in the 1989s by cool journalists. Then it was reclaimed in a slightly ironic way by the new progressive bands.

    • Good points. ‘Underground rock’ was always considered to be progressive (in a literal sense). I suspect it was only in the mid 1970s, at about the time of punk, that the phrase ‘prog rock’ came in to use as a term of derision.

      In the late 1960s and early 1970s there were some fine ‘underground’ bands about, on labels such as Vertigo and Harvest. Here is one of my favourites: The Greatest Show on Earth, with Borderline.

    • Progressive applied to blues rock and soul in a certain period. I think Sly Stone, Miles Davies, Santana, black musicians and multicultural lineups were part of that. Prog as in UK, home counties inevitably led to a certain demographic in that era. Punk rockers alike if one was to compare.

        • My view on progressive music and it being “hideously white”, and also not easy for Americans (a few decent acts, but they had to work at it), is that jazz rock fusion is the “blacker” or potentially more danceable expression of progressive sensibilities. Folk could sneer at Return to Forever for its technicality, but it took a very English form of music into a great new direction.

          • I’ve been listening to Al Di Meola a bit recently, and I think he also added something to the genre (I hear him as being Fripp-like, at times, but with a unique vibe).

            • The album “imaginary day” by the pat Metheny group has a lot of prog in the jazz, plus world music and Metallica. I think it’s genuinely progressive music. “Rock” is too limiting for what it is.

              • Race With The Devil on Spanish Highway, to me, has very much got something very like Fripp’s cross-picking as heard in Fracture and others. Admittedly it has the Santana vibe as well, but it’s not as loose-sounding as they can be. All stuff I’ve heard of Al Di Meola is blisteringly good. Amazing how little he gets mentioned.

      • Santana were very progressive for the early part of the 70s. All kinds of interesting stuff there, although the critical consensus(*) seems not to have been kind to them.

        (*) bollocks to that.

  22. I like King Crimson. I don’t like most of everything else which gets called prog. I think it’s mainly because my tastes in pop music generally require joy or aggression or a groove or all three, and most of the usual suspects (to my ears) tend to lack the lot. (There’s also the whiff of hippy adjacency, and the pure subjectivity of musical tastes aside, I quite correctly hate a hippy as I hate hell.)

    If music genres were venues, I like nightclubsc cathedrals and small sweaty hardcore gig holes; bedrooms weren’t for hanging around in. If music genres were analogous to drugs, I liked booze, ecstasy and the occasional dirty bump of speed. I hated weed and stoners, again correctly. Even though I’m now 47 and avoid the lot except maybe a pint every couple of months, my tastes in music still hold true to the analogy.

    • I’m curious. What is it about King Crimson for you? They often seem to be an outlier for people with more ‘angular and funky’ tastes. Is it the Discipline stuff, or the earlier albums? For me it’s the incredibly committed approach that they have throughout; I like things from all across their output but go towards the THRAK era mostly.

  23. @BFG Sorry for my tardiness but I have something of a Prog reputation around these parts. I was an impressionable teenager when Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Wishbone Ash, Camel, Pink Floyd, Focus, Atlantis and Manfred Mann’s Earthband rocked my world. These days I love dozens of genres but Close to the Edge, Argus, A Trick of the Tail and The Yes Album are still amongst my favourite albums of all time.

    Then, twelve years, @Beany posted a track by Big Big Train on here and it has led me down several rabbit holes, a European tour, dozens of gigs and a community of friends that has enriched my life completely.

    I would say something similar about Frost* whose most recent album, Life In the Wires, is a completely stunning Prog epic and has joined those albums above in my all-time list.

    Other modern Prog I’ve discovered through my Big Big Train association has included acts like Abel Ganz, Lazuli, Meer, Mostly Autumn, Ali Ferguson, IQ, Arena, Lifesigns and many others.

    The Prog waters are warm and welcoming; just dive in.

    • BBT are what I would call ’emotional prog’. There’s a sort of authentic feeling to what they do, which has something in common with Aha, or Tears for Fears. A lot of modern prog is in this interesting space. The Pineapple Thief are a good example.

      • Interesting that you mention Tears for Fears. I am sure most would place Tears for Fears in a Pop category, but Sowing the Seeds of Love is that rare thing – a full blooded prog single – and bloody marvellous it is too.

      • Oh yes. Rush are big faves of mine and were definitely prog for quite some time. The R50 Deluxe 4CD edition has just arrived on my shelves. What a band!

        In my opinion, Rush prog albums would be:
        Fly By Night
        Caress Of Steel
        2112
        A Farewell To Kings
        Hemispheres

        Despite the opinions of so many wrong-thinking people, Rush’s best album is A Farewell To KIngs. And that is definitely 100% prog.

        • You have to tell us: which album do the “wrong-thinking people” choose as best?

          Colours to the mast time: I like their whole prog era, as you’ve defined above (and All the World’s a Stage) – but my favourite would be 2112. Maybe I have an affection for it because it was my first – and it blew me away at the time.

          • I left out All The World’s A Stage because it’s a live album. I think most of it is prog – the sides taken up by 2112 and By-Tor And The Snow Dog/In The End especially – though side 4 (and parts of side 1) would probably count more as heavy rock. It was the first Rush album I heard and I love it dearly.

            Moving Pictures is, I think, Rush’s biggest-selling album and is regarded as their best album by every single train driver I know. And it’s a brilliant album. It just isn’t their best in my opinion.

  25. Funny that threads about Prog go on a long time – how appropriate. What is it about this music that still manages generate such fervour and discourse? I guess most of us on here are old enough to remember when prog was king and then a few years later when it was verboten and then a few decades later it’s cool again. I notice that a prog album is currently No 1 in the (physical) album charts and for what’s it’s worth it is stunning.

    • Thanks for the link, that was quite an interesting read. I know of quite a few of the bands mentioned, but had never really linked it all together. Opeth are a good example of this stuff in more recent years.

      There’s ironically almost a punk attitude in amongst all of this…

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