Svety, I think the point Angelo was trying to make was that even if some early prog bands were not bluesy, per se, there guitar and keyboard heroes probably were Blues icons.Originally Posted by Svetonio
Svety, I think the point Angelo was trying to make was that even if some early prog bands were not bluesy, per se, there guitar and keyboard heroes probably were Blues icons.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
Sorry, I think this is just propping up your argument. Just because someone listened to a certain kind of music means very little, unless they incorporated that style into their own. Elton John is/was fond of many bluesy artists, but most of Elton's songs sound nothing like blues.
Reading some of the posts here, what seems to be occurring is reasoning that goes something like this:
- I like/love this style of music (call it A).
- These other musicians and bands I like, who play style B, must have listened to style A when they were little... or they admired some musician who liked style A, or admired someone who admired someone who played style A.
- Therefore, B evolved from A. Never mind that B sounds nothing like A.
One could say that Beethoven's symphonies were an evolution from the first time a caveman banged two rocks together to make an interesting noise. While that may be true in a technical sense, it says almost nothing about the nature of the music.
Last edited by bob_32_116; 01-29-2016 at 04:26 PM.
Here's how I think it worked. The musicians associated with the hippie days were explicitly interested in experimenting with all aspects of music: melody, harmony, rhythm, lyric, instrumentation, trying all sorts of off the wall ideas. (Psychotomimetic drugs certainly helped with the ideation process. Famous story that Grace Slick took STP and played Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain on infinite repeat until she had the melody and chord feel for "White Rabbit.") There were a number of hippie records that sound remarkably like progressive rock in a lot of ways-- bizarre chord changes, electronically altered timbres, even the occasional odd meter.
For various reasons, it seemed that by the end of the Sixties the engine of musical progress wasn't situated within the hippie community any more, at least not as defined by the sorts of musicians who'd played countless shows at the Fillmore. The new sound out of California was Crosby Stills & Nash, the British blues scene that would allow Jack Bruce to play cello with Cream and Peter Green to write "Green Manalishi" with Fleetwood Mac was no more, replaced by Led Zeppelin's less nuanced sound. There were people still looking to do new things with rock, and they seemed to be more intellectual and bookish, and less Zen, than their flower power forebears. Their way of progressing also lent itself to the style of discourse of a forum like this one-- they could talk about odd numbered meters, alternative scales, polytonality, etc, while the old hippie bands were practicing their cowboy licks and triadic harmony singing.
I'm old enough that I remember watching this happen. The Jefferson Airplane was my favorite band when Crown of Creation came out. By the time of Volunteers, I was more into Jethro Tull, Traffic, and Procol Harum. It seemed to me to be the same sense of adventure, but seasoned, arguably matured. Then I heard "Yours is No Disgrace," and "Knife Edge" (I didn't know about Janacek then), and "Watcher of the Skies," and so on and so forth, and every step looked like progress back then. I miss those days something awful, but it was a privilege to be alive then. Talking about it is almost the only pleasure I have left in my old age :-)
There is no argument to prop up. If you don't agree that early proggers were once influenced and also, the key word is, inspired, by 50's R&R, Blues, Jazz, and Country music to take up music and play an instrument along with their classically trained compatriots, then you are the one who is trying to dispel my so called "argument" by thinking that early prog muscians existed in some sort of an influence free vacuum. This is, I'm sorry to say, is a very poor perception of artists who were born in the forties and listened to pop/blues/classical/big band or various other varities of music that was available to them in the fifties.
Last edited by StevegSr; 02-01-2016 at 05:03 PM.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
True progressive rock stands apart from psych due to it's use of virtuoso instrumentation (ie. odd time signatures, sudden changes in mood or tempo within a single song, and strong influences from Classical Music). However, it is late '60s psych that led to prog music since it had pioneered longer songs and influences outside of Rock Music for the first time.
I heard it was Ravel's Bolero, but by and large I agree with your analysis. Musical trends are always changing, but its the one's that challenge the status quo that history remembers, not necessarily the silly love songs.
Yep. Psychedelic rock opened the door to more sophisticated, less conventional rock music; progressive rock stepped through that door. The key difference between psych and prog is prog's more sophisticated approach to composition, drawing on classical and other musics, which wasn't yet well developed in psych. Psych showed that a rock song could be 20 minutes long; prog showed that a 20-minute rock song could be as complex as a symphony movement.
Totally agree with that, but I would take it even further and say that: prog rock showed that a SIX minute rock song could be as complex as a symphony movement.
Also, that is the clearest, most concise and most accurate description of the difference between psych and prog that I have ever read.
I think your right on a macrocosmic level, Steve. Nearly every great British rock musician who came out of 60s was either influenced by the blues of Elmore James, Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters, the R&B/early rock and roll of Bo Diddley, The Isleys and Chuck Berry, country musicians like Chet Atkins and Albert Lee or early jazz players like Wes Montgomery, Fats Waller, Dave Brubeck or, in the case of Ian Anderson, Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Jethro Tull started out as a blues-rock band, covering Dr. Ross' "Cat's Squirrel (just like Clapton and Cream), T-Bone Walker and Roland Kirk; Keith Emerson started out backing up T-Bone Walker (and many of his jazz piano runs are straight Fats Waller); you can hear a little Chet Atkins in Steve Howe (an avid fan); David Gilmour played blues scales throughout most of his career (and jammed 50s rock 'n' roll tunes with Paul McCartney); hell, for all of his love of Bach, Steve Hackett came out with a blues album. Also, the influence of intermediaries like The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix lent their sensibilities to American musicians of previous generations to the slightly younger prog musicians who blossomed in the 70s.
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
I'm not disagreeing with that, though I would qualify it by saying "some early proggers". I'd say they were inspired by whatever music they listened to and enjoyed, whether that was Bach, Beethoven, Bartok or B.B. King.
I still think the importance of Blues is often over-stated, especially when you start discussing progressive music. For every progressive songwriter who has allowed the blues influence to show in their music, I'd say there are several who have consciously steered AWAY from that sound, with its predictable chord progressions.
Not sure if Baroque Rock has been mentioned in this thread. Check out The Baroques and The Left Banke.
I think Yes by their second album were definitely doing something different, as were The Nice. Pop music
outside of rock already had complex rhythms, song structures and harmonies, long before 1966. In a way,
Rock was probably a latecomer to this, because it developed much later. I think looking at the history of Western
pop music would be an interesting study, but I don't have much of a background in it. I do like this period of
history, the 1960s, and find much interesting stuff in the female pop of USA, France, Holland, and both E and W Germany.
I agree that artists like Fripp avoided Blues progressions in an effort to be different, but without going into a history of American music, Blues, Gospel and Jazz heavily influenced the genres of Swing, R&B and R&R. These are the genres, along with straight up Blues and Jazz, which "some early proggers" (and I would suspect a majority of them) grabbed onto in the 50's.
Last edited by StevegSr; 01-31-2016 at 02:32 PM.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
Kurt Cobain was a big fan of King Crimson's Red, so by your pretzel logic, prog is responsible for grunge.
I agree. I would just add that the psychedelia movement in general was about the issues like "internal worlds", "altered states", "soul traveling" and other things linked to LSD, while prog originally was more about daydreaming, gloom, loneliness, literature, social issues and so on; a different subject matter and not linked to LSD and other hallucinogens.
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-01-2016 at 09:25 AM.
There's too much crossover for that to be a useful criteria. Psychedelia had plenty of social commentary, literary allusions, daydreaming and the like.
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Of course not. At least not as it was in prog.
Actually, psychedelia was a movement about visual arts too, not only about rock music, and those psychedelic artworks from 60s speak to us very clear about that original spirit of the movement. And those psychedelic images were made in its static style of devotional images if you compare them with the variety of artwork styles used for prog albums (unlike psychedelic rock, prog had not its own and one style of visual arts as a part of the movement)
And so on, while artworks for prog albums and posters were different as same as the music was something different and not developed from psychedelia.
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-01-2016 at 10:00 AM.
Fair. Of course, the term "psychedelic rock" is sometimes overused in designating any kind of "weird" rock music in the late 1960s, even if it doesn't have anything to do with psychedelic drugs. But prog has more mature and more varied subject matters than psych. There certainly is a good deal of crossover between the two genres, though. But what sets prog off from psych is its greater musical and lyrical sophistication. It is a vast difference between a 20-minute piece in, say, sonata form, and a 20-minute piece where the same few chords are repeated over and over. (Granted, not all psychedelic rock is like that. But many pieces are.)
And, as said before, the different stance on drugs. Psych, in the true sense of the word, is all about psychedelic drugs and related experiences. Prog is usually not about drugs. Sure, many classic-era prog musicians smoked pot, and some tried LSD. But that was not essential to the music, and most prog musicians of later times had no affinity to psychedelic drugs at all.
I also think that if something is labelled "psychedelic" it more or less presupposes the use of some kind of electronic gimmickry, like the fuzz-box, or the device - I don't know what it is - that is used to make sounds appear to come from far away or over a phone line, such as the way the drum cadences on the Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park" sound kind of distant and distorted.
Now that sounds as though I consider gimmickry a bad thing, but I don't - not if it's done well and not overused. Also there are plenty of "effects" used in music that I term prog rather than psych, but in prog it always seems secondary to the music.
If we need a benchmark to be able to say "anything more psych than this is psych rather than prog, anyhing more proggy than this is prog rather than psych", then I would suggest PF's "Meddle", which seems to have feet in both camps.
I agreed. The 60s psychedelic rock is like a "primitive art" in comparision with prog rock.
Meddle is my favourite album by Pink Floyd; followed by Obscured by Clouds. By the U.S. bands, I would suggest The Grateful Dead's Blues for Allah as a masterpiece of 70s progressive psych.
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-01-2016 at 01:33 PM.
I understand that you are also ready to admit that all these psych vs prog differences turned out to be minuscule as soon as progressive/math metal entered the stage, and showed that a SIX minute prog/math-metal étude could be as complex as an entire prog masterpiece from the 70s. A band like, say, Symphony X in a single number can switch odd time meters and quote different classic excerpts more times than YES did on the whole span of any of their three consecutive albums.
The mastery the modern musicians play their instruments leaves old prog stalwarts in dust, making 70s prog look like a "primitive art" in comparison with progressive/math metal.
Agreed?
Last edited by Jay.Dee; 02-01-2016 at 01:34 PM.
You said six minute? That's too long... what about 3 minute?I understand that you are also ready to admit that all these psych vs prog differences turned out to be minuscule as soon as progressive/math metal entered the stage, and showed that a SIX minute prog-metal étude could be as complex as an entire prog masterpiece from the 70s. A band like, say, Symphony X in a single number can switch odd time meters and quote different classic excerpts more times than YES did it on the whole span of any of their three consecutive albums.
The mastery the modern musicians play their instruments leaves old prog stalwarts in dust, making 70s prog look like a "primitive art" in comparison with progressive/math metal.
Agreed?
P.S. I agreed.
Last edited by Svetonio; 02-01-2016 at 01:51 PM.
I thought ItCotCK by KC was psych rock when it appeared in 1969. If that's primitive, then give me more! Same with side 2 of Abbey Road.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
In what decade of the Forties was the late Kurt Cobain born?
Perhaps you should stick to eating pretzels, Svety, and not using the word in conversations.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
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