h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've always thought prog has quite a bit of similarity to jazz - not that they're the same thing, but with strong links. Long songs (or at least, songs not written to be singles), no chorus, a tendency to imrov, multiple or complex time signatures... (not all in every song, obviously).

Gif

Jaysus! The favourite albums lists are always so depresing, aren't they? I mean - Sgt. Pepper isn't even The Beatles' best album. (Rubber Soul? The White Album?). The critics' lists usually haver between Pet Sounds and Astral Weeks - both of which I rate very highly indeed.

I refuse to list my top ten albums because they change every week, No...every day. No...every minute...and so on. However - when asked I always say 'Psychocandy by the Jesus and Mary Chain, and nine others' (Yes, The Marychain are British).

Here's my Desert Island Disks:
http://bonoboworld.blogspot.com/2007/02/desert-island-bonobo.html


As for Bach:
Cassandra Mortmain in 'I Capture The Castle' by Dodie Smith (an *excellent* book!)
'I feel that listening to bach is rather like being hit repeatedly on the forehead with a teaspoon.'
My sediments entirely! In fairness, someone does suggest that she's probably been listening to the wrong Bach, and I wouldn't disagree with 'St Matthew's Passion'.

>>I've always thought prog has quite a bit of similarity to jazz

Now...I was musing over something on the drive in today. I'll see if I can clarify my objections to Prog.

We have to distinguish between types of music. On the one hand, there's 'Classical' Music. The reason it's called Classical is to do with it's underpinning forms and structures. Classical composers deal with the 'formal' aspects - they write symphonies, sonatas, fugues, concertos, etc. Thingls like keys and time signatures mean something. See also the 'formal' aspects of petry (sonents; pentameters; meter). Popular music also has structure, of course (4/4 time; twelve bars, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight; etc) - but they're really not what it's about.

What do we understand by 'Popular' Music? A lot of it's distinctly unpopular (Metal Machine Music, anyone?). Another word for 'popular' would be 'demotic'. It arose from the population. What Popular Music does best is to mash up all the forms and blur the boundaries. It's a plagiaristic music. The Beatles plagiarised every bit as much as Oasis (except that The Beatles did it better!)...and the peope they plagiarised plagiarised them back.

Now...what *doesn't* work is the crossover between Classical and Popular. I've yet to hear a piece of Classical music that's incorporated Popular music in a non-inane way. Now...I know what you're thinking: 'Jazz!'. But what people like Stravinsky got from Jazz wasn't the formal aspects but a few new chops; syncopation and polyrhythms; discordancy. But The Rites of Spring sounds nothing like Jazz!

Which brings me back to Prog. Prog isn't really an attempt to incorporate Jazz into Popular Music. What they're really aspiring to, surely, is to be serious, Classical music, only played with rock instruments. (And also, unfortunately, in at least one case - flutes.) But by concentrating on the formal aspects - even by consciously thinking 'let's see if we can do a crossover' - they miss the point entirely. If it happens, it has to happen on its own. This, incidentally, is also why the best music comes from cultural diversity, upheaval and dislocation - whether it's displaced sharecroppers moving upriver to Chicago or black and white uniting in 1970's Britain or American merchant seamen taking R&B records to late 50's Liverpool.

And that, pop pickers, is why Prog Rock *must not be allowed*!!!

"Attacking prog rock is just musical snobbery. [....] It is a shame that whole swaves of music are dismissed as some people think they are too cool to like it or they can't think individually and have to follow fashionable statements[*]." Well said, Strangely!

[*] Or, perhaps, they think they are so cool and knowledgeable that they have to be seen to stand apart from the crowd.


Nevertheless, there can be no argument here: American music rules in both quantity & quality. We have had one or two great artists/bands, though. (Criticise these all you like - why should I care what you think?)

From memory:

Traffic
Animals
The Kinks
Led Zeppelin
Fairport Convention
Donovan
Cream
Alison Moyet
Dire Straits
Queen
Tears for Fears
Deep Purple
Black Sabbath
Manfred Mann's Earth Band
Pink Floyd
John Mayall
Iron Maiden
Wishbone Ash
Yes
Jethro Tull
The Electric Light Orchestra
The Sex Pistols
Fleetwood Mac (the original)
Soft Machine
David Bowie
Spencer Davis
The Troggs
The Cure
Eurythmics
Supertramp
Pet Shop Boys
Radiohead
King Crimson
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Pentangle
Hawkwind
Lonnie Donegan
Georgie Fame
Alexis Korner
The Who
Alan Parsons Project
The Moody Blues
Cat Stevens
Sade
Everything But The Girl
Manic Street Preachers
Stone Roses
Kim Wilde

I'm sure I've missed a lot, but I'm equally certain that Ed could list twenty (or more) times as many great American artists.

>>Attacking prog rock is just musical snobbery.

I *hope* I'm not a musical snob - I'm merely obnoxiously opiniated. I can assure you that I love an awful lot of music that would traditionally be scoffed at by fans of Prog.

But come on - whether you agree with the case I've made against Prog or not - you've got to admit it's based on something more than snobbery.

Hi Ed,

So '[w]hat Popular Music does best is to mash up all the forms and blur the boundaries', but this should not include the boundary with classical music?

>I know what you're thinking: 'Jazz!'

No, I'm thinking Deep Purple and Hans Zimmer Do youself a favour and listen to Difficult to Cure live from Finyl Vinyl by Rainbow. Extract here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCxhRujGpbw (hoping it's the right one - no sound at work!)

And don't diss Jethro Tull either - they were as much folk and blues as classical, especially on the early albums. (Though I do remember one video where Ian Anderson is doing things that should really never be done with a flute...)

Gif

>>And don't diss Jethro Tull either

How did you know who I meant? (Actually - The Tull have more going for them than the worst excesses of Prog).

>>but this should not include the boundary with classical music?

No. That way lies Sky.

How did you know who I meant?



There are other flute-based progesque bands?

Gif

That should read:

Hi Ed,

>How did you know who I meant?



There are other flute-based progesque bands?

Gif

That's not my most impressive intuitive guess.

Just before Star Wars Ep 1 came out (Ed's probably realised he may not fully appreciate this story) one of my work colleagues managed to get hold of and read the novelisation at an airport. So he came back into work boasting that he knew what happened in the film. Another colleague didn't believe him, and tried to trip him up with knowledge gleaned from the trailers.

Colleague 2: So, then, what character...

Me (interrupting): Jango Fett!

Collegaue 2:

Me and Colleague 1:

Gif

>>listening to bach is rather like being hit repeatedly on the forehead with a teaspoon.

Yes, baroque. and bebop, arrrgh. give me bauhaus anyday. The aesthetic, not the goth lot.

Yet... don't mind a bit of synth-nonsense.

I simply will not have it! Prog Rock is just unimaginably inexcusable. So they could play their instruments and liked to mess with fancy key changes and time signatures. ('Apocalypse in 9/8', anyone?) - but so 'kin what?! *That's not what popular music is about!!!* Strip it down. Keep it simple. Take it on back down the Mississippi. It's not meant to be a 'kin intellectual exercise to show off how much your parents spent on school fees.

It should be about Soul!


Sorry, but I'm never swayed by arguments that hammer-home the idea that music should "be" or "be about" something specific. It can be any damn thing it pleases.

"Sgt. Pepper isn't even The Beatles' best album."

Oddly, the same VH1 book has a poll on the "Best 60's Album". Sgt. Pepper's doesn't even show up, but No. 1 is ... Revolver. Then this from Wikipedia:

"[Sgt. Pepper's] was ranked the greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone in 2003."

Go figure ...

" ... listening to bach is rather like being hit repeatedly on the forehead with a teaspoon."

Sounds like Bach's own sons, like C.P.E., who said "C'mon, dad, that old stuff is boring ..." (paraphrasing, possibly). Must be the masochistic engineer in me.

Am I in a timewarp? I saw the above post an hour ago. But it still says "Just now".

Versus?

For me they all belongs to the same group: anglosaxon/ northamerican music. Both , at the same time are the product of others musics or rhythmic patterns.

I always thought that Deep Purple were Northamericans ( American is for a whole continent, hadn't you noticed that?)

***
I would say The anglo-northamerican culture versus the diversity of the world

***

>>Sorry, but I'm never swayed by arguments that hammer-home the idea that music should "be" or "be about" something specific. It can be any damn thing it pleases.

Oh, I'd hate to think I was swaying anyone. And yes - you are of course right. But...isn't there a place for artistic criticism? For giving better justifications than 'Well *I* like this!'?

>>I would say The anglo-northamerican culture versus the diversity of the world

Well I know what you mean - and I'd hold up many a non-anglophile artist as equal to anything. (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan? Amalia Rodriguez? Rosa Eskanazi? Youssou N'Dour?...etc.)

But this started with a discussion of whet we'd call 'Popular Music'. It's a difficult term to define, but basically we mean a genre that started with African-Americans at the start of the 20thC*. And on the whole, Anglophile nations do that best. (And the French do it the worst. )








* Specifically, when Robert Johnson met the at a crossroads and sold him his soul. Tony 'Anthony H' Wilson said in his last interview,
'When you saw Johnny Rotten up on the stage, you realised...actually - it was a pretty good deal!'

well, I missed that of Popular as a genre. (again the important of capital letters)

"But...isn't there a place for artistic criticism? For giving better justifications than 'Well *I* like this!'?"

Not really. That's the thing with pop, you see, it doesn't really need any more justification than "I like this".